The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit was held October 21-23, 2019, in Washington D.C

MPW Summit 2019

So let's get right to it here. So, lambda lakes is a farmer owned Co Op .>> Yeah. It's an extremely challenging time for farmers. I think farmer medium income is negative at this point. Yeah, I think the average was $ 43, 000 for the median is minus 1500. So everybody's living on loans, have been for multiple years. It is a challenging environment and this year, especially, has been, frankly, has been devastating for many because of the flooding. The weather has been unbelievably challenging. Many farmers didn't get planted and right now, if they did, we're starting on to a hard frost. In the upper Midwest. And so the yields, if even if they got planted, won't be good, and that's on the grain side. And then on the dairy side, it's been five years where they've been losing money. And so This is the first year I just started to see milk price pop up a little bit, where a couple of them are actually going to make money and that's great cuz they've been living on their balance sheets. So it's extreme weather one factor. What are some of the other issues at play? Well, I always get the question of trade. Certainly that's not been helpful. And that volatility means that a farmer doesn't know when to pull the contract what to hedge, and then you can understand how to invest. So soy beans have been shipping to China for the last number of years. And this year, and really the last two years this has been part of the trade war, the tariff issues. So that has been devastating for many bean growers. And then n the dairy side it's been the disruption with US MCA. The Mexico is the largest stereo market for export and exports are critical for again the most productive farmers in the world the American farmer. So you seem to view though your role as not just improving the business but really improving the communities where these farmers live why is that so important. You know we are member owned so we touch half the harvested acres 25 % of the farmers in America With our federated model. The realities, I thought one of the most profound things one of the board members said when they named me CEO, and they said Beth, please do something to change this narrative. Please make sure that you leverage this moment to do something bigger. And I thought, that's a great challenge. So I've spent a lot of my time before my predecessor was focused on that grand challenge of feeding a growing world population ten billion people by 2015. We have to almost double food production in that time. I decided to pivot into push back into rural America. Because we are seeing just devastation in rural America as people stop and say, it's the trade, or it's farming. but understand if they don't make money, the towns around them have no investment. We have, what is it 24 million people in America that don't have access to technology, to broadband, 19 million are in rural America. There's a shortage of 40, 000 Doctors in rural America, 78 % of the counties in America that index has food and secure are in rural America. These kids are being driven to Mcdonalds or Dairy Queen parking lots to finish their homework. There's an opioid crisis, three of four farmers or farm workers have been directly impacted by the opioid crisis. So I've been pushing back and trying to invest my time on addressing challenges, which I think fundamentally means that we have to get investment in technology in these communities, otherwise entrepreneurs aren't going to be there. So I focus a lot of my work on broadband access and pushing policy and Around broadband and these [ UNKNOWN ]. Right. So Denise for you, you took on yoru current role of [ UNKNOWN ] dream at a similarly challenged time. I think the business I don't know, all time well for you. First, why did you take the job then and walk us through what was happening. > Sure. So I took over as Group President in 2016 so we definitely were at a low point In the cycles and you know, Caterpillar serves not only customers in mining markets but also in construction and energy and transportation. So at that point, certainly the opportunity came with where the job came open and I had a pretty steep background in. Engineering and manufacturing and just had the opportunity. Two decades at GM. At GM, that's correct. And so I had the opportunity to take the role and it was really a time where we needed to do some major restructuring of the business. And so we had to take a lot of cost out and I had a good background in doing that. So it was a great opportunity for me. To really take the business to the next level, decide what we needed to invest on for the future and what we needed to cut and sometimes during those difficult times, the best decision you can make is what you're gonna choose not to do versus what you're gonna choose to do. So, we had to make some really difficult decisions had to cut a lot of things. But it really ended up working out and the the business has improved dramatically. We've really taken our cost structure and flattened it out and been able to grow sales and as a result are in a much better position now than we were in 2016. So how did going through that painful period, change the company and also change those communities where you operate Yeah, I mean, we, you know, during 2016, we also had to transition of our CEO. And so during that time, we really took a step back to look at the strategy of the company and decide what we wanted to focus on. And, you know, we're in a cyclical business, so really trying to focus on what areas. Can we grow that are less cyclical, so that we can really create momentum and grow the company overall. And so moving towards a services business is really what we wanted to do. And we've really chosen to take that on head on and double our services, overall sales. So that's been pivotal in kind of our whole trajectory of where we wanted to go with the business and I think looking at Taking that chance, a step back, is oftentimes really important, as you start to really navigate the business, moving forward, and we chose to do that. The services side, that's one of the things that we're trying to figure out. Cuz again, in our model, we probably have 4, 000 to 5, 000 retail Outlets in rural communities. And so the question is in addition to solving some of the problems, and normally those are servicing farmers with crop protection items or things like that. The question is can we use those platforms to solve bigger problems in those communities. That's what we're looking on including the technology access or fresh food delivery cuz places they don't have fresh food deliveries anymore. The maternity desert, so when we set up little clinics, we're gonna look at all of those things to expand the utilization of that rural footprint in a different way and a services model that I think will have a direct ability to impact some of these challenges because there's just no services in these communities. Right, and you've talked a lot about how we need to start listening To the voices in the heartland and sort of the shared destiny between urban and rural communities. Why are we missing that connection? When I speak in urban areas about this the optimistic side me says people come up to me and said we just didn't know We just didn't know. And unfortunately, this kind of fraught, political environment makes us seem like this is a red blue discussion and it just isn't. We do have a shared destiny between the urban and the rural areas. And the rural communities need investment and they are the ones growing our food and the thing is, they don't wanna move to the coast. They want to be in their towns. They want a vibrant economy, they want the same thing all of us want education for their children, they want healthcare access they want, they want investment. So why are we Why are we focused on this shared destiny because I think people forget To me, it's a food security issue, it's a national security issue because we have one of the most efficient cost- effective food supplies in the world. And if we don't invest, these towns are rolling up. Three farmers a day are going out of business in Wisconsin dairy farmers. I mean that's a heritage dairy [ UNKNOWN ] three a day. And if you go out in the country, it's painful. I mean, it is painful. And as I always say when we're not getting back on the wagon and resettling the land for goodness sake, I mean, we've got to invest now and make sure that we have vibrant economies. And so I talked about the shared destiny because there is a shared destiny. And when I talk about that I'm encouraged because people say I just didn't know and how can I help? We're trying to have a convening of unusual constituents so, you know, Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan or, you know, Doug McMillan from Walmart or other major business leaders. And people in urban areas who will advocate on behalf of rural communities as well. Because it can't ba an either [ UNKNOWN ] It has to a both end. And I'd like to bring other voices in that are unusual not in, are really focused on inner city investment and I keep saying well America is the new inner city, we should be very clear about that, and that is what is happening, and so we have to get investment immediately. So Denise, your business is very international or are you seeing some of these conversations happen to you and some of the communities where you operate? Absolutely. I mean I think right now, it's a very uncertain time. There's a lot happening in the world as far as investment for The future but a lot of businesses are really uncertain about making those investments. And so they're taking a pause and really making a decision on what to do and what not to do. And as a result there definitely is a wall and just a feeling of uncertainty around the world. And I think that really has impacted a lot of end businesses, especially in the industrial space. Right. So talk a little bit about that. How do you manage through uncertainty, right? Because if Business is good or bad, it's probably easier to make decisions than when you have no idea what's gonna happen. Yeah, I think it's really interesting as you think about uncertainity and I think as we navigate through the biggest piece of advice that I give is to be as transparent as possible. As you are talking to your employees or you are talking to customers It's being open and honest about what's happening in the environment, how that's impacting the business. And then also, not only being transparent but also being very clear about what your intentions are. And where you're going for the future is is also important. So what you're going to do, what you're not going to do and how you how you communicate, that becomes really important. And I'll tell you it so tough because right now, even before we had these, this difficult cycle, agriculture in general couldn't attract talent. So talent. I'd say everybody in the room would say, Jeez, what's your biggest challenge is attracting the right players. And now it's especially difficult and I keep saying, Jeez, my observation is a lot of these things. People that came in to start working in the sector, were doing it when everything was bright and shiny, and everything was up and right. And they have not been through a down cycle. So this transparency is so important, but also do it being realistically or pragmatically optimistic. To get them enthusiastic about solving these problems and that life Is full of challenges, and that is part of the journey. But it's very difficult. Sometimes we keep everybody positive. And I think I spent a lot of my time have lunch with Beth, or breakfast with Beth. We're trying to encourage the team to get out in the playing field, they're saying, the game is underway And you need to be out there and it doesn't mean that we're not gonna take some hit, so that's gonna be okay. And I think having people see through, I mean you're in a down cycle but you will be back in an up cycle. So it will end, it's a matter of time and you can make it through. That resilience becomes really important. To be so young that you didn't have to see a down cycle. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] I remember that. But it does seem like for both of you, you are trying to figure out how to change the business so it is not such a boom and bust cycle and part of that feels like that is services are a big piece. What else are you doing to try to make sure it is not, you don't see such extreme ups and downs. But for me I keep talking to my team about driving variability in our course structure because we have a cyclical business as well, maybe not as heavy on infrastructure as you. But trying to drive and make sure that everything is variable as possible, is critically important to us. And then changing, as I said, the service model Is a focus but frankly, we have to innovate. We have a unique platform we really are farmer and we go right from the farm all the way to the retail shelf different businesses. So innovation is so critical and what we spend a lot of time on an investment in is insight analytics Technology, the things that will drive a different product portfolio or a different services portfolio and you have to have analytics for that. So we are kind of moving pretty aggressively into commercialization of different businesses driven by insights. Okay. And without a doubt it's investing in technology and if you look at where really the future is going and really trying to Skate to the puck, so to speak. It's investing in things that you know the customers are going to value and will help them be more productive with your equipment than they can be with a competitor's. And so the only way you can do that is to really invest in technology and look for The opportunity to be smarter about how you're doing that investment. And keeping your cost structure as well as possible is also the key .>> You know what's been fancinating, I've been watching your sector but what I hear on this. The services side is we're no longer an equipment manufacturer, we are a service provider. And I was thinking about this in agriculture, everybody has kind of equipment envy, they're asset envy. This guy's got a new combine, he's got whatever. So I'm wondering how you're gonna make a move on that direction because everybody's so attached To their stuff. And then the reality is, what you're saying is, I'll have a combine there for you, or a plant, or whatever whenever you need it. And here's the service, and we'll take care of that. Right, well, and you take the risk out of the Out of the equation when you do that, right? So you're kind of guaranteeing a certain level of productivity with a piece of equipment, whether you're going to license that for a period of time or whether they're going to keep that equipment. And you're going to help them be more productive. So there's lots of business model changes that you can reflect on and be able to participate in that you never could before. Yeah, all I'm saying is they'd like to, of course. Take their picture next to their big tractor. [ LAUGH ] They still like to [ CROSSTALK ] This is mine, you know. This is Bessy. [ LAUGH ] So I'm always wondering whether we can pull away from that and really go to something that is really more variable which I think is probably, definitely, the way to go. Yeah. I wanna see if there's questions in the room. But first I just wanna go back to Denise and ask Are you seeing this talent problem as well? Is this an issue in your sector or? Yeah, definitely, you know, I think the job market is so tight right now. And so to be able to hire the best and brightest and even, even to get individuals into some of our factories, we are really struggling with attracting talent. And so it is an interesting time even though the economy is uncertain and there's a lot of uncertainty in the business environment. On the talent end of things, we are definitely seeing a pinch. So we're having to market ourselves Really give people a reason to want to join Caterpillar as a company and be more compelling than we've ever been before. And to be attractive, especially in the female market is very challenging because you know, a lot of females don't identify themselves as being a part of a construction or mining company, provider. So. It's changing that value product position? Cuz it's fun. It is, it's a lot of fun, it is. [ LAUGH ] Cool. Do we have any questions in the room? No, okay. Well I want to actually touch on something you both have in common, which is that you're both from rural farming communities. I'm really curious how that's impacted What's your careers and your leadership? I don't know, Beth, if you want to start with that? Well, for me, I come from a very large family in the middle of eight children. And you star, I think the values that you get in smaller towns, the ability to kind of be free and kind of do your own thing now. With my own children, it feels everything is plan. Everything is kind of cultured and edited and here we're gonna make this playdate and things like that. And I think that there's a freedom and some lessons that you learn when you're in a smaller community that I think have been central to the way I think about working hard and trying to achieve different things. I'm lucky, I really feel that way. Even though I probably grew up as a lower middle class, working class family, I think it's a gift. I always concern myself about myself as a parent, because my job is to say no, right? That wasn't my mom's job. My mom was job was to say we don't have it. So you're gonna have to figure that out. My job is say, you can't have it, and that's just a different challenge. You'll know this, right? Yes, [ LAUGH ] Too. That's fair. No, I totally agree. I think there's huge value in growing up in a community where you don't have everything planned for you. And I remember growing up, and actually walking to school, in kindergarten and first grade, by myself. I didn't have anyone taking me to school And in the summers, in high school, babysitting to be able to have money to buy school clothes. Right. And that was normal. And that teaches you a lot about working hard, about your sense of community, and growing up and helping others. Right. I think that really makes a difference. Right, right So very quickly Beth 30 seconds, what's the outlook for the heartland? For having this conversation in five years what does it look like? I am an optimist, try to be a pragmatic optimist. I'm gonna believe that there's gonna be an aggressive 1930's rural electric Investment in technology in these communities that people are gonna understand the value on the coasts. And that we're gonna make a change, and that these communities will improve their vibrancy and others will move back. We are starting to see that, folks moving back into rural communities and I'm excited about that. Beth, Denise, thank you so much. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Climate and Trade Wars Are Affecting the Heartland 

Politics

Land O’ Lakes’ Beth Ford and Caterpillar’s Denise Johnson discuss.

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Behind Amazon's $10 Billion Pentagon Bid

Leadership

Amazon’s $10 billion bid to build out the Pentagon’s new cloud computing infrastructure is huge—and in limbo.

glad you're with me. I would be much more boring on my own. So, Teresa, thank you for being here with us. Um, we're happy you had a short commute home for you. Love it. Love Washington, D. C. It's a boring town. So for those of us who aren't fully steeped in government procurement processes and the D o d Jed I project, what is the Jet I project? Can you just explain? Well, first of all, thanks for having me. And it's amazing to be here with all these other women, and I'm totally shocked that everyone doesn't understand government procurement. But that Jen Ai is a $10 billion contract that the Department of Defense has set out its called a war fatter contract. And it's the first time they've gone out for an enterprise wide capability for a new technology that really supports the war. Fatter at the edge for mission. It's very different. A lot of these they're kind of back office in their large I t contract that this is really considered a war fatter contract. It's a significant, and it's a new kind of model. They're looking to drive 10 year, $10 billion contract, given example of what is the warfighter cloud or contact me and what kind of applications? Yeah, well, one of the reasons is different. If you think about Ah, war fatter, they need information in real time and then kind of old mall. Today they've had thio B. It takes him a long time to get information that they need because they would have to buy tools and wait for them to get him. And when you're in the field and you're in dangerous ferries, there's areas around the world you can have as an example. You need information dissemination. You need the ability to rapidly pull in and process data and analyze it and get it to the war fighters so they could do something with it. And today, because of the amount of data and how much comes down, is being processed. If you think about N men vehicles over header drones that are looking at things, there's a lot of information flow coming from that, and if they can't process and decide what to do with that information quickly, the other area is continuous communications or resiliency of communications. So it's satellite many times in the field for war fighters. They're sad, like jam or communications networks get a cat, then cloud computing allows them to have that continues level of communication in 1/3 area. Me Hall would be like training and maintenance, where they have continuous information about fleet so they know what's working, what's not. And then just virtual in real time training. And it's it's critical for them to have these capabilities at all time. This all sounds like something that we would think already existed but doesn't a d o d Why why is that? Well, d o d for some of you may not know the U. S. Department since then, more many on I t than anyone in the world by far. And you have again. Like I said, I see capabilities, and then you have mission and mission trumps everything in government, as it should just in business that the old model of I t. Is one where you go out and you, Babin just servers and you back things that you don't always need and kind of hope you have what you need. Cloud computing is still fairly new. It's not need to start up. That's the company's you've heard here they begin. They begin their companies and building sustained. They don't know their cloud native. We call, they just build their tools in clouds. Well, governments around the world, Ms Devane have old, very outdated legacy citizens on part of it is because of what you just said. The procurement processes are long, laborious, and they get they get processed it all the time. It takes a very long time. And in the past, governments have tended to do these really long contract without continuous innovation built in. Now they're trying to make this shit the old legacy for a very long period of time. Now they're really going through a modernized approach to how they're actually procuring and using technology which mess be done in the United States of America. It's got to be done. So speaking of the laborious process, this one has been particularly complicated with plenty of awesome twists and turns. Talk a little bit about who were the players early on, and what has it been whittled down to, and what's the current status? Okay, so, um, the d o. D. Today it's kind of been reported that they have about 500 cloud projects in the works. But like I said, this is the first big war fighter won over a long period. So there were four bidders originally, which was a TBS, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle that we know. It's like, you know, us being an unwed survived, and it's down to two. Now it's down. They kind of down selected to which is Microsoft and and we're waiting. And Oracle was happy with that. Totally, completely. You can see that. No, they were not happy. They went. They protested it, which is not unusual, by the way. For again. I know you ladies. I'm excited that you want to know about government contracting. I'm sure it's riveting topic that it does. It does effect all of them on a daily basis as matches. It's kind of, ah, hard to dive into. We should all actually be really concerned about this. But it is kind of a status quote in government that everything gets protested, which is kind of bad, because it delays innovation and one of the things me haul it. We've Janet dated. Yes, I came to Amazon and 2010 and started our public sector business, Brandy and Jeff. And the reason what we said. Government and citizen citizens deserve the same top of technologies. And he started up, and our role has been to provide the governments around the world, the U. S and others with technologies that help them move faster and have the innovative capabilities that built in better, faster, less expensive with security by design. So, uh, it is definitely true that these kind of contracts that contested all the time on but that's the status quo. But is it unprecedented? The level to which this particular contract has become politicized? Well, um, I have been doing I've been working in public sector for liver 20 years now, and I have seen a lot of these. Sometimes they're not as always out there in the press, but there are a lot that kind of will get political for tankers, aircraft care. I mean, there's been a lot of things because this is big business. Like I just said, D o d been Maur many than anyone else in the world on information technology, and when you're trying to go into shift, a lot of people don't want change, and a lot of the vendors that are in there. They don't want change because change means that somebody's me, their cheese and they potentially won't have the same type of business as they had before. But that's innovation. That's what we all do is compete every day. So it is. It has been out there a lot. I will have to admit. Even for May. I was shocked. I was like, Oh, wow, this contract that when you consider it's such a massive ship, that's the reason because you're going from on premises lost the dollar spent a lot of these vendors to move to the cloud for a lot of mission capability, which we need so and just to give a little bit more context. One of the allegations, I guess the concerns that have been brought up on the part of your rival bidders, at least earlier on in the process, was that the profits was rigged in favor of Amazon and things have been brought up like you meeting with Mattis and all sorts of other things. And there's like this crazy chart that was drawn with parts and whatever annexing Amazon executives with governments and beauty and and so, um I mean, I'm guessing I know what your answer is, but I mean, was there any wrongdoing? Was the process ribs? No. The process was not rig there, Yanni, or I'm sure, because if you said you were gonna break news here Yeah, I wish I wish I had a crystal ball. Actually, I wish I, you know, had a wall. But this was one of the most complicated I've been doing for Germans for years. Mike. Team, I think we did, uh, 15,000 different procurement on my team just last year that we did for this is the most complex when I've ever seen in my career. I mean, I really mean that. I think the reason that, uh, some legacy providers were worried that in 2030 seen a TV s won the intelligence community cloud and people were shocked. I mean, it was I've heard people say it's kind of shot around the world. They're like, What? How did they win that? That the intelligence community had already been looking for cloud computing capabilities. And when we win that and we built it, we have sustained that. The intelligence community is doing amazing things with their innovation. So we built clouds that every classifications level from and last two top secret to secret. And we we have experience. We have that experience and I think that is the reason people thought was working in their local Amazon. Just gonna win this because it's working. How many of you, by the way, knew that Amazon runs the CIA's cloud, Raise your hand show of hands. Okay, well, you know, you have to be on the case and every star that doesn't surprise me. So another another concern that has been raised is that is the fact that the O. D. Is going with a single vendor. Why not multi vendor? Wouldn't that actually helped bubble up more innovation and increase security? Well, if you go back 2013 why did the intelligence community to make the decision for to do a single cloud? It was because they don't have the capabilities they need of training and education yet. And you know, we can't underestimate. Moving to the cloud is complicated when you're moving Oh, legacy systems. And when you're asking an end trained force, the people to get trained on multiple clouds with multiple security configurations that makes the war fighters job more complicated, not easier. So I think they I personally think they're making the right decision because they need one enterprise wide model for this toe. Actually, over time they can actually, And by the way, they'll have multiple companies and partners on top of whatever cloud they choose. That one, not one group. And if you look at D o. D. Today, they're not a single cloud. They have. Like I said, 500 cloud project. They have other clubs, but these are different clouds for the warfighter cloud. This your father? This is one that they can try to make out. That d o d will only have this one, which is not the case. They already have project my team. We work on multiple projects today, a deity. But for this one, it is the right thing because they need a single enterprise solution that they can build on and learn and scale and that the way they should get started. I still believe that is the right thing for them. Whatever vendor they choose. Whatever partner, they cheese. I think it's the right thing for that. And let me ask you real quick also, because we can't have this conversation without talking about President Trump. This has become politicized. President retreated a story calling this contract in the bidding process the basil bailout. He repeatedly refers to the Washington Post, the Amazon Washington Post and everybody knows that there's a beef there. How has that complicated this process from your perspective? Well, um, like I shared. I've been doing this for 20 years and my team and myself running the public sector. We always look at the long term, not the short term. And we want to build solutions that outlast all of that and that we give and we put technologies in the hands truly of our citizens were factors in the public servant that are required. And we kind of I have to get beyond all this. I know that sounds maybe strangely, Hall, But you can't dwell on this death, and I will I will have to say a lot of people may not know this, but this administration has actually driven a lot in the item modernization area. So for cloud, as an example, we've seen customers across government adopt cloud at a much faster rate during this administration than ever before. Up in the Obama administration. A good friend amount of that Kendra started. He was the first thing out of the federal government, and he started this process that really this administration has taken They have a very effective i t. Modernization policy. And we are seeing a broad adoption there. So we really I know what you're saying. If you don't mind the president calling it, I think people in from her just say if you are a public company, you have to be screwing up. It's OK. And you have to take that feedback and learn from it and do the best you can. And like I said, we just we have to build things that are outlasting us. And we can't just focus on the kind of political well, things that happen all the time. Okay, well, I wanted to get you a lot more, but I'm so sorry we have to wrap up. Thank you so much for being here with you.

Thank you, Ellen and thank you to the fortune. Most Powerful Women team for having me back It's wonderful to be here. [ APPLAUSE ] [ LAUGH ] I Welcome their browser. You and I had the chance to chat in 2015 during your first term. Mayor Bowser is now officially after having won reelection last fall. The first female two term mayor of the district in history, and [ APPLAUSE ] And the first mayor to be reelected in almost 20 years. So congratulations >> Thank you. for those compliments and congratulations on the Nationals being in the world. hey [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] Also a first I think. So you've been busy the past couple of days? We've been very busy over the last several months, and many Washingtonians are sleep- deprived. Yes- Because we're staying out till midnight and 1 AM. Watching the Nationals win but as well worth it. And do you have to go everywhere and represent them? Well, absolutely. So our first two games are away. We're playing a fantastic team. We're up against one of the best pitchers in the world last night and we won. Are you a baseball fan? Absolutely. I'm a [ UNKNOWN ] No span, let me clear. Okay, that's great. So they won last night. [ LAUGH ] Yeah, they won last night was a big deal. So let's talk about this push for statehood. So this is one of your big priorities right now. Absolutely, The District of Columbia is a district it is not a state. And you have basically resurrected along, you know this is a historical push that has been mounted before but you've brought it back to the forefront. Tell us why? Why, is because I'm an American, I pay taxes, I'm subject to all the responsibilities of citizenship yet I don't have all of the benefits. Specifically, I don't have the fundamental benefit of having a vote in Congress. We have a delegate, she cannot vote. Imagine that on all of the important issues that come before the Congress, she cannot vote. We don't have two senators. We don't have senators at all, the important things that only the senate can weigh in on like confirming a Supreme Court justice or sending Americans to war. We have absolutely no voice. And we think that is counter to everything our country was founded on. And the only way to achieve representation in the Senate is by admission as a state. Now the founders didn't want our federal government to not be in a certain state. They wanted it to be in a you know, a neutral zone. So with this plan, preserve that? It would preserve it, but I think we all have to recognize that some things have changed since the founding of our nation. And then it was, states had something to be concerned about with a federal Federal government in states being overwhelmed by a federal government. Now we know the federal government is completely overwhelming. And so, that's not the big issue. But what our plan does is it preserves the federal enclave. There will still be a nation's capitol, still be a federal district But it will be smaller it will include all of our federal buildings. Americans coming to visit their nation's capital won't notice any difference still to free museums, great transportation, visits to the White House and capital and all of those things. So this movement has, you know, as been giving you live and you were given a hearing given a vote. Yeah, it Where does it stand now? We took to our residents. The question on statehood in 2016. One of the good things that came out of that election in my view and 86 % of DC residents voted for statehood. We had a hearing about a month ago, in the government oversight committee, we expect that committee to mark up the bill. We have more than 220 sponsors in the house, which means it can pass the House and we think we'll get a vote on the house. But then there's the Senate. I mean, Mitch McConnell has called this full bore socialism so, Well we know the Senate's not doing much of anything. And moving bills that are important, but that shouldn't stop us. That shouldn't stop us on comprehensive gun reform. That shouldn't stop us on comprehensive immigration reform, and it definitely shouldn't stop us on advancing statehood for Washington DC. Great. Another issue that has been close to your heart as a new maternal health summit that you have brought to the fore, tell us about that a little bit. Well, we are like many jurisdictions around the nation concerned about women dying in childbirth, and we think in our nation that shouldn't be a Huge fear. We know especially among African American women across all socio economic levels, the problem of maternal and infant death is significant. So we know in cities, we can do things that the federal government may not be doing. Or we can be the impetus for the federal government doing more. So I started two years ago, a national infant mortality summit right here in the district. Where we're bringing doctors, last year we brought elected officials, this year we focused on practitioners both nationally and locally. To talk about the problem of maternal and infant death. That's great. And speaking of maternal issues, you yourself became a mom in last year. I did. You adopted a baby daughter. I did. A baby girl. Yes, I did. Moranda Elizabeth. Yes. And you did that on your own. I do. You are a sinle woman and I am a single mother too. I just had a baby. Congratulations. In April, she's right there. [ APPLAUSE ] I think we have. And she's a star, she loves it. [ UNKNOWN ], I think we have pictures of both of these babies that we might be able to show up on the screen. Okay. But we're part of a small club called single mothers by choice. This means that we decided to go down the path of motherhood alone, and so What led you to make that decision and were you daunted by the challenge of being a single mother? I was daunted by a lot of it, one thing that motherhood has taught me is that I'm scared and anxious about just about everything when it comes to my daughter But I also knew that I just always expected that I would be a mom, and have a family, and life goes in a lot of different ways. And I was clear that there are many ways to make a family. And for me, I have the incredible fortune of adopting just the most beautiful loving little girl. And I will say I was making that decision for myself and my family personally. And what I've been struck by is how many people have been touched by that story or how many people have shared with me their own adoption stories, how many women who were like me who decided on a particular political course and then woke up one day and said, Hey, What about being a mom and others who won't make that choice and don't want to be a mom? And so those are a lot of different things that I've encountered over the last year and a half. And one of the things we learn as mothers is that you're not in control anymore, right? But you really, you had this in mind and you were hoping to You know, have, be able to adopt. But Miranda became available when you were least expecting it. You were in the middle of your re- election campaign. I was .>> So not ideal timing. So tell us how all that went down .>> Well, I. I was thinking about it, and kinda thinking about how things would roll out in my life. I didn't know that many people who had gone through an adoption process. I had very close friends who had. And everybody told me it could be a year or two years or even longer for the process to unfold. So I said I'd better get started. And I did get started. And I did have a great opportunity to adopt. And Miranda was born one month before my primary. Wow. Wow. When you're a mayor of a city, it's hard to be out of town, ever And so or hard to be off the, to be doing anything not For yourself? Yes, so I was probably down for two weeks, right before my election. Where did you have to go? I wanted to be with my daughter. Yeah. And so I did not want any time apart. Did you have to travel to get her, though? You had to leave the district. I was out of the district for a little while. Right. And then, you just took a few weeks off Really, I took two weeks off. Less than that, in some ways, because I had some issues in the city that needed my attention, and I had to address them. And it was very different for council members, for citizens Not to see me on the scene when something was happening, but then I. People didn't know, they didn't know what you were doing. I mean, they didn't. No, they did. They knew soon after Miranda was born. Okay. I let my folks know that the blast with opportunity to adopt her. And that I would be down just bonding with my daughter. And so, for the most part, I think people were very supportive. But at the same time, they want their mayor when they want their mayor. And I was able to manage that. Now, the difference is, I am able to manage it. I am my boss. I do make my schedule. And so having that time with my daughter was very important, but it also opened my eyes even wider to all of the decisions moms and dads make all the time about that time immediately after birth or adoption But every day after that childcare decisions and how you manage your schedule and how you manage your life. Because a challenge for anyone in this room who has children, just managing a huge career and children, I don't know how it's. It's been okay so far, but it's definitely an issue. So what are some specific things? How do you, you have help obviously, and your parents are nearby. What's your sort of scheduling hack that you find really helpful or how do you get through the day? My scheduling hack I like that is to try to be as consistent as I can to have reliable childcare that you can trust. And never when when I make a commitment to my daughter even though she's 17 months I try to keep it. That's great. We're going to go to questions in a minute but let's talk about some other issues. We are just a few blocks away from the White House. There's big election coming up. What your thoughts on on the 2020 election? I will be so happy when people start voting. it is it's for me and we are kind in the upset for many years for kind in the belly of the beast, where there's just so much chaos. And the tension and anxiety I think in the city and in a lot of different discussions is really high. And it's distracting from real issues that our Congress and president needs to be focused on all of our agency directors. When I think I have a city to run. They're 700, 000 bus with $ 15. 5 billion budget, and we deliver services. So we can't be sidelined by gridlock. But there are some things that The agencies, federal agencies are helpful to us on, or we need to partner with them on. Basic things in our city like the national parks. So, how we're gonna dispose of RFK stadium? How we're gonna work with all of the human services programs that are going through some changes. So we need federal agencies that work in people who have an agenda. To get done, so that's what I'm really looking forward to getting back to. What would you like to see happen in the in the election, the federal election? What I like to I would like to see a Democrat in the White House. Do you have any favorite that support statehood for Washington, DC have any favorites so far? I mean, I think that we have we're really blessed with a lot of talent in the Democratic primary. And I think that at this stage I, you know, total group of my constituents last night that I don't know where I'm gonna be. I love what Kamala Harris has done. She's been a great supporter of DC and me and women and office. And it's hard for women and I think we saw in the last election you can be the most prepared and still face some very significant challenges, in my view some unfair challenges. I really liked the campaign that Elizabeth Warren is running. I like that a Mayor is in the top tier of the candidates in Mayor P. Cory Booker, born in Washington DC, also a mayor has been, I think a tremendous, I think was most important to me is that we have a candidate that inspires people to go out and vote. And that focuses on Urban Agenda which affects my town. In into win. Who has a question for Mayor Bowser, anyone over here? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Thanks very much for being with us this morning Katie Couch. I wanted to talk about what you've done with the public. Public schools here in DC, if you could comment on how you've gotten enrollment to go up other progress and how we could scale that nationally. Now, thank you for that question. So yesterday, I was able to announce that we've seen 11 straight years of growth in our public schools, but these are traditional public schools, and our Public charter schools 11 straight years our traditional public schools in fact saw a 4 % increase over the previous year. So now we have about 94, 000 kids in public education. Our population is growing and more people are choosing public schools. And I think, over 10 years, our taxpayers, DC taxpayers have said to every elected official, do everything that you can to transform public education, and we're gonna be right there, behind you. Our teachers are the best paid in the region. And we have a competitive Process to evaluate teachers, and retain highly effective teachers. So teachers have made a huge difference. We spent $ 4 billion transforming our facilities, so when you walk into one of our environments, you see that we value Our children. And we put very engaging content in front of them. We have a public charter school sector that is doing what that sector should do, keeping innovative schools open. And when schools aren't working, they are they're shutting those schools down. So I think we have a mix of things that are working in our city, but we have work to do. One of the things I pledge, when I became mayor was I will focus on our middle grades. And over the last two years now we've seen our population in the middle grades grow up. We're also focused on making sure we have a variety of options for high school, strong neighborhood options. But also early college we just opened barred early college in our city, a two year degree associate's degree our children will receive upon graduation. [ UNKNOWN ] $ 75, 000 a year, says $ 150, 000 value for a family. So that's what we're doing and we're going to keep doing it. That's great. Thanks. [ UNKNOWN ] It change us, it transformed our city. It's great. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] Well, we're just about out of time, I'll just ask you one more thing. What can we look for for your protocol future? What are your aspirations? Well, I'm surprised that how frequently people asked me because you know I'm only in the first year of a four year term. [ LAUGH ] And everybody, somebody asked asked, are you running again? Are you running again? Are you running again? There are no term moments in Washington D. C. and And I feel as long as we are inspiring DC residents that I'm going to look forward to serving DC .>> Do you have aspirations for any other office in the future and a larger, bigger platform ?>> I think this will be mayor of DC will probably be my last elective office. Unless Somebody call me with something else interesting. Unless Maria has an opinion about that. She may have some thoughts. She may. She may. She may. What's she like? She is beautiful, loving child. She's very, very vocal. She moves around a lot. She lives around too much effect. Now she has a nice little Shiner on her forehead for moving around a lot and she's very observant and she I think she gets That we are in office, that she saw. [ LAUGH ] I think she gets that. They do, sounds like we have a future, most powerful women in the making. So congratulations to you, thank you for being here. [ UNKNOWN ], thank you, thank you [ UNKNOWN ], thank you. Congratulationa to you. Thank you, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Muriel Bowser is Trying to Bring Statehood to DC

She’s the first woman to serve two-terms in the nation’s capital. 


It's a great introduction to Corey .>> So weird to watch herself on video .>> [ LAUGHS ]>> Very disconserding .>> But they do, I want to go back to that because it's sort of a little bit of your childhood here. And it sounds super interesting, but I know it's also kind of hard for you .>> Yes, art is an amazing gift, and my parents believed deeply in what they did. They believed the world was a better place. When you had art in it, and anyone in here who's ever been self employed, there's this misnomer that like you have control of your schedule. My parents worked all the time, morning, noon and night because all they had to do is walk downstairs. So I'd be yelling down dad, I wanna play Monopoly And he'd be like, play by yourself. Not fun, by the way. [ LAUGH ] And I loved the passion and the ethic that they had. But it's very organic. You don't know where th enext meal is coming from. You're at the whim of someone else liking your art. People say very rude things about your art like, I could go home and paint that myself. It's not, like for real people stand there and say that, I'm like really could you. It's not easy. And for me it definitely made me crave some more structure and an ability to just kind of know where the next meal was going to come from. In a small town everyone knows when you have the hippie parents who don't make any money and you know you're standing in line with the free lunch card. So you chose a completely different path. You became an accountant. You like spreadsheets? Yeah. You spend 20 years at the same company. Yeah. It sounds like you purposely chose a different path for yourself. You don't always know that you're doing that. I mean, look, I'm probably the only person on earth whose parents were really disappointed when I said I wanted to go be an accountant. [ LAUGHTER ] you know. You're the man all of a sudden. Yup. My dad was like, you're gonna go work for the man. I was like, Dad I kinda am the man. Right? [ LAUGHTER ]. But it genuenly. You know they had these huge hopes for perhaps picking a path that I think They felt like would change the world. And now, interestingly, that is exactly, I believe fundamentally, what my path has allowed me to start on the path to do. Well, at Best Buy, I mean, you have been there for 20 years. But it has, ironically, been anything but stable. And you were key to the turnaround that really sort of set you off on your path to CEO. So Set the stage a little bit. What was going on at the time? Yeah, so it's 2012 and it was a tough time for Best Buy. You know, we came to work one day and literally got the star everyone email that said, your CEO is leaving. And the stock price was down, we didn't have a replacement CEO immediately. It's difficult when you're at an organization that you fundamentally believe can do amazing things for people, and yet at the same time has made so many mistakes. And for me in 2012 it was so frustrating, to know we could be doing so much better and then the fall of 2012 you barely came in, who had no background in retail. He came From Carlson begun late travel stock price took another 20 % dive when he came. And, and literally probably one month and 15 meetings in I thought, well now here's a breath of fresh air. And maybe for those of us who fundamentally believe There is a way to move this thing and we just one quarter after another. We were big on what we call the say do ratio. We would talk about what we were going to accomplish. We would go make progress against it, and then we would update people on it and we just did it and. Did it and did it. Momentum is huge in retail one hundred twenty thousand people starting to believe in something all of a sudden they can catch fire before you know it. So, why did you decide to stay through this period. Yeah, this was interesting. I mean genuinely people were coming in our stores and saying they didn't want to buy warranties because they didn't think we'd be in business. Your friends and family are calling and saying what are you doing? We talked a lot about purpose at Best Buy and that is the purpose of the company but importantly it is also our purpose as leaders. And my purpose is one of stewardship. I believe strongly in leaving the company better, my family better, the community better, because I was there every day I literally sit in the car on my way home and try to think through why was best buy better today. And if your purpose is stewardship, then leaving when things are bad is the ultimate crime. For me that felt like I was running away from something that I should be there fundamentally to fix. So how did you ultimately the fate of the Comp USAs, the Circuit Cities. I mean you are The only consumer electronics company of your size left. Yeah. There were a few things that we collectively did and put our stake in the ground. Number one was embracing the idea of showrooming. Showrooming had a really negative connotation, meaning people would come into the store, they'd look at the TVs, they'd go home, they'd buy them on Amazon, they'd get shipped. And instead we said if you're going to go through all the work to come to the store and look at the TV, let us just price competitively or will match anyone else's prices and just take it home with you. It's way easier than trying to ship it. And that idea of taking the big pill on pricing competitively all the time and matching whenever you needed to and embracing people coming into the store and working with our associates. Was really a big deal at the time. We also embraced our vendor partnerships, and we said we are the last major scale consume electronic supplier. We're the only ones who can showcase billions of dollars of R and D And partnering with them to say help us bring this, help us make this better, was a huge moment. And finally we just invest in the experience. It turns out when you go to an online site and you search, you'd like actual results that are relevant to come back. So we thought we'd invest in that. [ LAUGH ] And it sounds funny but you've got to divert hundreds of millions of dollars to your digital experiences and then also find ways to devote hundres of millions of dollars to your store associates and pay them better. And we did that by pulling out a billion five and cost. And we pulled the cost out in a way that actually allowed us to have more front line labor better paid but to streamline some of the back end. So, you've talked about to how you want Best Buy to be the chief technology officer for your home. What does that mean? Homes are getting more complex. I mean there's something very interesting happening often when I'm meeting with analysts investors, they'll say But wait. Technology is getting simpler I can just pull out of the box and set it on the counter. Well, that one thing, yes, but if you'd like that one thing to talk to anything else in your home, you're completely out of luck. Everyone has competing ecosystems, there is no one ecosystem that's winning. The number one ecosystem for TV's is the manufacturer, for computer's it's Windows, for phones it's Android. I mean. every one of us is trying to stitch together experiences and by the way, We don't even understand the cool things our homes can do for us, or the cool things we can do when we're on the road. We want to be that person who helps you unleash the cool, and just makes the stuff work for you when you want it to. So a new area that you're also getting to is health, and this feels like you're First big new announcement. Are you concerned about the competitiveness in the space? How are you going to do something differently than everybody else? So, health is like everyone wants to say health. Every day, there's a new release about health. We spend a great deal of time analyzing both the market we play in and the broader consumer dynamic. We. Again, our purpose as a company is to enrich people's lives with the help of technology. Fundamentally under that, we believe we can help seniors age in their homes longer with the help of technology. I have a 100 year old grandma And I'm on the road a lot. And you're the caregiver. I am the caregiver for the most. Well my husband to be fair does a lot of the work. But it's difficult. I don't know exactly if she got up, did she take her medicine? With a simple asortment of sensors in her home and an Alexa, I can completely change her day. I can know if she got onto bed, I know if she was up 50 times last time, I know if she opened the fridge. I as a caregiver have a better sense of what's going on. All of this enabled with technology. The world, and technology in the world is changing so rapidly and the idea that our health is going to be disrupted and I call it in a positive way, by health, is a very real one. And we feel this focus on an aging population. Look, I mean 10, 000 people are turning 65 every day. It's a population that's going to grow by 50 percent and 20 years. There's going to be a lot of people who would like to take better care of themselves and their loved ones. So I have I'm gonna go to questions in a second but first I wanna ask you said this summer your named CEO and you became the youngest female Fortune 500 CEO. You've had 15 different roles at Best Buy including most recently CFO but early on in your career, in an assessment you were told You are a risk to the organization. [ LAUGH ] How. It's on paper I have it. How did you get over that? Not well for the first couple days. [ LAUGH ] I think in any moment like that every one of us, there is a flight or fight response. You can either decide I am going to turn tail and run from this, which sometimes looks like I don't believe it or I'm not going to acknowledge it or I am just going to go somewhere else. Or you can decide somewhere in here there is a nugget of truth. Somewhere in here there are things I need to work on And I fundamentally took the ladder path and I buckled down and said, What are those attributes that might be leading to me to be seen as a risk and how do i i proactively push myself against those and try to come out the other side a better leader? And ultimately in the next leadership assessment, I brought my own development plan said I heard you hear all the things I'm working on, and here's where I've made progress. So did you expect to get the CEO job? [ LAUGH ] It's so interesting. If you had asked me five years ago, my answer would have been no and that's not even on the horizon But I wanted the CEO job and I worked hard to acquire the skills that I thought would get me ready for it. And so I don't think anyone at the end of the day, really expects someone to look you in the eye and say, you are going to be the CEO of a $ 43 billion company. But at the same time, I have a lot of confidence in the skills and experience that I put together. That I'm the right person for the role. Great. Do we have any questions in the audience? Right over here. If you could just wait for the mic and tell us who you are. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Good morning. Christy Rodriguez, Nationwide Financial. I think it's just thrilling that you're going down the healthcare path. Can you tell us a little bit if you're thinking about collaborations or partnerships to execute on that? Yeah. I think the only way that ultimately you're going to make progress in healthcare is to make collaborations. We've made threee aquisitions in the last year. Our first was of a company called Great Call, Which provides devices that are geared toward aging seniors. The have what they call caring centers, which are call centers that are staffed by very specificallly trained associates. Who helped meet the needs of seniors. The acquisitions were the first step and kind of closing the loop on some of the capabilities we think we need in order to work in the space like you're going to work with seniors It sure is helpful to have a whole population of people who understand what it means to work with seniors. From here, it's a question of how do you scale the business? And likely there's a consumer side of the business where we sell stuff and we have services and that we know well. There's also the commercial side of the business meaning can we partner with insurers in a way that will actually offer these services as part of an insurance suite of services because, one, they're great for the patient, and two, they actually pull meaningful cost out of the system. [ UNKNOWN ] another question over here. Serance Rotski, Chicago. I shop everything I have at my house from your store. Aw, thank you. Your people are wonderful. You didn't mention Geek. I asked for a lifetime membership to Geek. They didn't- I can make that happen for you. Anybody wants a lifetime membership to Geek supply, I Okay. Do this. Thank you. Do we have another. Where's, do we have a mic handler somewhere. Right over there. We'll go to that question. Thank you. Hi. I'm Maria Chavez with the National Council on Aging. You're talking my love language here. So many things that are prompting my question today. One, the reason I love being here is that women are going to make this better for everyone. And the 10, 000 people turning 65 every day 54 % are women. And a girl 10 years old today has a 50 % chance of living to 110. So this is the future. So I would encourage your leadership to continue, I think it's fabulous. And I think we need to talk only about technology keeping seniors and older adults in the home, but how we're gonna use this technology platforms, to get them into new jobs, new careers. If they're gonna live to 85 and work, then they're gonna need all the devices to help them with that. Well, and social isolation is also a very real face. So how you connect an aging population who may wanna age in their homes. But has trouble perhaps connecting with others. There is a whole suite of tools that technology can help enable to help them build their active price of the workforce or that they are connected to their friends. Thanks. So I want to end by just asking you. I have heard that you hate being on stage. That you are introvert and you just hate. Well, clearly, I think we are skeptical of that But how have you gotten over that fear? Public speaking or being on stage is a very learned behavior. An introvert means I get my energy from being alone. It doesn't mean I don't like other people. It just means that when it's dinnertime, I'll be like, thanks for the invite, team, I'm going home. I said that to my husband, too, he doesn't respond as well. [ LAUGH ] This idea of practice And I mean, I'll be honest about Matt Freeman who leads our Communication Department is here. And you have to be willing to stand alone, on stage in front of your best communications person, and take all the feedback in the world. And then work to get better. People have asked me what's the biggest surprise about being CEO And for me, it's been the amount of feedback you get and how many places you get it. [ APPLAUSE ] But here's what I would tell you. You know what I believe? I believe that means I'm doing the job right, cuz if no one was telling me how I could be better If no one was helping to create a better solution, if it was helping me in the moments when I'm on stage, then I am not helping the company be as amazing as it could be. I'm not helping unleash the strengths of others. And so, you know, the minute you're not getting feedback or not feeling uncomfortable, then something different as well. So if you're a CEO, be prepared to get lots of feedback. In summary yes. Corey thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Corie Barry Climbed the Ladder at Best Buy

Careers

Best Buy’s CEO details her rise and the future of the company.


Building Tech That Keeps Us Safe on Land, Sea, Sky, and Space

Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson is #1 on Fortune’s MPW list.


 Welcome, Congresswoman Gabbard. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Isn't it gorgeous here? I can't get over it. The view from the stage is great. Aloha. So Tulsi, you have had quite a big news week. So thank you for that. We have a lot to talk about. But before we get there, I just want to ask you to start us off by telling us why you're running for president. To bring about the kind of change rooted in the principles that are at the heart of every soldier, every service member, these principles of service above self to the White House, to the presidency. When I'm traveling across the country and visiting small rural communities, big cities, people still feel so disconnected from their government. They feel like our government is not hearing their voices, but instead is really looking inward and influenced heavily by those who can afford high paid lobbyists, the rich and the powerful, the very few. And people are left behind as a result. Just yesterday, we visited a rural hospital in the community of Grinnell in Iowa that's on the verge of shutting down. And they're unable to get the issues-- really, they're legislative issues that need to get resolved because of so much of the gridlock in Washington. We can get past so many of the divides, the divisiveness, the gridlock that we are seeing if we as leaders and we come together as a country saying, hey, let's put our mission of service to the American people, service to our country, above all else, actually put the well-being of people ahead of profits, ahead of politics, and actually get things done. Now, one of the reasons I wanted to start with that question is because it's very important if you're running for president, but also because some people have called your motives into question in the last couple of days. And I'm just going to recap this briefly for anybody who's not been following the story. Last week-- You guys haven't read the headlines the last few days, right? For anyone who hasn't looked at the internet, last week, Secretary Hillary Clinton appeared on a podcast where she said that you are being groomed to be a third-party candidate and that you are, quote, "a favorite of the Russians." She didn't name you explicitly, but the implication was very clear. So how do you respond to those statements? Look, it's outrageous. It's outrageous. I have been motivated throughout my entire life to do my best to be of service to others, to be of service to our country. I am now serving almost 17 years in the Army National Guard still serving as a major, deployed twice to the Middle East. And I've served in Congress now for almost seven years focused on the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, understanding the importance of our national security. Really what has come to light by her comments is the huge disparity between the Hillary Clinton foreign policy and the kind of change in foreign policy that I'm seeking to bring at the heart of my campaign for president, understanding. The most important responsibility that the president has is to serve as commander-in-chief. Hillary Clinton throughout her career has espoused, advocated, and championed a very interventionist foreign policy pushing for regime change wars, toppling dictators in other countries, being the world's police, using draconian sanctions to accomplish these things. And they have proven to be incredibly destructive. They have cost thousands of my brothers and sisters in uniform their lives. They have cost the lives of millions of people in the countries where these wars have been waged, wars the likes of which we've seen in Iraq and Libya and ongoing in Syria. What to speak of refugee crises, what to speak of the trillions of dollars that have been wasted on these wars that have undermined our national security when there are so many needs of our people here at home that must be met. Those dollars are coming out of our health care system, out of our schools, out of our infrastructure needs. And here's the big change. Here's the big difference is I'm calling for an end to being the world's police, leading with a foreign policy that's focused on cooperation rather than conflict, actually engaging with other countries, seeing war as a last result, understanding that unless we are willing to pursue diplomacy to work out our differences while also creating the opportunity to pursue areas of shared interests, then the only alternative is the confrontational approach and the conflict and the war that we are seeing for so long. Well, let me ask you to the point of national security, are you concerned about possible Russian interference in the 2020 election? I'm concerned about any foreign interference in our election. Look, I've dedicated my life to preserving and protecting our democracy. When I took that oath of office when I first enlisted in the military back in 2003, that is to support and defend our constitution, the same oath that I took as a member of Congress. And I felt so strongly about this that I understand the most serious threat to our democracy, whether it's coming from interference from another country or another bad actor, is that our votes that we cast in our election could actually be manipulated, that the votes that we are casting at the ballot box. Because we still have-- I believe the number is 14 states now that use no paper ballots whatsoever leaves the vulnerability ripe for someone to come in and actually try to manipulate the votes that are cast, potentially changing the outcome of our election. When you think about the risk that that poses to our democracy, if that were to occur, and you have no paper ballot or paper trail to audit it, then people lose faith in our democracy at all that it'll actually work, that the votes that are cast will actually be counted. So I have legislation in Congress, the Securing America's Elections Act, that will mandate paper ballots or voter-verified paper backups to ensure that we are actually strengthening and protecting our democracy. I want to take one step back and just ask you-- you've answered this question in other forums-- but for our audience, is there any scenario in which you would run as a third-party candidate in 2020? No. Pretty clear. It's incredible to me honestly how many times I get asked that question even just over the last 72 hours over and over and over again. And over and over and over again, my answer is still the same. And I think it's important to look at what I'm doing. I am calling out my own party. And I am calling out what I have seen as a corruptive influence in our party that's taken it away from being the party of the people that it needs to be. So no, I'm not going to run as a third-party candidate. I'm running for the Democratic nomination to lead the Democratic Party, take it back from those who have been advocating for waging war, regime change wars, serving interests other than those the interests of the people. Our party should be the party of, by, and for the people fighting for the well-being of every person in this country, protecting our planet, and fighting for peace. Well, let's talk about peace and the lack thereof for a moment. We have all been following the situation in Syria, I think. And my understanding of your position on this-- and correct me if I'm wrong-- you've been clear that you don't believe the US should have a presence in Syria. But you've also said that you disagree with President Trump's decision earlier this month to pull back in northern Syria. So my question is, if you had woken up as president at the beginning of this month with the situation that we had on the ground where US troops were already in the country, what would you have done differently? So let's start with why our troops are there because I think that that's a very important question that isn't often asked or answered. As a soldier, I know when we deploy or when we go on a mission, we have to have a very clear objective. Otherwise, we end up seeing what they call mission creep. You end up having long, protracted deployments if you don't actually know what you're there to accomplish. Our troops have been in Syria to work with the Syrian Kurds in order to fight and defeat ISIS. That is the mission that they were authorized to go there for. Our troops were never going to or supposed to be there for a long, protracted, indefinite deployment. There is no invitation from the Syrian government for our troops to be there. Our troops were never authorized to go and serve as a peacekeeping force or a force to provide border security for the northern part of Syria. So I have supported bringing our troops home in the conclusion of their ISIS mission, but it must be done in a responsible way. And that's where I find disagreement with the way Trump has done this is, first of all, he didn't withdraw our troops. He just pulled them back from the northern border of Syria essentially leaving the Syrian Kurds there welcoming Turkey to come in and begin the ethnic cleansing that they are doing. What Trump failed to do and what his administration failed to do was knowing that almost a year ago, Trump said, we got to pull our troops out of Syria. I agreed with him then. And I said, OK, yes, but it must be done in a responsible way. What Trump should have done, what I would have done as president, was help support their efforts which they were trying to undertake in negotiating and reconciling with the Syrian government and their allies in the region to ensure they could form that common defense of the northern border of Syria against the Turkish invasion that they and we and everyone knew was always going to happen. The Trump administration not only failed to do that, they were actively blocking the Kurds from forming their own alliances and making false promises to them that we would be there for them when they had no intentions of doing so at all. Let me ask you another Syria-related question. You shocked a lot of people in 2017 when you met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. This is a person who used chemical weapons on his own people. For a lot of Americans, the idea that we would be sitting down with somebody like that is morally sort of beyond the pale. So how do you talk about that decision with someone who feels that way? What is morally beyond the pale is more of our troops, our nation's sons and daughters, continuing to be sent to fight in regime-toppling wars that have nothing to do with our national security, sacrificing their lives and their limbs to do so. I lost friends in Iraq because of decisions that have made by people like Hillary Clinton and others to go and launch a regime change war in Iraq that had nothing to do with our national security, the likes of which we've seen in Libya, the likes of which we're seeing ongoing in Syria today. Here's the reality-- and you can see so many examples throughout history is that the only alternative to diplomacy is war. And if our leaders lack the courage to meet with other leaders of other countries, whether they be adversaries, potential adversaries, or dictators, then there is no hope for peace. War will become a certainty. You look at Roosevelt meeting with Stalin. Stalin murdered what millions of people. That was necessary at that time to put the best interests of peace first. You look at JFK's meeting with Khrushchev, Reagan meeting with Gorbachev, Nixon meeting with Mao. If our leaders lack the courage to pursue diplomacy and maximize diplomacy, we the American people will be guaranteed a continuation of the devastation, the loss of life, American casualties and casualties around the world that we have seen inflicted on our country and the world for far too long. I'm not willing to accept that. This is why I'm running for president to bring about that change in our foreign policy to end that insanity. Obviously, your service has had a huge impact on your foreign policy and how you see the world. Is there a specific moment or decision during one of your two tours that really stands out for you? Yeah, I was deployed to Iraq in 2005. It was during the height of the war. I served in a field medical unit. And every single day, we were confronted with the terribly high human cost of war. The very first task that I had every day-- my job was to provide medical support, logistic support, and operational support to our medics and doctors and all of our field units that were out there. And the first thing that I started my day with was going through a list of every single American casualty and injury that had occurred the day before in the previous 24 hours. And I had to go through this list name by name looking to see if there were any soldiers from our brigade who had been hurt. We had almost 3,000 soldiers there from Hawaii and across the Pacific. And I needed to see if they were hurt. Were they getting the care they needed? Were they able to get the care they needed in country? Did I need to make sure they were evacuated as quickly as possible, make sure the command and everyone who needed to know knew what was going on? But heart-wrenching every single day knowing that these were our brothers and sisters and their loved ones back home, the anxiety and the stress that they feel. And for those who would go home with both visible and invisible wounds, this cost of war would be something that would stick with them forever. I want to ask you one more question related to the news. Sure. Obviously, the other big news in Washington is the impeachment investigations. You were one of the last Democrats to back that. How are you feeling about that decision now? What's your current stance? I have long been concerned that pursuing impeachment, especially driven by partisan reasons, is really, really bad for the country. Our country is already so divided. Last night, I was talking with a college student at Grinnell College. And he was talking about how his uncle and his cousin, they don't even speak anymore because of political differences. And pursuing impeachment purely on partisan differences would be extremely divisive for an already divided country. I looked carefully at the information that was released about President Trump's conversation with the Ukraine president, the whistleblower complaint, the information that was released shortly thereafter, and was very concerned about what I read and understood that we as the American people need to get to the bottom of this and that there needs to be a transparent and narrowly-focused inquiry to be able to determine what should happen next. So supporting that inquiry, but remain concerned about really the lack of transparency that we've seen so far. A lot of the meetings have been held behind closed doors. And if you're not on those committees, then you're not really getting the information that you need both to be able to represent your constituents, but ultimately to be able to make a decision. And I think that that has the potential to undermine the integrity of what should be a nonpartisan investigation. Interesting. So I want to also touch on the debates. Your campaign did not qualify for the September debate. You were back on the stage in October debate. That was one week ago. Was it only a week? One week ago tonight. That's what this news cycle is doing to us. No kidding. And then upcoming is the November debate. The bar for getting in those debates is higher. The qualifications have become more difficult. Your campaign hasn't yet qualified. What will it mean for your campaign going forward if you don't appear in November? I have always said debates or no debates, our campaign is driving full speed ahead. We have been and are continuing to spend a lot of time just with voters. We have small town halls. We have big rallies understanding and recognizing that it is the voters who will decide who our Democratic nominee will be, not the DNC even as they are trying to unfortunately limit who is able to participate in these debates and this discussion and kind of holding their own pre-election prior to voters, especially those who are first in the nation, actually being able to be the ones who are telling the country, hey, these are the people who we think that you should consider who should move forward as the Democratic nominee. So would you want the DNC to have every candidate who is running on the debates? How would you change that? Absolutely. Absolutely. There shouldn't be any kind of arbitrary limitation telling voters, well, these are the people who the party thinks are, quote unquote, "legitimate" candidates. And these are ones that they don't feel qualify. Someone reminded me the other day that at this point in his campaign, Jimmy Carter was polling at 1%. 1%. He would not be allowed on the debate stage in the rules that have been set forward today. Obviously, the rest is history. And what he was able to do-- he went on to win Iowa and obviously won the nomination. But this just points to how we should be focusing on that responsibility that voters take seriously. Empower them. Facilitate the discussion and debate to allow them to make the best informed decision, rather than what we're seeing, which is really these debates. And the last one was, what, three hours long. The previous ones were two hours long. They are unfortunately centered more around getting a sound bite, confrontation, and conflict. The follow-up questions are really more centered around how do we get a fiery exchange between two candidates, rather than actually asking follow-up questions that will get to the heart of, hey, my vision on health care may be very different from another candidate's. Let's actually talk about these issues so the voters can walk away actually feeling like they were informed about something, rather than the snapshots that they get that are really-- it's political reality TV. 

Tulsi Gabbard On Hillary Clinton And Her Case For The Presidency

The Democratic nominee opened up about recent remarks made by Hilary Clinton and how her campaign will look like going forward.

Welcome, Congresswoman Gabber. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Gorgeous here. We can't get over it. The view from the stage is great. Aloha. Uh so Tulsi, you have had quite a big Newsweek. Yeah. So thank you for that. We have a lot to talk about, but before we get there, I just want to ask you to start us off by telling us why you're running for president to bring about the kind of change rooted in the principles that are at the heart of every soldier. Every service member of these principles of service above self, for the White House, to the presidency. You know, when I'm traveling across the country and visiting small rural communities, big cities, people still feel so disconnected from their government, they feel like our government is not hearing their voices, but instead is really looking inward and influenced heavily by those who can afford high paid lobbyists, the rich and the powerful, the very few and people are left behind as a result. Just yesterday we visited a rural hospital in the community of Grinnell in Iowa. That's on the verge of shutting down, and they're unable to get the issues really their legislative issues that need to get resolved because of so much of the gridlock in Washington. We can get past so many of the divides, the divisiveness, the the gridlock that we're seeing if we as leaders and we come together as a country saying, Hey, let's put our mission of service to the American people service to our country above all else actually put the well being of people ahead of profits ahead of politics and actually get things done now. One of the reasons I wanted to start with that question is because it's very important if you're running for president, but also because some people have called your motives into question in the last couple of days, and I'm I'm just gonna recap this briefly for anybody who's not been following the story. Uh, last week, you guys haven't read the headline of the last few days, right? For anyone who hasn't looked at the Internet last week, Secretary Hillary Clinton appears appeared on a podcast where she said that you are being groomed to be 1/3 party candidate and that you are quote a favorite of the Russians. Um, she didn't name you explicitly but the implication was very clear. So how do you respond to the statement? Look, it's outrageous. It's outrageous. I have been motivated throughout my entire life to do my best to be of service to others, to be of service to our country. I am now serving almost almost 17 years in the Army. National Guard, still serving as a major of deployed twice to the Middle East, has served in Congress now for almost seven years, focused on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The armed service is committee, the Homeland Security Committee, understanding the importance of our national security. Really. What has come to light by her comments is the huge disparity between the Hillary Clinton foreign policy and the kind of change in foreign policy that I'm seeking to bring at the heart of my campaign for understanding. The most important responsibility that the president has is to serve as commander in chief. Hillary Clinton, throughout her career, has espoused, advocated and champion the very interventionist foreign policy pushing for regime change wars, toppling dictators and other countries, being the world's police, using draconian sanctions to accomplish these things, and they have proven to be in credibly destructive they have cost thousands of my brothers and sisters in uniform their lives. They have caused the lives of millions of people in the countries where these words have been waged wars, the likes of which we've seen in Iraq and Libya and ongoing in Syria what to speak of refugee crises, what to speak of the trillions of dollars that have been wasted on these wars that have undermined our national security. When there are so many needs of our people here at home, that must be met, those dollars air coming out of our health care system, out of our schools, out of our infrastructure needs it and that here's the big change here is the big difference is I'm calling for unending to being the world's police, leading with the foreign policy that's focused on cooperation rather than conflict, actually engaging with other countries being war as a last result, understanding that unless we're willing to pursue diplomacy, toe, work out our differences while also creating the opportunity Thio pursue areas of shared interests, then the only alternative is the confrontational approach and the conflict in the war that we're seeing for so long. No, let me ask you to the point of national security. Are you concerned about possible Russian interference in the 2020 election? I'm concerned about any foreign interference in our election. Look, I've dedicated my life to preserving and protecting our democracy. When I took that oath of office when I first enlisted in the military back in 2003 that is to support and defend our Constitution. The same oath that I took as a member of Congress and I felt so strongly about this that I understand the most a serious threat to our democracy, whether it's coming from interference from another country or another bad actor, is that our votes that we cast in our election could actually be manipulated, that the votes that were casting at the ballot box because we still have, I believe the numbers 14 states now that used no paper ballots whatsoever leaves the vulnerability right for someone to come in and actually try to manipulate the votes that were cast, potentially changing the outcome of our election. When you think about the risk that that poses to our democracy, if that were to occur and you have no paper, ballot or paper trail to audit it. Then people lose faith in our democracy at all that it'll actually work, that their votes will be cast. The votes that were cast black should be counted. So I have legislation in Congress securing America's Elections Act that will mandate paper ballots or voter verified paper backup to ensure that we're actually strengthening and protecting our democracy. I wanna take one step back and just ask you, You know, you've answered this question, other forms for our audience. Is there any scenario in which he would run as 1/3 party candidate in 2020? No, pretty clear. Um, it's incredible to me, honestly, how many times how many times I get asked that question even just over the last 72 hours, over and over and over again, and over and over and over again. My answer is still the same, and I just I think it's, um it's important to look at what I'm doing. I am calling out my own party, and I am calling out what I have seen as as, ah, corruptive influence in our party that's taken it away from being the party of the people that it needs to be so No, I'm not going to run as 1/3 party candidate running for the Democratic nomination to leave the Democratic Party. Take it back from those who have been advocating for waging Maur Regime change wars, you know, serving interests other than those the interests of the people are party should be the party of buying for the people fighting for the well being of every person in this country protecting our planet and fighting for peace. Well, let's talk about peace and the lack thereof for a moment. Um, you know, we have all been following the situation in Syria. I think, um, and my understanding of your position on this and correct me if I'm wrong, you've been clear that you don't believe the U. S should have a presence in Syria. But you've also said that you disagree with President Trump's decision earlier this month to pull back in northern Syria. So my question is, if you had woken up as president at the beginning of this month with the situation that we had on the ground where U S troops were already in the country, um what would you have done differently? Uh, So let's start with why our troops are there, because I think that's that's a very important question that isn't often asked or answered a soldier. I know when we deploy or when we go on a mission, we have to have a very clear objectives, right. Otherwise, we end up seeing that they call mission creep. You end up having long, protracted deployments if you don't actually know what you're there to accomplish. Our troops have been in Syria to work with the Syrian Kurds in order to fight and defeat Isis. That is the mission that they were authorized to go there for. Our troops were never going to were supposed to be there for a long, protracted, indefinite deployment. There is no invitation from the Syrian government for our troops to be there. Our troops were never authorized to go and serve as a peacekeeping force or forced to provide border security for the northern part of Syria. So I have supported bringing our troops home in the conclusion of their, uh, their Isis mission. But it must be done in a responsible, and that's where I find disagreement with the way Trump has done. This is First of all, he didn't withdraw our troops. He just pulled them back from the northern border of Syria, essentially leaving the Syrian Kurds there, uh, welcoming turkey to come in and begin the ethnic cleansing that they're doing. What Trump failed to do and what his administration failed to do was knowing that almost a year ago, Trump said, We gotta pull our troops out of Syria. I agreed with him then and I said, Okay, yes, but it must be done in a responsible way. What Trump should have done. What I would have done as president was helped support their efforts, which they were trying to undertake in negotiating and reconcile ing with the Syrian government and their allies in the region to ensure they could form that common defense of the northern border of Syria against the Turkish invasion that they and we and everyone knew was always going to happen. The Trump administration not only failed to do that, they were actively blocking the Kurds from forming their own alliances and tell it making false promises to them that we would be there for them when they had no intentions of doing so. It all um, let me ask you another Syria. Really? The question. You should be shocked. A lot of people in 2017 when you met with Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad. Um, this is a person who used chemical weapons on his own people. Um, for a lot of Americans, the idea that we would be sitting down with somebody like that is morally there beyond the pale. How do you talk about that decision with someone who feels that way? What is morally beyond the pale is mawr of our troops, our nation, sons and daughters continuing to be sent to fight in regime, toppling wars that have nothing to do with our national security, sacrificing their lives and their limbs to do so. I lost friends in Iraq because of decisions that have made by people like Hillary Clinton and others to go and launch a regime change war in Iraq that had nothing to do with our national security, the likes of which we've seen in Libya, the likes of which we're seeing ongoing in Syria today. Here's the reality, and you can see so many examples throughout history is that the only alternative to diplomacy is war And if our leaders lacked the courage to meet with other leaders of other countries, whether they be adversaries, potential adversaries or dictators, then there is no hope for peace. War will become a certainty. You look at the Roosevelt meeting with Stalin. Stalin murdered millions of people that was necessary at that time to put the best interests of peace. First you look at JFK is meeting with crucial Reagan, meeting with Gorbachev Nixon, meeting with Mao. If our leaders lacked the courage to pursue diplomacy and maximize diplomacy, we, the American people, will be guaranteed a continuation of the devastation, the loss of life, American casualties and casualties around the world that we have seen inflicted on our country in the world for far too long. I'm not willing to accept that. This is why I'm running for president to bring about that change in our foreign policy to end that insanity. Obviously your service has had a huge impact on your foreign policy and and how you see the world. Is there a specific moment or decision during one of your two tours? Uh, that really stands out for you. Yeah. You know, I was, um, deployed to Iraq in 2005. It was. It was during the height of the war. I served in a field medical unit, and every single day we were we were confronted with the terribly high human cost of war, the very first task that I had every day. My job was to provide medical support, logistics support and operational support to our medics and doctors and all of our field units that were out there. And the first thing that I started my day with was going through a list of every single American casualty and injury that had occurred the day before the previous 24 hours. And I had to go through this list name by name, looking to see if there were any soldiers from our brigade who had been hurt. We had almost 3000 soldiers. They're from Hawaii and across the Pacific, and I needed to see they were hurt. Were they getting the care they needed? Were they able to get the care they needed in country that I need to make sure they were evacuated quickly as possible? Make sure the command and everyone who needed to know knew what was going on but heart wrenching every single day knowing, um that these these were our brothers and sisters and their loved ones back home. The anxiety and the stress that they feel. And for those who would go home with both visible and invisible wounds, this cost of war would be something that would stick with them forever. Um, I want to ask you one more question related to the new Um, you know, obviously the other big news in Washington, um, is the impeachment investigation. Um, you were one of the the left Democrats to back that, um, how are you feeling about that decision now? What? What's your current stance? I have, uh I have long been concerned that pursuing impeachment especially driven by partisan reasons Um, it's really, really bad for the country. Our country is already so divided. Last night, I was talking with a college student at Grinnell College. He was talking about how his uncle and his cousin, they don't even speak anymore because of political differences. And pursuing impeachment purely on partisan differences would be extremely divisive for an already divided country. Uh, I looked carefully at the information that was released about President Trump's conversation with the Ukraine president. The whistleblower complaints the information that was released shortly thereafter and was very concerned about what I read and understood that we, as the American people, need to get to the bottom of this and that their needs to be a transparent, uh, and narrowly focused inquiry to be able to determine what should happen next. So supporting that inquiry but remain concerned about really the lack of transparency that we've seen so far, a lot of the the meetings have been held behind closed doors. And if you're not on those committees and you're not really getting the information that you need both to be able to represent your constituents but ultimately to be able to make a decision and I think that that is has the potential to undermine the integrity of what should be a nonpartisan investigation Interesting. Um, So, uh, I want to also touch on the debate. Um, you Your campaign did not qualify for the September debate. Um, you are back on the stage and octo October debate. That was one week ago. Was it only a week one week ago tonight? Um, that's what this news cycle is doing to our kidding. Uh, and then upcoming is, You know, the November debate. The bar for getting in those debates is higher. The qualifications have become more difficult. Your campaign hasn't yet qualified. Um, what will it mean for your campaign going forward if if you don't appear November, I have always said debates or no debates. Our campaign is driving full speed ahead. We have been and are continuing to spend a lot of time just with voters. You know, we have a small town halls. We have big rallies, understanding and recognizing that it is the voters who will decide who our Democratic nominee will be. Not the DNC, even as they're trying to. Unfortunately, Lim, who is able to participate in these debates on this discussion and kind of holding their own pre election prior to voters, especially those who are first in the nation actually being able to be the ones who are telling the country. Hey, these are the people who we think that you should consider at who should move forward as the Democratic nominee. So would you. I want the DNC tohave every candidate who is running on the debates, how would you? You know? Yeah, You How would you? Absolutely, absolutely. There shouldn't be any kind of arbitrary limitation telling voters will. These are the people who the party thinks our quote unquote legitimate candidates, candidates and these these are ones that they don't feel. Qualify. Uh, someone reminded me the other day that at this point, um, at this point in his campaign, Jimmy Carter was pulling at 1% 1%. He would not be allowed in the debate stage in the rules that have been set forward today. Obviously, the rest is history and what he was able to do, he went on to win Iowa and obviously won the nomination. But this just point to how we should be focusing on that responsibility that voters take seriously, empower them, facilitate the discussion and debate so long to make the best informed decision rather than what we're seeing, which is really these debates in the last one was three hours long. The previous ones were two hours long. They are, unfortunately centered, more around getting a soundbite, confrontation and conflict. The follow up questions, they're really more centered around. How do we get a fiery exchange between two candidates, rather than actually asking follow up questions that will get to the heart of hate. My vision on health care may be very different from another candidate. Let's actually talk about these issues. The voters can walk away actually feeling like they were informed about something rather than the snapshots that they get that, really, it's political reality TV.

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019 Town Hall: Riding the Social Storm

Attendees discuss linking their company's to social good, and what it means to stand by your values.

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Taking a Stand on Guns

Fortune 1000 CEOs have typically shied away from political issues rather than risk alienating some customers. 

So, first of all, just for the people in the room who aren't familiar with cloud flare, because you're not a household name like a Facebook or Google yet, just very, very briefly what is cloud flare do? Sure cloud player runs a global cloud platform. Our customers are internet properties, so your websites your apps or API's, Our customers come to us for cyber security solutions global performance reliability solutions. In the past, companies used to buy this through hardware boxes. But as more businesses are using a lot of cloud computing services and a lot of SAS companies, services like Salesforce or workday, they need something else. And that's what we do. We're about nine years old as a company. We have 2 million free and paying customers everyone from nonprofits like the women's global March or the Trevor Project to millions of small businesses around the world who need these sorts of services. And then 10 % of the Fortune 1000 are cloud cloud customers, including many brands in this room like Starbucks and Walmart and L'Oreal, and so We just went public five years ago, and I started the company nine years ago. Five years ago? Sorry, we went public five weeks ago. Thank you. [ LAUGH ] And we started the company nine years. Has it felt like five years? [ LAUGH ] No, no, actually it hasn't. Actually the whole experience was incredible. Okay. All right. Now that we have established that. So for For those in the audience who don't live and breathe Silicon Valley, give us a little bit of a sense of what the mood is like, what changed, what hasn't and it's like post Cambridge analytical, post [ UNKNOWN ], we work from weird S- 1 filing and whatever you wanna call what's going on. They're now So much has happened. I realize not all those companies are in Silicon Valley, but in tech and in Silicon Valley specifically. So what's the movement was? Well, if you think so 10 years ago, there were eight tech companies that had market caps over 100 billion dollars and today that's 25. And so what's changed is, technology companies have kinda grown up from the kids cable to being on the main stage and so there's a lot more scrutiny and a spotlight on how These companies are growing and those are companies with 100 billion dollars in market capital or more. There are so many that are in the pipeline trying to grow in that direction. And so it's a lot more spotlight. And what we've seen is that there's some really crummy behaviors or bad management from some small portion of Tech companies. It's definitely not all But I think it's the mixture of. Tech is, again, 10 years ago it was kind of the geeky corner no one really understood. But now it's really mainstream paired with the spotlight. So there's a lot of people holding people accountable for their behaviors. And I actually think that's a good thing. How do you see that manifesting itself, like in tangible ways in Silicon Valley, and in the tech industry? What are the conversations that you guys are having that you weren't having just a few years ago? Well, there's really. So, first of all, you take capital. A lot of these companies are venture back. So they've taken capital. And you have to be good stewards of your capital and let you see the companies who are bad stewards of the capital. It's not working out very well for them. And again, I think this is a good thing. And so founders and the investors are saying, hey, wait, we're going to reward good stewards of capital. And so even at Cloud flair, I mean, we've always been running our company like a public company for years. While we are private, you know, whether it's flying coach or how we allocate how we deploy these resources. It matters and and i think that the really great If tech leaders realize that. The second place we've around through the employees. If you wanna talk about competitive talent pool, try to hire in the bay area. There are a lot of great jobs there, and so employees are voting with their feet. They are saying I wanna go to a company that I believe in that's doing the right thing and they are running their companies the right way And actually, I think because of all the things that have recently happened, that's gonna become an increasingly important part of the next two years of hiring because people, I mean, you can read in the news about whether it's Uber we work or theranos. The people who really got the short end of that stick are not only the investors, but the employees. I mean people go work there. They are getting below market wages, usually in exchange for equity upside. And a lot of cases their equity is underwater. And so I think that's interesting. And then the third thing I've seen a huge shift recently is actually customers. Customers want to do businesses with companies that align with that they believe in and so cut customers are having a lot more scrutiny and deciding who they do business with. And so it actually shifted alot the last three years. Actually thinking all through cases for the better. Okay. Lets draw down a little bit in one specific that you guys grambled with I mentioned ealier you may be not be a household name like a Facebook or Google but you have to make some very tough decisions. Recently you power You help to power and you secure millions of different websites. Yes. A lot of them you probably don't agree with their values, but you typically in the past at least have not shut off service to any of them, and you've done that recently. And the most recent example of that is HM, which is this toxic message board and gathering place for white supremacists, among other things, and talk about the decision to cancel service to HM. Okay, we have eight minutes, I don't want to use eight minutes talking about this. It's so let me start by saying. In the next ten years, I think are all about policy, is the technologists in the policymakers coming together because there's a lot of angles around what's legal, what's not. And some of the laws that were pen 25 years ago did not take into account to what technology has democratized. And so there's a lot of work to be done on the policy side. And it's the policymakers engaging with the technologists and business leaders and the academics to help move that forward. And I think on the good side that the conversations are happening. So we'll start with [ UNKNOWN ] That's important. In our case, there's a whole stack that makes the Internet work. And [ UNKNOWN ] we provide infrastructure for internet properties. I like to joke, we're like [ UNKNOWN ] Plumbing is not that exciting sometimes when I say we build internet infrastructure, and people turn the other way, they're like, that sounds really boring. But it turns out plumbing is really important. You really want it to work. And and that's what and that's what clapper offers and We enable performance security reliability for internet properties. And we just don't think we should be deciding what content shouldn't should be online. Somebody should. It just probably shouldn't be infrastructure layer because it's very deep in the stack. If we make a decision that someone doesn't like how do you vote with your feet as a consumer to say that is a bad decision. I'm gonna go there. And it's not transparent because we're so low in the stack. And so, as a business we've always said we're a law abiding organization We definitely are a law abiding organisation but their laws are kind of outdated and so there's a lot of gray areas that have popped up and the pulse makers are trying to pass a law that works for everybody. As a society we're having those conversations but we're Switzerland. We kind of say, we're just going to provide service anyone whether I personally like it or not. So that's our stance and it actually works I think it's the right stands we've started through and if you ask the experts they agree with the right stands for the most part. Recently HN is this lawless platform it's much higher up it's places where people here converse with their eyeballs, their time and they were declared the lawless platform. And today we're doing good job moderating content on their site with a [ UNKNOWN ] in the world. And again we don't think is our job to decide what should be online or not, but we stop service to them. And it was the second time in that companys history that we stopped service without a court order to do that. We had done it onces two years ago- With Dairly Storman. With Dairly Storman another particulary terrible internal property and this is the second time. What was interesting about this decision is we did it without a court order everything else. We've take things off our network all the time, but it has gone through the court. There's been due process, which again, I think holds us accountable. But in this case, there is no due process. And when we do these things, even though we're not a household name. Turns out people pat attention. And I would say a lot of people applauded us saying thank you for taking that leadership, we know you don't have to do this. Thank you or giving us this terrible platform of the [ UNKNOWN ], particularly terrible. And some people think they are like it is creepy for Cloud Ford to be making these decisions, you should not be making these decisions without a court order. And so, one thing I will say is that two years ago we took discontinue service from [ UNKNOWN ] and then this year, this summer the conversation has changed so much. We've made a lot of progress. We talked to the policy makers here in the United States and in Europe and the the business leaders. People were talking about it, the conversation has evolved more, it's making progress but the really tough issues So people are working on it to figure out what the law should be and what should happen in these cases. But that's that's where we are. So and just for more context HN was associated with some of the mass shooting shooters. Yes. And some of the the most recent shootings including El Paso So what does this mean though for the future? I mean, I get what you're saying about policy not having caught up to what's really going on, on a lot of these platforms like MHN. And that a lot of That government regulatory bodies and obviously companies are struggling with this. But as long as there is that mismatch, I mean how do you, specially now as a publicly traded company with even more scrutiny, how do you draw the line? We're all talking about free speech but what is your role in this? How do you, it's so tricky to be the [ UNKNOWN ] You cancel what you allow? Right? Well, that'strue. Well, I mean, I think we've drawn one for a long time, and engage on it and we are incredibly transparent as an organization. We have transparency report or we report back to the world, just because we want to every six months of how we're thinking about this. We've read public blog posts that are Very random where we thinking we've written all [ UNKNOWN ] and sorts of media publications. So, in many ways I think we are very, we have [ UNKNOWN ] we said this is why we take this inspiration, this is how we think about what we are engaging in the conversations. So I think we have done a good job on that, and I invite more companies to take that similar approach, and I think Even whether you like what Mark Zuckerberg said last week or not, at least he's now talking about it publicly. I actually think that's a good thing to bring more voices together to get the issues on the table so we can move the conversation forward. The conversation is moving forward. But these are hard issues that there's no silver bullet, which is the kind of unsatisfactory answer, but there's The conversations are happening, and you know, even in Europe, there are a lot of agreement on the path, and here in the US, there is slowly becoming a path forward, so I think those are good that people are coming together to have a conversation, and again, I think we've been very transparent, those organizations were very principled, we've kind of stuck to that, we've explained why we're making these decisions, here's where's hard, here's where's not. And that transparency has helped us. It has been very helpful. So, again, I encourage more companies to engage in the conversation. And just to point out real quick that in the statement when you made the decision to cancel service [ UNKNOWN ], your co- founder and CEO, Matthew Prince Wrote in a statement we reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible. But we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated that they directly inspired tragic events and are lawless by design. And he also said that while removing a chain from our network takes, Heat off of us. It does nothing to address why hateful sites fester online. That is obviously, you know, a much broader conversation that requires a lot of coordination. And I have like a ton more questions for you. But I want to open it up to you guys. We very quickly probably have a question. Time for a question if there is one. Otherwise, I'm happy to keep going. Yes, Malin, let's wait for a microphone for you. Can you introduce yourself? Mallin Yen, with operator collective. Michelle, I've watched what you and Matthew have done so many awesome, amazing things. So this is a little bit of an easy question, but it's also a hard question because I know there's so many things. What is the thing that you are most proud of over these past nine years? Building [ INAUDIBLE ] Everyday we stop 44 billion cyber attacks on behalf of our customers. [ APPLAUSE ] And we make the Internet work faster for for 99 % of Internet connected population. And so We're kind of doing what we set out to do and we just helped built a better internet. There are a lot of flaws with the internet and technology, but the good outweigh the bad and it's gonna keep happening until the fact that we can provide these services to our customers and help make this internet services easier for everyone. I think I'm incredibly proud of and our whole team is really proud of and that's why we come to work everyday. Well Michelle thank you so much for joining us. And for making this your first public interview since the IPO 5 years ago. Yeah. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you back there. Yeah. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Lessons Learned From Silicon Valley

Cloudfare COO Michelle Zatlyn on the complicated business of running a tech company. 

Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here. And thank you secretary for being here as well. Pleasure. I want to begin by asking you about the topic on everyone's mind right now but is the decision back in 2018 to separate families and children, families further at the southern border. In April of 2018 memo came before you when you were head of Homeland Security. And it read that if you signed it you could permissively direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors health and immigrant detention so the parent or legal guardian could be prosecuted. You sign that allowing for For the separation of parents and children at the southern border. Do you regret signing that memo. Yes. So I think first of all I wanted to start by saying thank you all for having here. I think these are very important as we heard just before, there was some controversy. But from m y view, these issues are so important. That we really need more voices and we need to be additive and find a way to come together to solve the problem and not work on taking people apart. It's very divisive. It's very emotional. It's very complex lives are at stake. Many people have been affected. But unfortunately the reality is and we'll talk more about this and I'll get to your question in two seconds. The system is broken. You know it the rules, the laws, the facilities were all built during a time when the vast majority of people coming across the border were single males actually from Mexico. It was very easy to return them. It was a very short period of time, returned them if they didn't have a legal right to stay. But now what we see is over 60 % of this traveling here are families, and over 60 % of those traveling are from other parts of the south of us mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. So The fluids have changed, but the laws and the facilities have not. So we have a terrible mismatch. And we have a huge need to come together to solve this. With respect to the particular question. There is a lot of confusion about what happened and what didn't happen. And I do think it's really important to discuss, because the only way we can get to solutions is when we really understand What happened and what that what the facts are and what worked and what didn't work and what shouldn't have worked and what perhaps could have worked better. Secretary apologize I know my time with you is limited but. [ CROSSTALK ] Yeah the Attorney General announced zero tolerance. Zero Tolerance was the direction that a lobby enforce. There is a law that says, it's illegal to come into our country between ports of entry. There's 90 ports of entry around 90 ports of entry on the Southern border. What I did the entire time I was secretaries encourage people to go to the ports because it's much safer. This is a terrible journey that people take to come here. outside groups tell us 70 % of migrants are victims of violence. 30 % of women are raped. We give pregnancy test girls as young as 10 so that we can protect them when we receive them. So the decision is zero tolerance was to enforce the law. Unfortunately, like everywhere in the United States, there isn't a exclusion for purposes of immigrants. If a parent commits a crime. They go to a custodial setting and their child is not followed up. The idea and the quay and the concept of zero tolerance is decided by the attorney general was not to separate families. It was to enforce a law to encroach people to go to the courts eventually. What happened now was out of the 49, 000 children that came un accompanied, meaning they were sent without their parents There was a percentage of those that was added to that number because their parents went into a prosecutorial setting. So I just wanna be very clear as to what was decided and what was not decided, we didn't. I am to be clear asking you about your decision to sign a memo in April of 2018, and endorse. Separating families at the Southern border. And it did not. What it did was it said we were going to enforce the law, There was no, to be clear, there is no Federal law mandating separation of families No, there's the Federal law that says it's illegal to cross between ports of entry. That's right The Judge said, That, yes, it's illegal. And the judge said yes, in the United States, we don't send kids to prison or to a custodial setting with their parents. The decision was to enforce the law, not to separate families. And if anything. I think we should be very clear about this. There was a policy change at DOJ That was called zero tolerance that said, Now everyone crossing the southern border would be prosecuted. In order to do that they needed children separated from their parents so parents could be prosecuted in your role as the head of Homeland Security. You had to allow for your agents to separate children from their family. You made that decision in the spring of 2018, I'm asking you if you regret making that decision. I don't regret enforcing the law because I took an oath to do that, as did everybody at the Department of Homeland Security. We don't make the laws. We asked Congress to change the law. Congress reviewed the law in 2006 and decided to continue to make it illegal to cross in that manner. What I do wish had worked a lot better is that the coordination and information flow were simply insufficient for that number of people coming. It's heartbreaking, that any family smelted anytime that they had to cross the border illegally. This is a terrible, dangerous journey. It's terrible. So what I regret is that we haven't solved it and what I regret is that that information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families Was clearly not in place. And that's why the practice was stopped through an executive order. In the lead up to that policy being signed. We know on the other side of the government on HHS where they were responsible for the care and custody of those children. They were raising red flags. They saw the numbers of children coming in being separated and said this will cause lifelong trauma and harm to these children. There should not be an official policy to separate children. We now know also in your agency senior staff Raised concerns about civil rights issues and trauma to children. Did anyone in the lead up to you signing off on family separation raise those concerns with you? Everything was of courser reviewd by the office of civil rights and celebrities, which was reviewd by the lawyers. These were the recommendations from the operational entities to enforce the law, becaise from their perspective there are Law enforcement agents who've taken an oath, and that's their duty. The bigger challenge here is to prevent families from coming away because it's extraordinarily dangerous. So yes, all of those people if you if you follow the timeline as well, after the Attorney General made his announcement, we spent a month looking through trying to make sure that we would do it and enforce the law. In the most compassionate way possible. And what I mean by that is, if you had children under five, the policy was we would not refer you to prosecution. Despite the fact that you had broken the law and despite. But we know now that children under 5 were in fact separated from their families. Some of them were. If you look through the court cases, though, there's other reasons why families are separated. If the Adults accompany them is not a parent. And fortunately, we saw a tremendous increase in fake families of adults, unfortunately. But you and I both know that the number of fraudulent families as they're classified are statistically insignificant. That's incorrect. I'm crossing- That's incorrect. What's the percentage of fraud? It's over 500 families and out of the 49, 000 children that HHS had in its care that were unaccompanied, they're under 2, 000 Or because of the fact that their parents chose to break the law. The [ INAUDIBLE ] sector just released numbers that showed of the families that they found to be fragile and it's less than one percent of all the families crossing at that time. But that's one of 90 Board of [ INAUDIBLE ] .- And is one of the most highly traffic sectors. Right so, when percent still is .- At the same time, how fair is it to hold up a statistical insignifficant number. As a priority for you? Why does it justify, why does that justify family .- Well, because I think if we, it's not about justifying, my point is that what we need to be focused on together, is trying to stop .- All of this horror of these families coming in this way. We don't want them to have to go to a smuggler or a trafficker. I guess what I'm saying is one woman who's raped, one child who is exploited is too many. So the system needs to be changed so that they don't have to come that way, which is why among many other things I proposed legislation to Congress to allow families and individuals to claim asylum before they ever get to the United States so that they don't have to take this journey which is so horrible. Do people ever specifically raised you the concern that children will be traumatized as a result of this policy. Not during that. Not directly to you, you've never heard those concerns? Not from staff. No. I mean, I think it from the biggest. Child Welfare experts, anyone outside the government. From the biggest. This was nothing new to be clear. So from a staff perspective, I think, you know, there was this belief that to not enforce the law would encourage trafficking would encourage child to be Chuck, children to be used as pawns. And he law enforcement officials had taken an oath which is why the operational entities recommended that we choose to enforce the law. We never forced it 100 %, if you had two parents coming across, we chose specifically not to refer both parents so that one parent could stay with the children. As I said, we did try to limit as much as possible in a tender age situation. But it wasn't it clearly wasn't working. So we stopped it during an executive order. And we have been hopeful that Congress will look at this and really take very seriously. What is the best way to do this? I mean, the debate the debate is very false. We don't have to choose. Between protecting vulnerable populations and securing a border. That's a false choice. We don't have to choose between keeping out opioids and facilitating trade. We can do all of these things at the same time but they do require changes to the laws. So that's what I hope we can all come together to work on, because none of these things should even be. Let me ask you About it. We have to. Some of your public defenses of the policy at the time in June of 2018 you went out to the White House press briefing room. And you said very clearly administration did not create a policy of separating families. That same month, DHS released numbers that said over 2000 children had been separated from their parents at the border. So why did you say what you did? So if a family comes to a legal point of entry, I specifically chose, when asked if I would do otherwise not to separate that family. Because they hadn't broken any laws. There was no need to separate them, in my opinion. I'm asking about the families that are separeted? And I'm telling you why it's not a policy. So interior under my watch, we didn't separate families in the interior, we didn't separate them at legal parts of entry and as I already mentioned if you had two parents we did not refer both to prosecution. So the policy was not to separate, the policy was to enforce the law as a law enforcement agency by the way a lot of it we didn't pass, [ INAUDIBLE ] we tried to work with congress To change and make more sense given the flows, but it's not a policy I do want to make clear. You say you are enforcing the law that is a significant change from the way the law was previously enforced. So that is a big policy shift, at the very least So under previous administrations, they also enforced this exact law. What was different is the numbers of people have greatly increased over the last few years. And as I mentioned, the number of families have increased over the last few years. But no, this is a law that was enforced in exactly the same way in previous administrations, the numbers just aren't the same. [ CROSSTALK ] officials from the previous administration I've spoken to have said that they Always veered on the interest, of the best interest of the child. That only if there was an immediate harm to the child, would they choose to separate. And that's why we did not see thousands of children, as we saw with this administration out there. Though we didn't see thousands of children because there weren't thousands of families. So, it's what I'm trying to tell you, that the flow is very different. But actually long standing CBP policy has been as you're describing, to only separate when there is an issue that favors the child is separate. So there's a communicable disease. There's a credit history of the parent, the parent is not the parent. There's clear abuse or if the parent has to go to a custodial location If any parent in this room. When you say a custodial location, Yeah. You made the decision to prosecute, which was a policy change from DHS and I want to be clear about that. Yeah, I understand but the change. And that relating to past administration. The change was rather than enforcing the law, the change was let's enforce the law with the retards. That's what the Attorney General said. Let's not exempt any group of people. Let's encourage everyone to go to ports of entry and come here legally. It is the law. Let's enforce the law our law enforcement agencies. You testified before Congress about this policy as well in May of 2019. And you said that no parents were deported without the chance to reunite. With their children. We now know that hundreds of parents were deported without their children. Why did you say what you said? Yeah so that's ongoing litigation. As I understand it, what the judge found is, as is practiced, not only does CBP ask, or ICE in that case ask the parent, But we deport someone or someone is deported which by the way is not a decision DHS makes. That's the Department of Justice decision. The parents are asked if they want to bring their children with them. And in many many cases for a variety of reasons they don't want to bring their children with them. They would prefer to leave the children in the United States. So, many parents left without their children as part of that. Case, the judge issued the orders, asked that we go back again to the parents find them wherever they had gone home to. And ask again, do you want your children with you? And in many cases then they said no, they wanted their children in the United States. Now, Were you aware when you testified that hundreds of parents had been deported without their kids? I still not sure that's an accurate fact. Because it's not what the judge has found. So they were deported without their children, but with their complete knowledge. Let me ask you about the federal government's ongoing efforts to reunite some of those children who were separated. There's now a new report out on Friday, a government official said that the judge overseeing the effort to reunite them The federal government could have separated additional, almost 1300 children before this policy was ever officially put into place. So am going to ask you what do you think the US government responsibility should be to make sure that all of those children are reunitedwith their parents? It is every possible method possible Imean there is, there shouldn't The law is difficult because when HHS, HHS is the agency cares for the children, not DHS, it's HHS. But HHS under law has to find a sponsor for the child, that's What they're required to do. What we need to do is understand when a parent is present in the United States, we need to first and foremost reunite the child with that parent assuming that's what both the parent and the child want, as opposed to trying to find another sponsor. There's differences in a lot too if you're from Mexico. And you don't have any parents here, we have the legal right to work with the consulate to send you back to your family in Mexico. If you're from other countries we don't have that ability, you can't send the children home, they have to be placed with a sponsor in the United States. So, we should do everything possible, I mean there's no question there. To be clear the US government is currently not doing everything possible to [ INAUDIBLE ] immigration groups and [ INAUDIBLE ] non- profits. I'm not in the government right now, but I'm also not part of health and human services. You are part of the administration right now, right? You did accept a position on the advisory council. I'm not with the administration right now. The White House put out a press release saying you had rejoined. No, what the White House did was say that They had asked me as an expert in critical infrastructure and cyber security to join CEOs throughout the country. As part of an advisory council. None of us are paid. None of us work for the White House. We use our expertise to try to advise government. On what we need to do in cyber and [ UNKNOWN ]. You're currently advising the White House. Can I ask what led you to resign? And by the way, so are other CEOs though. I mean, are you telling every CEO in here that they should never advise the government on how to make something work? [ APPLAUSE ] I'm interviewing you right now. So I'm asking you before we turn to questions what led you to resign from this administration? What led me to resign is there were a lot of things that there were those administration he thought that we should do and just as I spoke truth to power from the very beginning, it became clear that saying no and refusing to do it myself was not gonna be enough. So it was time for me to offer my resignation. That's what I did. Secretary Nelson, thank you for taking the time to answer the questions. No problem. I wish we had gotten to cyber because that's why I was originally here, it was for a cyber panel. So let me just quickly say it's Cyber Awareness Month. Cyber is the biggest threat that we face in the Homeland today. It does take each of us to do our part, it's a weakest link problem. Third Party risk is the biggest thing we face. And as we move towards elections, the only thing I want to say quickly is remember, if you go to vote, and for any reason you are not on the voter database, you are guaranteed by right of provisional ballot. Please use it. [ APPLAUSE ] That is our time. I apologize we don't have time for the audience. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy

Kirstjen Nielsen Reflects on Signing the Controversial Detention Migrant Policy

We come up with these themes leading together. And then this is a perfect example of leading together. So thank you both for being here. Elise has been with us before. So I think Nina gave great background on you. My first question before we talk about you, leading together, I would like each of you to explain briefly how you got here, here and to Congress. So, Elise, let's start with you. Sure, so I'm in my third term, I represent a district in upstate New York and I decided to run in 2014 because I felt that my district needed an energetic new generation voice, who had the courage to put out new ideas. And what was really interesting is, initially, there were a lot of naysayers. I was 29 years old at the time, no one thought I could win a primary, let alone a general election. And my district is a pretty evenly split district But when I ran and we built a coalition, not just within my own party but across party lines, we won by over 20 points, and we won by double digits since then, so I think what really resonates with voters today, particularly young voters, is they're looking for problem solvers who get things done. But I ran to bring that new generation of leadership and work across the aisle and I've been able to deliver that to my district. Hi everyone, I'm Elissa Slotkin, I'm a former CIA officer. I did three tours in Iraq alongside the military. I met my husband in Saddam's palace. He's an R- 30 year Army officer. [ LAUGH ] It's where every good girl meets her husband. [ LAUGH ] You know, Come on ladies you all know it. [ LAUGH ] And then I was at the Pentagon for seven years and left there as an acting assistant secretary of defense so my entire background is in national security and actually Elise and I worked at the same time in the Bush White House on the National Security Council. I was sent down there by the CIA So we've known each other for a while. And I ran after being very apolitical my entire life. I ran because I just felt the tone and tenor of politics has become unbecoming of the country. And I'm from Michigan, mid- Michigan. I live on my family farm. And the people in my district just want the government to function. It's a very bipartisan district. It's a Republican district. And so just rational practical people who area focused on solving problems is what they want. And I saw that my representative wasn't doing enough and so I decided to run and I won last November I'm in my first term .>> [ APPLAUSE ] So how do you lead together? Well, I think you make a conscious decision to choose to reach across the aisle. Alyssa and I and sometimes we get confused. Other members confuse us because We both have brown hair We both are national security minded and Alyssa Slotkin Elise to phonic say that three times fast. [ LAUGH ] And we vote similarly on a number of issues. We've worked on a number of bills together, one of them is closing loopholes when it comes to foreign dollars being spent on digital ads. That's one of my concerns when it comes to securing our elections. And I think you have the numbers we've co- sponsored or worked on 85 pieces of legislation together? Yeah So you really have to make that conscious effort and one metric that I think is important that I look at Is the Luger series does an assessment at the end of every Congress rating how bipartisan you are as a member of Congress, and I've been very proud to be in the top 10 % most bipartisan members, but you have to choose to do that. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] and it is a choice, especially in this polarized environment, from both the right and the left. You know, I, the first day that I was in congress, we're all on floor of the house, we're having our first vote and I made the point of walking across the aisle, literally and going to find Elise and saying: hey, we haven't seen each other in years, it's so good to be serving together Can we work together on things? I have this bill idea. She'll come to me. It is a conscious effort. And I would say the number of people in Congress who make that conscious effort is not probably give enough. It is not a coincidence that both Elise and I are in districts that are really, can kinda go either way. That they're really, either they lean one way or the other but they have a history of kind of Voting different ways. That means our seats are more competitive. That means it's our job to reach out to the broadest possible group of people. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. And if everyone in Congress had that kind of like drive, pushing them back home, I think we'd actually get a lot more done. So Nina, in the introduction mentioned two bills that you have sponsored together. One was the To provide more support for the northern border in which clearly is of interest to both of you being from Michigan and up state New York. And especially at the time when the southern border obviously is sucking up a lot of Manpower and attention. The other bill is very important right now and describe explain to this group what the paid ad act is. Yeah. So this was what Elise was alluding to it so it says very basic idea. That foreigners should not be able to buy digital ads for or against a candidate in an American election. That's what it is. [ APPLAUSE ] That's what it is. And I think no matter what party you're from, I think most of us agree that foreigners should not have a hand in trying to influence our political process. And so, We've been working on this it's actually coming to the floor as part of a package tomorrow, something called the shield act as the big name for it. And, you know, it's something that we very deliberately did bipartisan, because it shouldn't be a partisan issue, you know, and certainly I'm from Michigan So we saw these ads in our last elections. We were targeted and they are divisive and meant to split us apart, and I always say to people like we're gonna put those divisive ads out, it should be red blooded Americans that do it, gosh darn it. [ LAUGH ] Not foreigners, right? Not foreigners so that's the point. And Michigan, I have read, was one of the Top targets. Targets of Russian interference. Yeah. I mean, we know that they digitally targeted our state among all others swing states and that was a very popular thing. In the 2016 election. In 2016. And I think it's important, I mean, the bill that we've co- sponsored, there's a lot of time. Talk in the ether, about the mama report and all this stuff, but there was no one focusing on actually changing the system passing legislation that makes us safer in 2020 than we were in 2016. And so again, it's a hallmark of being a problem solver. Are you going to get on TV and squawk about it one way or the other or you can actually pass legislation To make the situation better. Who has a question? Wow. Over here. Can we get a mic. It's coming. Hold off. Please identify yourself when you, there's one up here and then we have one in the front also. Colleen McCreary I'm with Credit Karma. My question actually [ UNKNOWN ] I heard you on a podcast a couple of weeks ago And you're back home in your district. And you did a really great job of being very matter of fact when people are being exceptionally emotional about a number of topics, primarily talking a lot about Trump. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you sort of use that rationalization and that sort of intellectual style to help you sort of influence others? Well, I mean, I am a former CIA officer. [ LAUGH ] And I think sometimes it's temperament. When things are dramatic around me, I tend to go real calm. And so that was sort of my experience in those. We did three back to back town halls. And people were very upset and so. And the other thing is I know this is going to sound really cheesy but you have to have love in your heart for all people. And after you have to reach out to people. [ APPLAUSE ] And you know, I might not convince that person to see things the way, I see things. But that person will walk away saying: she listened to me, she heard me out, we had an honest debate, it was civil and decent and at least we're doing what our forefathers asked us to do as a country. And that's as much as I can ask when we have legitimate disagreements. Beautiful, wow. [ APPLAUSE ] Question up here? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right so we were having a discusion at dinner last night about how for a lot us who we grew up It was kind of like the senate were the grownups. They were a little more bipartisan and the house was little more rogue. And it feels like right now that sort of the reverse. I mean, I was reading the other day to your point about bipartisanship, about all these bills that are this stuff, that 80 % of Americans agree on. that the house is passed and apparently the Senate will look at what's going on for those of us who are not as it did. And is there any hope for this improving? Well, I will tell a funny story about getting our makeup touch ups on the way in. I got here early and I was seated in the makeup chair. And they said senator mix Sally's coming you might have to get out of makeup chair and I said it's okay. I know she's a senator but she was also my classmate elected to the House. So I say that because the senate you know, they do have this sense of, you know, they try to slow down the process but as a house member, what frustrates me. Is that we often pass very bipartisan sometimes unanimous bills and they go nowhere in the Senate and the senate stays very focused on their procedures. And, you know, I understand when I listened to senators that you know they want to be thoughtful and you know you hear the story about the saucer and the teacup, about how the saucer is the Senate and the teacup, this is what George Washington used to say, the teacup is the House and when the coffee spills over the Senate picks it up. I don't buy that as a House member I think [ COUGH ] I said it needs to move bipartisan bills, particularly when they pass on suspension and are unanimous. But I joke with my former colleagues like Martha, who is wonderful, how quickly they forget what it's like to be in the house where you're constantly working, the pace is so fast. So I do think the Senate needs to act on a number of bills that have passed significantly. And I think the longer you're in Congress, the more frustrated you get as a house member with the Senate's procedural mechanisms. You have thoughts as a first termer. No I agree. I didn't know I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know the saucer in the tea cup. Yeah that's the George Washington I mean, senators will often use that analogy. [ UNKNOWN ] Hold on, We have a we have a question back here. Mm hm Hi ladies. Thank you so much for your comments. I'll direct it to both of you. Can you talk about whether Congress is a good utilizer of your skills and prior experience, in terms of the committees they're putting you on and what legislation you're getting drawn into. I'd love for you, I meant to ask you to do this. Tell the group what committees each of you are on. Sure, so actually Elisa is my subcommittee chair. We're both on the Armed Services Committee, and I'm on the Homeland Security Committee. And so given my background, I felt like I was put on committees that made sense. I do think that there is an increasing number of people with a national security background on both sides of the aisle and that is a good, good thing. As someone who was a the Pentagon, it's important that the check and balance on the Pentagon be people who really understand this stuff I will say that one of the things that I think people with a national security background bring to these jobs that is more new for some people is a sense of mission. In the work that we were doing before we came into Congress, you would sit around a table and they would often be vociferous debate about issues. But at the end of the day it was about getting the mission done, whatever that was at the pentagon or the White House and you moved out ones a decision was made. And there wasn't room for ground standing and for people kind of self agrandizing. Well that's a little different in the house. Yeah I think its important to have members of Congress who bring that mission focus because It creates a culture where it's just not as okay to be kind of the peacock in the room for all of our other friends. And so it's a great thing that Elise and I share, particularly on the Armed Services Committee. I feel the same way. I'm on the Armed Services Committee. As she mentioned, I'm also on the House Intelligence Committee and then education and workforce. Those committees are critically important but they're also a great fit for my district. I represent the tenth mountain division, the most deployed unit in the US Army. So when we're discussing national security issues, that has an impact on tens of thousands of families that I represent. And on the domestic side, being on the education and workforce committee really allows me to engage in discussions. What does workforce development look like? How do we make sure that kids are college and work prepared going in this century? When it comes to do I feel that the institution is welcoming for our skill sets. I've had to really knock down some barriers in my own party to talk about the importance of. Electing women. I'm a Republican, and it's no news that we are at a historic low of the number of women that are in the house. And I've had to literally 18 verses 23 in the last Congress, right? [ UNKNOWN ] Republican women. Right, but overall, if you look at Congress, there are more women that have ever than I've ever served before. That's good for the country, but I believe strongly that. We will be a more functioning Congress when we have women in both parties, more women in both parties. So I've had to really kind of challenge the status quo in terms of ringing that alarm bell. And I'm really excited to see a number of women who are stepping up to run in my own party. So that's the only kind of Critique I would make because not everybody supported my effort. Now they're supporting it because, you know, there's positive news coverage about it, but well, I'm happy to have them follow my leadership, but I think it is good for the country and women tend to be more bipartisan policymakers. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, congresswoman Elissa Slotkin Thank you for your service. Thanks Cathy. And thanks for being here. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Leading Together From Across the Aisle

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) join the MPW Summit.

I have the honor of interviewing you for like an hour and a half on stage two years ago. And 15 minutes this isn't gonna do it. I know. But we are gonna try. We are gonna try. So Senator, you are just, welcome. You're just back from Saudi Arabia, where you had a little bit of a cathartic experience. Can you explain that? I did. Well, it's great to be here with you all and I know we got to talk fast. Yeah A little bit of time. And you're good at talking fast. About one of my experiences in the military that you may have been aware of Is I fought a eight- year battle with the Pentagon because our service women, when they served in Saudi Arabia, were being told to basically comply as if they were Saudi women. They couldn't drive. They had to sit in the backseat of the car. They had to wear a full abaya and headscarf. They always had to have a male escort. They were told, when stopped by the religious police, to lie and claim their fellow service woman as their wife. This is about doorstep it was but I fought for this thing on behalf of our troops for six and a half years before they ordered me there. In the end, you can google it or use another search engine actually. Sorry, Google here that doesn't collect your data, but any and I filed I've [ LAUGH ] Sorry, I filed a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld. So as an active duty military officer, I sued Rumsfeld not a good career move, but it was the right thing to do. And then I got legislation passed to overturn everything but the driving ban because Saudi women couldn't drive. I never got to sort of see the fruits of that I swore I'd never go back there but I was over there a couple weeks ago with Joe Manchin to see the damage at the Saudi Aramco oil facility that the Iranians bombed. And when we came off the causeway from Bahrain, I got my car and I drove and Western clothes. It was very [ CROSSTALK ]. It really was because this was a pretty I mean, I'm joking about it now, but those were not easy decisions to stand up. Yeah. And you're not somebody that runs away from a firefight. Let me tell you so, just your childhood briefly, your defining tragedy in your life as a girl was your father died? Yes. When you were 12? Was 12. And that was the It was defining. absolutely. I was youngest of five kids, three older brothers, one older sister, so I mean, I'm feisty, I had to fight fornmy food, so I'm feisty by nature, but I really was blessed to grow up in a very stable middle class family and my dad came from top circumstances but he grew up with the value of hard work, he served in the navy, used the GI bell, Get a good education, make a difference with your life, and at the age of 49, when I was 12 years old, he very suddenly passed away and in- between two heart attacks, while he was in the hospital, he knew in the middle of the night, he just knew in the spirit he was gonna leave and he said get my kids, I need to talk to my kids and so I was so blessed that I get to visit with him. I didn't understand really what was going on. He just wanted to talk to us and think about what you talked about with those of you love this morning, right? Just the mundane mundane things of life. We shared about the dog in school and swimming and siblings. But among other things in that conversation, he told me to make them proud and then he. Passed away a few hours later. That's hard. And it really deeply has impacted the entire path of my life. To make him proud. So what's interesting too about you is that as a young woman, women weren't allowed in combat, let alone be a combat fighter. So what did you decide to do? Be a fighter pilot but I was motion sick when I was a kid. Like legally, yeah and your motion sickness. Against the law, yeah. It was against the law. Yeah, so I ended up, you know you're 17 when you make these decisions. Anybody have a 17 year old a man some young kids they're flaky, right? I mean so for me I was just trying to find an opportunity to get a good education. I did not sat on my mama debt. I was trying to channel my energy my feistiness my grief. I was still it was very difficult time junior high in high school for me. And I thought channeling it into something that was challenging me and being a part of something greater than myself. I wouldn't have said those words then but so off I go to the Air Force Academy but I really had no idea what I was getting into. And I thought I was going to be a doctor. And you and again You said you had motion sickness. Yeah. I wanted to be a pilot. Well, I found out when I got there for the first time in my life that just because I had ovaries, I couldn't be a fighter pilot and it just pissed me off. So I channel My feistiness into like, well, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And I mean, people laughed at me they were like, it's against the law. And I was never too short. I was too short, too, yeah. But I would say we live in America, laws change, and I'm gonna just have this dream in my heart and I wanna prove them wrong, and you go into the same training as the guys and the fact that, they just would have this random thing that says, you can't fly these planes. It doesn't make any sense. A plane doesn't care if you're a boy or a girl, just fly the plane, shoot the gun. So- [ LAUGH ] So, anyway, I channeled that energy. I wasn't going to let the dream die. I had nothing to do with the change. It took nearly ten years, but finally when the door opened, the law changed, the policy changed. They had identified seven of us women who had earned a fighter out of pilot training. But we just couldn't pick it because we were girls. And you ended up in Afghanistan in what you called a bad- ass plane 810 warthog. Yes I chose the 810 warthog. It's a beautiful ugly plane and its entire job is close air support. We show up when the troops are on the ground under fire often in really complex circumstances where the friendlies in the enemy are really close, fratricide is really high risk. It was actually built to go after Soviet tanks and anti- tank on the front lines, but it's been incredibly adaptive throughout the decades to deliver firepower in a very precise way often and just really High stakes situations with troops on the ground call on us and to help them. And so I picked it over all the other fighters ., it's an amazing. It's a gun. It's basically a gun on a plane. That's the fogler. It's all about being a gun. Yeah the Fogler as they built the 30 millimeter gun and then they went to the engineers and said, figure out how to fly this gun. I don't know if that's accurate. [ LAUGH ] In fact check that. But that's the folklore that we. As a ten pilot. So you became a you had honors you had this incredible career as a fighter pilot, but it was not easy along the way. You had in what was interesting last time I talked to you was you, really opened up about the sexual harassment you face which became most pitched As you got promotions, as you move up the ranks. Yeah, I found when I first opened up Fires to Women, there was a hostile environment. I mean, at that time, our chief of staff at the air force had testified before congress a few years earlier saying he'd rather pick a less qualified man than a more qualified woman. I mean, this is the guy leading our air force. Right, you set the culture at the top. When they changed the rule he had to decide to get behind it, but we knew it was in his heart. If you ever wanna look at something funny, just look at the I had, three of us women Standing next to him and I was a captain. And we went through all this media training about watch your body language and whatever and I like on purpose was sitting there with my arms folded and beside him because, I just was like we know exactly what he felt in his heart. So it didn't set a great environment And a bit hostile for us. I mean, had to change people's minds one at a time. As soon as I deployed with my first Squadron it things really, I think got better just because people realize when they're going into harm's way together they have to put things aside. The real enemy is out there and we're all in each our lives are in each other's hands. But then, you know, as you moved up it's one thing to be a wingman which is what you have lately tell you what to do, where to go, where to shoot. What. But then when you become the flight leader, then when you become the instructor, pilot or the evaluator, or the commander. It was interesting, I felt like we had hit a point where, okay, we've arrived women have been integrated into all the fighters like get over it. We picked the best man for the job even if she's a woman, and we're kinda through this. But I found that it actually sometimes surprisingly get a little more hostile as you move up. A little more hostile. So just to speed this up just a little bit, when I interviewed the senator when you were a member of congress You talked about the harassment you faced including this incredibly vicious voice mail that was left for you by the spouse of one of your colleagues. But what you didn't open up to me about, and you opened up last spring was that you were raped by a superior, why did you decide to come forward and talk about that. > I mean, this is something that people who know me in my life knew about, it wasn't a secret to those who know me and love and those I'm in relationship with It was something i just felt like at that moment in time, because of the position that I am, in and because of the importance of this issue, that i had a unique perspective not just as someone who had been a commander, who was responsible for making sure that we did not have sexual assault in my unit. But as a survivor, I had a unique perspective that I felt was important to fill the discussion. So just sometimes a good Lord puts you in positions that you didn't ask for. And I just felt like it was literally we're having a hearing on Wednesday on the topic I flew in on Monday. And as I looked at it, I just felt like how do I Explain where I'm coming from without explaining where I'm coming from. And so I just decided after thought and prayer and talk to a few people like I just needed to share this. Again, it wasn't a surprise to people who know me but- And become an activist, a legislative activist in terms of legislation to criminalize. I really am in a unique position in that regard and I think so many women and men Have been through sexual assault in their lives, so many. So many have been through sexual abuse, sexual assault, I mean it's in a crowd this size it's a significant percentage of us. Some people take it to their grave. When it comes to our military, this is a cancer on our good order and discipline and our mission. And we've gotta do everything we can in order to route it out and prevent it from happening and prosecute those who commit those crimes. And so I just felt like, not the topic I was planning to lead on, but here I am in this moment in time and it's really important. So when- [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you for your work on that. Yeah, and you know one more point on that is I think, especially in the positions that we're in, I just felt like there's somebody that has happened to yesterday or30 years ago who maybe in seeing someone like me sharing my story, maybe it Helps them to get out of bed today, you know and helps them to heal for their own grief and their own suffering in order to be able to find some hope, you know, for their own future, that this, these crimes do not have to crush you and hold you down and hold you back. And so that was another reason I that I shared it as someone who's in public role. Thank you, Senator. I wanna ask you about one issue we just say we have time for. You've sponsored something called the deter Act, which is to protect our electoral system going into 2020. What do you most worried about? Well, let me say that I've been studying the Russians since I was a cadet at the Air Force Academy and It's, but it's not just the Russians, there are foreign agents out there who have been, you know, trying to use propaganda and information operations in so many ways. I mean, the Russians tend to be the ones who've been known for it, you know, for my whole lifetime and even before that. They've adapted their propaganda and information operations now to 21st century tools that are out there. You know, to include obviously social media and other things. So there is two elements of it. One is the influence operations that others could try to use in order to turn us on each other and have us lose faith in our institutions, in our systems. And with like a little bit of resources, they can tackle something that'; s kind of naturally maybe a tinder box and a certain topic and then just turn Americans on each other. And I would just encourage us all, don't buy it Right, you know, we're divided. We have a lot of sincerely held views on how to solve our problems. But we're all in this together and we're Americans. And let's not be fooled and gullible by the propaganda that's out there that's actually trying to pit us against each other or [ UNKNOWN ] the divisions that are that are there. The second piece is making sure that Our actual databases are voter files and all that are protected. And a lot has happened. These are all very decentralized at the county levels around the state. That's a strength for sure. It's also a little bit of a weakness because sometimes county budgets are low. And investing in capabilities for protection Has not been a priority but with DHS support through the states, there's been a lot of resources available now. To bring us up to a stronger place and there were really no indications 2018. Yes or no? Now we are stronger and now that we are more aware in 2020. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Senator, thank you so much. [ INAUDIBLE ] debate. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Sen. Martha McSally

McSally is a Republican Senator from Arizona. 

So Lisa actually has a bachelor's, master's and PhD in engineering, all from MIT. I spent a lot of time in school. And when you find something you like, you stick with it. That's right. Okay, so five years ago, you became the CEO of AMD, and the company was in a very different spot back then. Are declining share price and kind of struggling to find its place in the market that's really dominated by very few very large players. And today you're one of the best performing stocks in less than P500 so, give us a quick. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Quick, quick glimpse into the keys of the turnaround at AMD. Yeah, absolutely. And first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's really an honor to be here. And AMD is a company that's been around for 50 years, but we've never quite hit our stride. And five years ago, This was an opportunity for me it was actually my dream job to run a semiconductor company. And many people would say, well, why would you wanna do that? [ LAUGH ] It's what every little girl wants. Yeah that's right [ LAUGH ] It's the idea that you can make something you can build products. You can put it on the shelf and somebody will buy it and will know that it's yours. And the key for us was really you know, it's a it's an industry where you have to make bets over the long term. So the bed sometimes take three years to pay off sometimes take five years to pay off and Wall Street is a very fickle and hard to hard to keep the attention span but I think we really focused we decided. Hey. We were gonna focus on great products. And it was gonna take us three years to get the next products out. And we had to be very, very clear on what we were not gonna do. Which is, you know, sort of change our strategy. And that focus which you you talk about, you know, you're focusing on certain products means you're not focusing on others. And that's not just a product decision. It's a personal Decision that has an impact. How did you get everybody in line with that renewed focus ,? Extreme communication, extreme communication in terms of, I think, this morning was discussed like you say something like 75 times and then you have to say it another 75 But it was very much around we are about our products we are about our customers and we are about simplifying everything that we do. So that you know so that everyone in the company is clear on what our strategy is. And for those of us who are not in the semiconductor industry, just give a sense of What those areas are that you chose to focus on. So, we are focused on products that are really for high performance computing. So the idea that we're all about how we get more efficient data centers or the large. Piece of things that are going to grow in the future and our focus is on building really powerful computers. Okay, you have. That means we don't do small things. Right, like what? Like we're not in my phone, but we might be in your PC and we might be in your data center. That is, you know, powering your cloud. And because of that, you have a host of new customers that didn't exist for AMD before you took over. So talk a little bit about that. I mean Amazon's AWS, Oracle, Twitter, what do you do for them? Yeah, what was really important to me when I took over as CEO was how did we have sort of large brands associated with what we do? Because My feeling was, if if we can get the most marquee customers using AMD products and that was validation. So, for example, we're powering some of Google's data centers today. So if you're running some applications on Google, you may be running on AMD. And we're working with Twitter. I'm a big twitter fan I don't know how many of you are but thats one of the things that- Its double edged sword. Wellonces in a whie yes yes. You know e are Micro soft new surface laptop. And those are you know my key brands where Relationships were really built over you know any years to get there. And I think everybody in this room has to make bets owards the future but in your business its way towards the future and so how do you, whats the process of amking those bets? Who do you have around you thats helping you to make those decision that this is the next big market for Our products. What's really important in in our world is really getting close to the people who are doing the engineering. So I'm an engineer at heart. And I actually spend quite a bit of time with our chief engineers and architects to understand where they think the future is going. And like I said, it's all about making bets. Sometimes you make the wrong bets, and hopefully most of the times you make the right bets, but the important thing is sticking to those bets. Because the life- cycle of semiconductors are so long. Do you miss being an engenier? Do I miss being an engenier? Sometimes, sometimes I miss being an engenier, but I have the luxury of being able to go into the labs and see what we're doing at any given time. So that a span. You have a lot of them around you. Yes. And how has the background of being an engineer, how has it helped and maybe hindered in some ways your transition into being a CEO? Well, I think for tech companies having some intuition about what you're trying to do is helpful. And so certainly for me, it's been helpful I've had to learn about the business on the job and so I've made sort of my share of mistakes doing that. But from the mentally understanding, I thought what the major said was interesting. Like flying is a great equalizer. I think engineering is a great equalizer because either the product works or it doesn't work. There's no in between. That's sort of how I look at it. Okay, I'm gonna switch to a slightly tougher topic for you, for all of us, I think, today. Which is China and the trade war. So, you have started back in 2016. You started a joint venture in China to license your technology there and that was put that organization that joint venture was blacklisted by our government. Just this summer I think we're all very foot, we think about Huawei and and maybe a few other companies, but there are many companies that have been impacted by this. So what is this turn of events mean for that joint venture Venture and for the future of your business overall in China. When you look at US China relations, it is a very, very complex topic. And we do maybe 30 % of our business in China. So it's a large market for us. And the way we think about it is. Like the world is different today than it was four five years ago. I think the you know the thoughts round how do you balance both access to the market which is one of the largest market in the world. But also the fact that you know there are national securities concerns as it relates to high tech. And for our case we are making some of the most powerful processors in the world And we wanna sure they're used for good things. And so it's an adjustment. But it's an adjustment that we are very prepared to make and the most important thing is to make sure that we're focused on our strengths which are around high performance computing. So if you take a step back, do you think that we should be, At this moment exporting computing, technology computing power to China to begin with. Well, I think there are lots of different things that we do trade with China and there are certain aspects of our technology that are really, really special. And we should protect those really, really special things as much as possible. And then realize that, for leadership in the US markets, we still need access to the largest markets in the world. And where do you? So two questions I guess, where do you see your hope things are going, if you. if you look into your crystal ball, and then the other question, you can answer whichever one you want first, but I think, obviously one of the hardest things with the current. Climate and the trade war is the uncertainty and the unpredictability of these twists and turns. And so how do you lead through that especially at a company that it has very direct, large impact? Well, I think what's really exciting to me is there's just so much you can do with technology. And there's so many applications that we can address, you know, whether we talk about, you know, sort of very geeky stuff but if you think about what we can do to. You're transform, you know, medicine and education and you know, you know, address climate change and all these things you really need powerful computers. And that's what we build. And so that's that's the really exciting thing. And then your your second question about just How do we navigate these waters? I think we're all in the same place. We're all in the same place like every day we wake up and there could be something different that you're addressing. And that's the life of a CEO or Senior Executive. And I think we get used to that I, one of the things that I'm most. Focused on is ensuring that we are very agile as a company like we have 10, 000 people. It's not a small company, but it's not a huge company. And the idea is how can we make 10, 000 people be able to turn on a dime. As market conditions change and as customer needs change. Ok and I'm going to turn to you guys for questions but one more question on China side, just to clarify and give more context, we're not talking about just chips that are going into You know, consumer PCs or whatnot. The concern has been around chips that are going high, high, high performance chips that are going into supercomputers right, and some of those supercomputers are used by the Chinese government for various means. So just give a sense of like what these supercomputers can do. For better or worse? Well, I think the real opportunity is super computers will allow you to really simulate things before they happen. And that allows us to predict much better. And some areas it's business problems, other areas it's how do you predict the weather and you know some areas are, Are weapons related. From our standpoint, again it's really exciting to be at the forefront of technology. One of the areas that we're most excited about is AMD was just awarded the next generation highest performance supercomputer for the United States. So Oakridge national labs We'll be building a, not that you need to know this, but a one- and- half extra flop computer that does lots and lots of things and it will be using our processors since we're very proud of that. And we just need to make sure that we keep pushing the envelope And I know we got very excited about the 50 most powerful women but there's actually a list of 50, the top 50 super computers in the world so that's very exciting in your world I know. That's right. [ LAUGH ] We all get excited about different things so. All right. Questions from you guys, please raise your hand if you would like to ask Lisa a question. Over here, can we get a microphone? And if you could introduce yourself real fast. Hello, Lisa, thank you for being here. My name is Leah Sweet from PayPal, so in a tech industry. I'm curious how you balance innovation with the long lead times that you have for your new technology. As your competition moves forward, as the dynamics of the industry change, you have to be able to change as you said on a dime a large organization to focus on new and innovative products. But at the same time, you have extensive lead times in development and so you have to have a significant amount of time reserved for that. How do you handle that balance? Yeah, it's a very interesting balance what, what we do is, you know, we really take sort of two aspects of it one is there is just foundation right? There's, foundational intellectual property, that you know you have to invest in and you know you have to be the best at and and that hardly ever changes. And then you have what is more customer driven. And one of the things that I find is you learn so much from every conversation about what's going on in the market and what customers need. And so we're able to adjust late in the cycle, sort of what we do With individual customers. But that foundational IP and that innovation has to really stand there. I'm gonna give one last very, very quick question. I've always wondered how you guys name your chip lines. You've got Matisse and Picasso and Rome and Naples. So how does that work? Okay, so here's what I would say. The large brands I actually weigh in on. It's like one of the most fun things like the marketing guys will come in with like 50 names. And I'll say ike one of our big product lines is a name called rise. Raison. And it plays off of Zen which is a very sort of balanced system. When I first heard about that I thought, my God, I'm gonna call it raisen by mistake. [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] But the other stuff that we let engineers do it we are a company of engineers and the engineers name the individual product. Branding experts. That's right. [ LAUGH ] All right. Well, thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me.

How Lisa Su Turned Around AMD

We talk to Su about her leadership at Advanced Micro Devices.


Hello. Hello. Hi, everybody! It's so nice not to ask you about all the details of your health care plan. [ LAUGH ] I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you. There's so many things that I've Long admired about you and your company and I just in preparing for this and talking to you, I learned about this semi new initiative, which you call Embrace Ambition, which I love on so many levels. So let me let you describe it. Thank you so much. Well, I'm number one. I'm so happy to be here. So Patty, thank you wherever you are But okay. So our company is 15 years old and in the first year of our business, The New York Times wrote an article, a journalist wrote an article and asked me if I was ambitious. And I thought that was a very rude question. And the way he asked it was very rude [ LAUGH ] so I wasn't imagining it After the article, a dear friend of mine called me up and said, great article, but you shied away from the word ambition. And, I realized from that moment on, I was buying into a very harmful stereotype and it's something that I wanted to address. It took me 15 years to do it, or actually 13 years but, two years ago we launched with our foundation, a public service announcement. About ambition in women and why is it okay for a man to be ambitious and it's not for women? I hope that's changing but certainly it's still a very harmful stereotype that we need to really change for good. Yeah, I love that you are owning it, it's not unlike Nancy Pelosi owning the picture of her standing up and pointing at Donald Trump, which he really is thinking it looked like a hysterical woman. And she said, no, it looks like a powerful woman standing in a room with all men. She looked in control I have to say. But all men, I mean it'sthe political maybe photo example of what you're trying to get at. Well, it's it you know, and then working with some of our entrepreneurs, some of them would Google. How do I look less pushy? How do I look less ambitious? How do I look? And I say to all of the women, we have to embrace that but we need women and men to be part of this conversation. That's one thing our foundation is working on. If we're just women talking about women's issues, we all agree. But we need to get men to be part of this conversation. And to really make it okay for women to embrace our ambition whatever it is, if you're a stay at home mom or an executive live how you want to live and be proud of that. And be confident to do that. And the reality is things have change a lot [ UNKNOWN ]. But not all the way, we are not in the place where women can no matter what the environment they are in, embrace ambition without there being some, negative consequences that's a reality. It's still a reality. I have three boys and I think, I do think it's changing a bit when they just. Look at me with this just unbelievable expression saying, what do you mean you can't be ambitious? And I said well that's great that you feel that way, I have to say, and then my step daughters are ten years older, and they're feeling it as we speak. Well that's good, I'm glad to hear that I want to talk a little bit about your foundation, which we just heard about that Bank of America has given a lot of money you have given a lot of money. And this is not something that's new. You started the foundation and you started, kind of giving part of your profits to charity when you started the company. But you're now just recently talking about it and making it a part of your brand. Explain why. Yeah, so 15 years ago, my business plan, and I can't believe I said this at the time because really in retrospect, I had no idea what this meant. But I said, I wanted to build a global lifestyle brands so I could start a foundation for women spend a lot of work figuring out what that would mean, and I thought about micro finance I went to visit Haiti I went to visit different organizations came to Washington. [ UNKNOWN ] But i realized the one thing that I could offer was helping women in business do a start up. So that was my business plan, I went to raise money and most of the people particularly one engine in particular, never say business and Almost, he said charity work in the same sentence. Now businesses aren't innovative without purpose. So I called him last December and I said hey. [ LAUGH ] I just went to a conference. It was doing good is good for business. And he said well, what do you want? And I said well, a check for the foundation, naturally. I said, I remember our conversation 14 years ago. And as I said, it's been a complete change. But one thing I wanted to- I'm sorry, what did he say? Did he write the check? He did, he wrote a check. [ LAUGH ] But one thing that I was very careful of over the years, and we've launched the foundation in 2009, is to not have it be thought of as marketing in any way. And that was very important to me. So It took me 10 years to write an email to our team which is about 4 months ago to say we're ready to really talk about the foundation in an external way. Why and explain why that was. Why were you so reluctant? Well I wanted to have real things to talk about and real impact and scale and I think now we have a real impact and scale. And yes, Bank of America's an incredible partner. We have a foundation site where we've had 17, 000 women write business plans with the tools that we give them. So it's women in the United States for now. We'd love to be global at some point, but Women are, as everyone in this room knows, are the best investment you can invest in. And working with these women is inspiring. Often they're single mom's, they have one or two or three jobs, sometimes, and they are making it happen. And just seeing some of their businesses is also inspiring. And you talked about the fact that it's You change in part because the culture of business has changed, right? I mean, you mentioned this a little bit that now it is almost impossible to have a business without being purpose- driven. Well, businesses are thought of particularly in Gen Z and Millenials Without purpose as we all know. They want purpose in something that they buy for sure. That said, it has to be authentic so I think a lot of businesses are thinking about what does that mean and how does purpose fit in to their business? It's essential as you go forward and that's something If we can talk to startups and talk to them about it early, not that they have to give money early and certainly we didn't and it took us a long time. But to start thinking about it and at the end of the day it's good for the bottom line. You and I spoke about that backstage, I never realized how good it would be for the bottom line, to have people wanting to come work in our company the first thing they talk about is our foundation. It's great for our employees and then that's great for our customer. That's fascinating. I wanna ask about you as a CEO, because you mentioned to me that you have worked so hard to be legitimate as a CEO which by the way, you're good. Wow. You're there. [ LAUGH ] But that now your focus is on your original. What you're originally going to school for and you're what you originally had passion for, which is designing. Yeah. So I gave up the title of CEO eight months ago and my husband came on board. It took me four years I had to marry him to get him to come on board. But basically it took me four years to get him BR CEO that said, I was so happy people asked me are you? Was it a hard decision? Absolutely not. I've been a CEO and doing the creative for 15 years. And it is such a relief to be able to have someone you trust and have Know that he has all good intentions and will be taking the business to the next level and we fundamentally see business in the same way. But that said, I was never trained in design either but when One thing that he said to me is, he said, you finally learned- You studied art, am I right? I studied art history. Art history, okay. But- Got it. He said, you finally learned to own your ambition, and own being a CEO. But you still haven't learned to own being a designer. And that struck me, I thought about it. He just said that to me last week, and I thought, he's absolutely right. I've been designing for 15 years, and Never had formal training. So in a way, maybe that's why but that's going to be my next call is really delve into the product and the creative and super excited to have a partner to do that with. And one of the things we were talking about which is, I do a series called Badass Women Of Washington where I talked to women. Here in DC who are elected members of the military of the of the cabinet and so forth about the fact that even at the highest heights that they have reached, they still see and they still feel just discriminated against misogyny Do you? Can you give examples, even recent examples, now that you are Tory Burch, where you have felt- No, listen, I feel it all the time, and I have a great board, I have great investors. But I was the only woman on the board, and until now. I think our next board meeting, it will be 50- 50, and that's something I am very proud of- Why was that, why was it that you were the only, yes? [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] You know it just was the nature of how the board came together. We had whatever seats and then we had certain investors that had this seat or that. So it just sort of came together that way. And then all of a sudden, I realized that I was in a room And women think differently. So let me start by saying that we think in a more, long term way. I certainly do. And, it's been, a, it's been, I wouldn't say a battle but I would think it's been a struggle at times to protect the business and. Convince our shareholders and our board that some decisions are better. If you think in the long term and not short term, fixes. Andy, I know it's probably hard for you to answer that question but because you think about this a lot Do you think that the struggle was more real for you because you are a woman with these male board members until recently? One thing my mother said to me is emotion gets you nowhere. And so she's absolutely right when I realized that I was getting emotional in that board meeting, It didn't get me anywhere and then when I was calm and just measured, it helped a lot. So I don't know that it was in my head, per se, I think it was very real. I think it was more real probably because I was a woman, but I think there is that old men's club mentality. I don't At least that's what I see. And I've seen a lot in all businesses not just fashion. Yeah, well and fashion especially, which is always to me the biggest irony involved that, you know, they make clothes for women and it's mostly present company excluded men. Well, yeah and actually we have [ UNKNOWN ] employees. 83 % are women. So That's something. And that is a good statistic to end on. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Tory Burch: Women Are the Best Investment

CNN’s Dana Bash interviews the fashion mogul.


Welcome, welcome, we've got a few minutes to talk together before we announce these extraordinary winners, the women, entrepreneurial game changing women who are gonna change the world and are gonna be supported thanks to this wonderful award. But before we do could we just take a moment and talk about the amazing Goldman- Sachs women that are here that are part of this community? It's an unbelievable group and I was just saying to you backstage I remember A number of years ago, if you go back a decade ago, right, we tried to get a great group of senior women to represent the firm here. It was honestly, it was a struggle. And today, we have so many senior women partners that want to be here. We're actually debating, who, such a wonderful group that's here. It's a diverse group, and it's, I'm really excited about it. Really proud. You should be proud it is a big achievement to have increased the numbers that, that you have in the way that you have. I just before we dig into how you've done all that and what your commitment to women and gender equity is, we should mention that this conference is not just a birthday for this community, it's a milestone for you to. Your first year at CEO was wasn't really launched but it felt like it was launched at this conference last year. It was my It was my first day I October 1 last year. Yeah. Out in California was my first day as CEO and I arrived first morning arrived at this conference, and it was I've got very, you know very warm feelings about that. We'll see how warm it all is five years from now, seven years from now when it's all done. But it was an exciting way, and also I think a good marker- Yeah! In terms of, I think one of the things you have to do when you take on one of these jobs is you've got to stand up for a handful of things that are really important to you. Mm- hm. That are gonna matter to you to the legacy that you want to create. Right. And Putting that marker down around my focus on diversity, inclusion for our organization. I think the opportunity, the privilege to participate in the conference was a good way to really put a pin in that. So let's talk a little bit about what some of the accomplishments have been in this year. Anything actually that you'd tell us about, but particularly some of the things for women. Well, I mean, you take one of these jobs, I think the accomplishments are you got through the first year, and you're moving forward. Right. The one thing I will say it went quickly. Yeah. I mean, I think about the conference last year, it seems like five minutes ago. But Goldman Sachs is doing just fine, but I'm really trying to evolve and I'm really trying to make it a more modern organization. I'm really trying to take all the good things about its focus, its content, its seriousness, its innovation, its entrepreneurship, but also make it more modern, more approachable, more authentic, more human. And I think we're often running. I've also tried to really make sure the organization is oriented toward clients. It's a client business. And I think the compass has to be constantly focused on our clients not in the context of how it feels for us, but how our clients experience us as an organization. And I think we've made progress on that. With respect to diversity and inclusion, there's no way I look at our industry broadly. There's no way to put positive spin on where the industry is or where it's been. It's. There's definitely progress but it's not worth should be. I think one of the things I've tried to do is in the contexts that my leadership in the organization, I've tried to make it in enormous priority to provide leadership for the organization to move us forward. And to really increase the diversity of the organization, the openness of the organization, the inclusion in the organization. And I'm trying to do it by practically challenging the organization to move ahead. Right. And I talked last year about the fact taht we hire the 2500 to 3000 people out of school a year and it was just inacceptable to me. That wasn't a com [ pletely diverse group and couple of years a go I wen to a board and I said we're gonna change that And we're gonna do it over the next few years and I'm pleased to say that two years in, we've basically gotten there. What I learned this summer group, the group that will come in next summer and start in 2020 it's over 50 % women. We had targeted 10 % black professionals, 14 % Hispanic professionals. And we're meeting those goals but that's just a step. If you really wanna get to a diverse organization, you've gotta set other things in place to change the way you hire and lateral hiring is an enormous problem. So we put a [ UNKNOWN ] into place, and we're pushing harder and thinking about how we bring people in laterally. But the big thing That I think I'm doing and I'm trying to do is to publicly hold this accountable. Right. So we put out in a public way kind of a summary of the things we were commited to doing aspirational as an organization [ INAUDIBLE ] and in context, so I lost my mic. In the context of that But we put it out there publicly and it's a way of saying to the organization hey, this is what we're trying to do and we're gonna hold everybody accountable. And you link it to compensation, but more importantly you link it to the representations you make so that you know you're gonna be accountable for moving it forward. One thing I'm always very moved by when I interview CEOs or very very senior executives when they take on Big things that are gonna be their legacies, later on, is the patience and the resilience they have to say the same thing, over and over again, to people within their organizations who have been treasured performers for many, many years. And now you're asking them to do something that's very, very different, and then hold them accountable in a public way. That That, to me is the ultimate leadership skill because you generate that moment where I'm saying this to this treasured person in a fresh way, even though I've just had it 75, 000 other other times, because we all need to get on board, but this very big thing. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it takes to be that kinds of leader and how you can make sure that you and your agenda scales Without wearing yourself out. Well change, change is hard. Someone said last night and one of the discussions people don't like change They don't. People, people do not like change, they want to, they want to move forward and do what they're doing but they don't like to change. So to get people to change to your point, I mean, this is this is very simple, but this is one of the things I think about. There are certain things that you have to say over and over again. You have to save them so many times that it feels like you're driving yourself crazy. And just what do you think. Just when you think you've absolutely said it so many times you can't say it again. People are probably just starting to hear you. And you have to say it again. And it's It's an aspect of kind of communication in a big organizational context. And it's definitely bigger if you are dealing with tens of thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people. But I think it's important that you repeat things. And I think also you have to recognize as a leader, taking the other side When you say something, people are listening, and so, the counter to that with some things. I know when I'm in a meeting and we're talking about something strategic that we want to spend time on, if I say, you know, I kind of think we should consider whether or not we should turn left, there's a portion of the organization that's gonna be running left. Right Just because I said we're considering it in other words, let's get ahead of where leadership wants to go. And so there's this balance of people do listen. But on some things that are really change, the big things as you're talking about. Yeah You've got to save them, you got to tell people you got to say You have to tell them, you've got to tell them what you said. You've got to do it over and over again and hopefully over time, if you live by those actions and that's very very important that leaders live by the actions, you actually will start to make progress. So, before you bring these two extraordinary young women, could you please tell us a little bit about lunch with GS? Sure. I mean this was another, this fell into the category of. Another thing we're talking about saying how can we use our platform to actually move forward on something we think is very, very important. There is an enormous gender gap around capital getting to women that are starting businesses, getting to women that are allocating capital that are asset managers. By the way, it's not just women. It's also People of color, other diverse populations, that just the capital is not getting there. So we decided to create a platform, use our resources as an investing platform. When we created, a year ago, Launch With GS, we committed $ 500 million to it to start. We've funded about $ 100 million so far. We've had over 6, 000 businesses. That our women founded or founded by black professionals or other diverse professionals come to us. We've interviewed or seriously thought about 2000 of those businesses and we've made a handful of investments and will continue to deploy capital and so we're trying to use Our platform and the resources of the organization to try and a much more directed way to get capital moving in that direction. And so we're excited about it. And just big bottom line, why does entrepreneurship mean so much? Well, entrepreneurship, when I think about and this is a I know this is a global audience, but it's a It's a US- centric audience, to some degree. Entrepreneurship and innovation, in this country, in this economy, is so important to our economic vitality. And also, some of the things that really make us unique and different. And so all of us, I think, have to support innovation and entrepreneurship in a variety of different ways. And we've tried, as an organization You know given our platform to do what with the variety of programs that tried to get capital and education. Yeah. To entrepreneurs that is starting businesses. 10, 000 women which we talked about here has directed over $ 140 million to women that are running businesses in developing economies. We now in the partnership with the IFC where we funded. In terms of loans to try to get lending capital from institutions, about a billion and a half dollars into that community. And so we're trying to find ways to use our platform to accelerate that entrepreneurship because it creates, it creates jobs, it creates growth, and it's vitally important both here in the US and around the world. Speaking of what's vitally important, it's time for us Dave and I would like to welcome to the stage. Two of our winners of the Goldman Sachs Fortune 2019 Global Women Leaders Awards, Lara Ayoub of Jordan, the Digital Director of Al Mamlaka TV, Co- Founder of SADAQA and Xuemei Fei of China, CEO of Yunnan Holyflora Horticultural Industry Company. Please welcome these winners to the stage. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ MUSIC ] Congratulations. How are you? Congratulations, nice to see you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations, nice to see you. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for being here. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] It is so exciting to have you. Thank you. So exciting to have you. Lara I'm gonna have you tell us first a little bit about your winning project .>> Thank you very much. First of all allow me to thank Goldman Sachs and Fortune for this amazing award and recognition. It comes at an important time in my life. And I'd also like to thank. Vital Voices [ INAUDIBLE ] For all the support they have extended to the women leaders of their network over the nine last years. And to be honest, my project comes out of a sense of urgency, okay for the women of Jordan when I was transitioning from in 2012 From television, I worked in digital media for the last 16 years. When I was transitioning from print to television, I was also transitioning into motherhood. So how many mothers do we have in the audience? So you all understand the challenges of being a mother. I was in my mid- thirties. But I wasn't prepared for the challenges that came with the work life balance. Okay. And because of that I wish I knew what mentoring could've done to me earlier if I was equipped to know that I could be enabled, that I have rights, I have labor rights, I can negotiate and ask for better conditions at work. So during that transition, I also cofounded an NGO called Saddake, which means friendship. I said that wrong, I apologize. Yes, it's okay. Saddake means friendship in Arabic. And the reason that we established Saddake was because We needed to create family friendly work environments for women of origin that can help her enter the workforce and stay there. So there are three milestones for women and in anyone's life when she graduates from school, university and work and enter the workforce that is the first phase, and the second phase is. When she decides to have a family, if she decides to have one, that's 15 years later and then when she leaves to retire. My challenge came in the middle of my life. When I come to these summits, I looked at all of you. I say, Okay, there's CEOs in 60s and the 70s and 50s There is possibility. And when I look at the young girls of Jordan, because to give you a background about Jordan. 70 % of the women in Jordan are under the age, the population of Jordan, are under the age of 30. And more women are in university than men, yet We, the economic participation doesn't exceed 18 % the last decade. And the three barriers to entry to the workforce are lack of daycares, lack of transportation and pay and equity. Sources office focusing on increasing Economic participation by creating daycares and focusing transportation Well done. And this project will focus on girls in schools and universities to give them a 360 coaching experience where they can Learn their labor rights, learn their gender, what gender inclusion means? So that they can go to a job interview and demand exactly the right conditions for them. To prepare them, to let them know life skills, wellness. I was just in Brazil. I came back from Brazil with Vital Voices where I was Pampered by Vital Voices actually, [ LAUGH ] and their partnership to the partnership between Vital Voices and Johnson and Johnson, which I discovered this partnership happened in a in a summit like this Well then well then and the network is essential to grow the network so that you as a woman can expand and then once again Thank you so much. Congratulations. Congratulations. [ APPLAUSE ] Today, welcome. Thank you. Please tell us about your project. Okay. Hello, everybody. It's my honor to be here. So I should say Scott's message To give these opportunities. I'm FEI from Yunnan Holyflora horticulture industry. CEO of this company, and also the [ UNKNOWN ] Women graduate, So, it's an honor to be here to share my project that growing rose Louis Plato as the founder of this company, I have spent 20 years in flower industry. After graduating from [ UNKNOWN ] I inspired how to give back to society, so that I want to give out support To the left behind a woman. That is where the husband and children have to work in the setting for living. So, they are so determined, and they are so strong to sacrifice everything to keep the family running. So, that is my project is aiming t help this woman Giving them some techniques and the skills to help them manage more profitable products, such as roads. With our help, they can increase their income about 27 times. So that's wonderful. It is. That is. It's great. Yeah. [ APPLAUSE ] But by sharing skills and practical techniques, I think we also can give them very good products. And with company where purchase also products they produced. So that is very helpful, this kind of things I think like core structure design that organically matched the profit. Business and model to the think that's like as strong socially need. So that is, I think is very helpful for this woman. They just want to have the. The Dream they want have their own family farm so I can help them to give the code let them come tree. So I think government says 10 pence on one project is really give me some hope and inspired me a lot. Beautiful. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] We are out of time. You can learn more about these extraordinary women, these extraordinary projects and of course, the wonderful work that Goldman Sachs is doing on many fronts behind the scenes in your program and on your app. Just join me in congratulating them once again. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you and knowing that all this work is. Is gonna be planting seeds all over the world for women and their families everywhere and thank you David. Thank yo. Thank you for having us. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Winners of the Goldman Sachs & Fortune Global Women Leaders Award 

Lara Ayoub, and Xuemei Fei receive the honor.

What a pleasure to be here and to see many friends had so it's a special treat. This is my second day on the job. And so I want to. [ APPLAUSE ] I wasn't sure if I would be reliable to be here so I wasn't so I'm not on the program but I'm delighted to see friends that they have the chance to be here. You are about to hear From an extraordinary steam of leaders. I want you to know that you are going to hear from two of the greatest airforce people you'll ever hear from. Airforce officers and they are General, Okay, not brigadier General Not Major General, not Lieutenant General, but General Marianne Miller, who runs the Air Mobility Command. So what's Air Mobility Commander? You all probably know that dead to rights? The Air Mobility Command is like the UPS of the skies. This is also however, not just the UPS of this guys, they don't just deliver packages. They're also the fuel tankers of this guys. So they're the flying gas stations. But they are also the passenger carrier for the United States Air Force. And they fly hospitals. So they are also the flying hospitals. The person who runs that entire Air Mobility command, all those air lift resources, is General Maryann Miller, who you will be hearing from this morning. You'll also be hearing from an extraordinary. Leader, the first woman test pilot for the F35. Now what's an F35? She's flown a 10s she's flown ac F6 teens and now she's flying the F35. As a test pilot. The test pilots are the ones who not only have the hand eye coordination to be able to fly these super sophisticated, stealthy Current, the latest and the greatest of our fighter aircraft, but she also has to observe the characteristics of that aircraft in flight and be able to evaluate and make recommendations for things that are anomalies, things that it does a little differently or quirks that it has So that people so she can advise and change and save lives by making sure that anomalies are corrected and perfected. She before flying this F35. The first woman F35 test pilot, she flew F16 fighter of great fighters and before that [ INAUDIBLE ] Often referred to as Tank killers. If you're on the ground, your best friend is probably an A10. So an A10 is an attack, they are ground aircraft fighter aircraft or ground attack aircraft, F16, which are fighters, air to air and air to ground. But now F35 fighters of the most sophisticated and sell and stealthy. capabilities. So ladies would you join me in welcoming the extraordinary General Maryanne Miller and Major Rachael Winiecki [ APPLAUSE ] [ LAUGHTER ] Thank you It was you That was great look forward to seeing more of you > so, thank you very much everyone, this is a real honor and For those of you who don't know, and I know there are a lot of newcomers here. Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett has been a core member of the most powerful women community for well over a decade. So it was such an honor to have her here. And I sat between you last night at dinner and that was wonderful. And you came to our Decision- making breakout session this morning, and I'm gonna ask you a question about decision- making. But first of all, I am going to ask both of you, General Miller and Major Wyneski, how did you get here? [ LAUGH ] So I know we are short on time, so we will keep this short. [ LAUGH ] So I'll start and then I'll turn it over to Rachel. Actually smart town girl grew up in here to Ohio, went to high state university for athletic scholarship, one of six kids, big Catholic family. Parents couldn't afford to send us so my sister and I both got athletic scholarship. So that was a very good thing. Then I went off to pilot training was the fourth year of women to go through training. We couldn't fly fighters back then which was 30 years ago we could only fly the heavies so I got pulled back to be an instructor and I trained guys how to fly for four years and then went on to fly the heavies. Spent seven years on the active duty they said hey you're on a path to get promoted early and go all the way to the top and I said no I'm on a path to go my way, right. So I really jumped out of the active and I went to go fly float planes from Washington State Department of Fisheries. After getting my first check of $ 17, 000 a year. I thought, bad move. Let's go. [ LAUGH ] Let's go back into the active or let's go back into the Air Force. I went back into the reserves full time. So I've spent 38 years in our Air Force, 36 of those full time. Had an excursion to run a restaurant, own and run a restaurant five years. Cuz as a reservist, you can take time off of the full- time and do part- time. So I've flown floatplanes, I've owned a restaurant which is absolutely fabulous. So I get your life, not only this life, but I get your life, and it's a pleasure being here. So, and thank you for what you do You're an inspiration. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Major Winiecki what's your story? Well, first of all, I wanted to thank fortune most powerful women, Miss Sellers, General Miller, for the invitation to speak with you today. And to Secretary Barrett for the kind remarks. I grew up in Wisconsin, went to school at the University of Minnesota and earned my commission through the Reserve Officer Training Corps. From there I was fortunate enough to attend pilot training, and was selected to fly the A10 warthog as Secretary Barrett spoke with. I flew three operational assignments in that aircraft before, going to Test Pilot School. And out of there was assigned as an F sixteen developmental test pilot. Last year, I had the opportunity to join the F thirty- five enterprise and, have the opportunity to execute developmental test fielding advanced technologies for that aircraft. So Secretary Barrett just described the F 35 is the most sophisticated plane that describe the F 35. What is that is man so the F 35 is our newest fifth generation fighter aircraft and what makes the F 35 unique Is that we have a number of different sensors were independently developing and obtain a fair amount of information for the pilot, for the operator. But the great thing about the F35 is it capability were referred to as fusion. So the ability to take information from multiple sources, And derive that into a total battle space awareness for what's going on. Allowing our operators and our pilots the information in a timely and easily digestible manner so that they can execute their job safely .>> General Miller I want to drill down into your career a little bit more and that was a phenomenal summary of your life in a minute. [ LAUGH ] Kudos to you. [ LAUGH ] When you decided that you wanted to take your own career path, and you went to the Washington State Department of Fishing Fisheries explain to me what you were doing there. So flying amphibious float planes. So the Havilland Beaver, it's an amphibious which we'd show up at the hangar and we take off and I'd fly scientists up and down the estuaries and rivers within Washington State. We do salmon counts, so they had to same account so I take the airplane, get it up on it side. And they count the same and the first time I showed up they came with Dramamine patches all over their face. [ LAUGH ] And they said the guy that flies us all the time. He gets a sick every time. I go, you guys take the patches off, this is gonna be great. Never got him sick, it's all in the technique. So [ APPLAUSE ] So we go, we go catch the illegal gooey Duckers, we'd have to go after those guys who we'd set steaks on the sides of the river, and they would harvest at the harvest with inside when they went out the steaks we'd landed, we'd pull up beside the boat, get their diver up and take them to jail. So It was really a lot of policing from the air on the water. And then tell them where your restaurant was. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. And what was the name of it? So it was our place restaurant garden patio because my business partner and I couldn't think of a name and we were within two weeks of opening and we had to make a sign and we're like, well, this is our place. So let's just call it our place. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] So yeah. So General Miller, Major Wynetski is the first female test pilot of the most sophisticated fighter plane, the F- 35. General Miller has several firsts. General Miller is the first reserve officer as secretary Barrett said male or female to become a four star general. She is also the first military pilot of any gender to become a four star general correct. first female Pilot. Thought, first female pilot, okay, I'm, yes, first female pilot to become a general? Become a four- star. A four- star general, and General Miller is the only female four- star general in America today. Among how many men? I would say roughly 30 total. Four stars? Mm- hm. Okay, okay, Our very service. Kudos to you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] So I think the most powerful women, here with us today, would love to hear a little bit more about what exactly you do. So Gen. Miller, you actually manage Air Force One, right? Mm- hm. Yeah. Yeah, so- [ LAUGH ] That's power. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] So I So I manage the airlift for the entire world, as secretary Bara had said. We do airomedic evacuation for the entire world. We do air refueling for the entire world. So a fighter does not go anywhere, a bomber does not go anywhere, big airplanes don't go anywhere if they need to go more than an hour's without a tanker to give them gas in the air. And I also run the in route structure for the entire global mobility system. So every country we land i run those operations and then we also support the Air Force. Every blue and white airplane out there that the Air Force has, we fly the president, the vice president and all the congressional members in the cabinet members so we support them. And how involved are you when wounded soldiers or To see soil; der come back from combat. Yeah, in fact, Fox News just did tree weeks ago, a story of a wounded soilder who got critically outside the wire, so outside the base, outside the wore. So, they were able to get him care right awaym bringing him to Boardroom and there was a line of people you probably saw maybe you saw in the fox news there was a line of Airmen to give him he needed 26 gallons of blood to get him back. So we he lost an arm and a leg and enroute bringing him back. We actually it was an 8000 mile journey. It was a 19 hour flight, it was 2 airing fullings, one on the other side of the Atlantic and one on this side of the Atlantic, and we took them all the way from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan all the way to San Antonio. And is alive, he's alive. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] And what about when humanitarian crises happen? natural disasters whatever what is your role? Right where the wings of hope so we call the great tales wings of hope to our enemies with the wings of strength or to our adversaries or to our friends where the wings of hope So, any humanitarian disaster around the world, you will see C17s and C5s and C130s and all the aircraft of air mobility command supporting that and bringing hope to devastation. Major Winetski, what makes a good test pilot? [ LAUGH ] Development was test specifically, our focus really is on risk management in decision making is we will attempt to mitigate risk as best as possible. But it's our responsibility as we go and evaluate the capabilities of these new platforms. To ensure that they are going to meet the needs of the customer and to ensure that the customer has the confidence in the system that they know they can go out and do their job and execute their mission. Through with that, I think it's the analytical process the scientific method, if you will. You're an engineer. Yes, ma'am. Of approaching a problem. And there's many of the speakers last night, and again this morning, that talked about the importance of timely and effective decision making. And I really think is that's where, not just a test pilot, cuz I'm just one small part Of the total team. We have a variety of engineers. Both on the developmental side as well as on the execution side that work with us daily to solve these challenges. But overall I would say risk management and decision making is critical to gathering that data that we need. To ensure we meet the needs of our customer. Who has a question? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Okay, we have two up here. Susan Pondegar, for both of you, what are the biggest obstacles or challenges that you faced As you continued your career. Honestly, for me I think it's balance. And I bet I speak to everyone in this room when I say that. My faith is critically important to me, and I spend a lot of time in that. So to do the job that I do now. As I was growing up as a general officer, I could balance. When I got in this position I thought, wow how am I going to continue to be able to do what I want to do in that Area and by grace. for me it's good. It's very good. Thank you .>> I would definitely say building your team through effective mentorship both on a aperior superior subordinate level. The importance of taking that time, that extra few seconds out of your day To stop by and ask someone and engage someone in talk with them and get them to understand where you're coming from or the needs of your customers or vice versa ask them what do they want to do. I think my sellers yesterday evening spoke of The mentorship opportunities that are gonna be available through Fortune. I think that's an excellent way to solve those types of challenges. We have just less than a minute left. Can you share, each of you, a brief piece of leadership advice That you tell young people? Humility is the most important thing you can learn as a leader. It's all about others, It's not about yourself. Flying is a great equalizer. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ LAUGH ] Words To Live By. Thank you, General Miller. Thank you major Netscape. That was fantastic. [ APPLAUSE ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ UNKNOWN ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

These Military Women Are the First of Their Kind

General Maryanne Miller and Major Rachael WIniecki oin the MPW Summit.


One of our goals tonight, was to bring someone to the stage who could represent the most powerful women community, and could set the tone for the next three days. Who could we get? Who could we get? And Cathy Englebirch, who was the first CEO of a big four, the big four consulting firms in America. Cathy became CEO of Deloitte. Cathy has been a huge supporter of Fortune's most powerful women, and thank you Deloitte for sponsoring. [ APPLAUSE ] We would have invited her. This has nothing to do with Deloitte. This past summer, Cathy made a switch. She joined Deloitte in 1986 You get out of college. And she became the CEO of the WNBA. And the tone we wanna set here is that women can do anything, and women are champions. And we're gonna talk about inspiration, winning, and championship here tonight. With Cathy Engelbert. Come on now Cathy. Yeah. Thank you for being here. So Cathy How different is it from running a light? Going from 100, 000 people to 144 players is quite different. I will tell you that but you know, I was looking for something different something with a broad women's leadership platform and something I had a passion for. So sports By the way, isn't that different is big business as you read every day, so it's not as different as everyone thinks. Women's forces even be more interesting, we can get into that hopefully. But I was joking with the group earlier at the cocktail hour about how I used to be worried about. You know debt and deficits, trade and tax policy, AI and the future of work, and now I watch the SPN every morning. [ LAUGH ]. So Kathy was born in Philadelphia, grew up mostly in New Jersey, one of eight children. Yes. And what did your parents do for a living? And where were you in the birth order? So I'm Jen Brady, middle girl fifth of eight. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, those who are middle children know that. But five brothers and three older, two younger so I was the fourth out in the yard and I did go on to play college basketball. And my father worked three jobs to put eight kids through university through college. My mother didn't go to college, but she's the most competitive, smart person I know and she is still alive. My father passed away years ago my father was actually drafted By the Detroit Pistons in 1957. [ APPLAUSE ] When by the way his one year salary would have been $ 900 [ LAUGH ] and he got a job for a company called RCA for $ 2, 000. And he took the $ 2, 000 job, [ LAUGH ] and the MBA wasn't what it was back then. So Kathie went to Lee High and she played basketball at Lee High. All right. [ UNKNOWN ]. Some engineers out there. Yeah, and I'm from Allen Town so we love Lee High. Lee High valley. You You were the captain of the team your last year. Now, what did you want to do when you were graduating from college? I actually started as a computer science major, I'm one of those who switched out of STEM to To accounting, believe it or not, because someone said, Warren Buffett said, I know Warren's a big MPW supporter, accounting is the language of business. And then someone else told me, and you'll get a job. [ LAUGH ] This thing called the big eight, back then, so But I switched to business and accounting and obviously became a CPA and But did at 5, 33 years later, five different careers within Deloitte later again. I mean I couldn't be more proud of the firm and everything it represents and the diversity inclusion platform that Deloitte has. But you know, moving on to something different in a second career is a big change. Not having all those resources at your fingertips. big change, but again, I never ever thought never aspired to be the CEO or the Commissioner of the W MBA, but Again, it was something I think and we have a big issue in women sports right now around money. And less than 5 % of all corporate sponsorship dollars in sports go to women. And less than 5 % of all media coverage of sports goes to women. This is a big boulder we're pushing up the hill, but we have this huge opportunity with this moment coming off the US women's soccer World Cup win. [ APPLAUSE ] There's an enormous momentum around the WNBA cuz the product on the court I inherited is so good. And all men tell me that too so I know it's good. And then there is this obviously movement around women's empowerment and if we can't take advantage of this moment, this momentum and this movement and drive these women to a higher level of Recognition and get more corporate sponsorship dollars. So any I know there's a lot of big companies in here. I used to be the one that was being courted. [ LAUGH ] Now I'm the one who's groveling for sponsorships, but there's so many assets amongst women's sports that deserve a higher level of attention. And so that's my job I was hired because my finance background and to really transform the economics. So we actually tried to get a member of the world champion Washington Mystics on stage with us, and ten days ago, the Washington Mystics won the WNBA championship. [ APPLAUSE ] And here's why we couldn't get them on the stage. Because, right after they win the world championship, tell me if I'm right on this, Kathy. The average salary for a WNBA player is 75, 000? It varies, but- Round there? It's not enough, that's all we need to say. For 34 games in the season, the average salary, or pay for total pay, average for an NBA player Is 6. 3 million? Probably about right. Yes. 6. 3 million now that's 82 games. So it's like twice as many games but 6. 3 million. Still not enough. Do the math. So this goes back to why we could not get a mystics player on this stage. Even the best ones, so Alaina Delladon, who has been at the most powerful at Summit thanks to our friend and community member Ellen Coleman the former CEO of DuPont. Ellen actually befriended Alaina Delladon who's the MVP of the mystics when she was playing for the University of Delaware and we had Alaina here on this stage a couple of years Can you tell us what would Elena make? Well, Elena's one of our few athletes that have national endorsements so she actually does make a better living. Okay, but okay. But in the league, you know, not enough, not enough, so. Yeah, not, not, so anyway, my point here is, what these women have to do to survive, to live Go off to Europe and play basketball. And Asia. And Asia. Yeah. So all of them are gone. There's no doubt that the model today isn't working. We want these women wearing collective bargaining, active collective bargaining negotiations. it expires next week on October 31st. And that ecosystem I was talking about about sponsors and media coverage and. The WNBA just concluded its 23rd season. The NBA by the way as it entered its 40th season. That's when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson started to put the NBA on the map. They started getting endorsement deals and sponsor deals and tv deals. We can't wait four years , we need to pay these women more. We need to give them a better experience as a player. I was a huge beneficiary of Title Nine in the 70s and to the 80s playing sports. And today, our players have title nine at the college level. Same treatment as the men and they come into the WMBA and it's a very difficult transition. So we're working on player experience. We need more fans in the seats. We do not have enough fans on like the men's sports get a lot more fans. And we don't have enough TV coverage and sponsorships. And that's what the transformation, not only the W. This is a money losing organization that Kathy has worked into, walked into, and what a business problem. So there's all this stuff. Low pay. The women can't even be here in the United States to celebrate and promote the teams that just, so that's a problem. Yep, working on it. Okay, working on it, good. [ LAUGH ] But it seems like there are so many issues. How do you choose? How do you prioritize? It's a perfect business problem whenever you transition to a new role. I did a tour, there's only 12 teams, so this doesn't sound like it should be that hard. 12 teams, 144 players. I did a tour of all 12 markets You know, downloaded just the other day, everything that was on the list 54 items and obviously I'm in my 19th day today on the job. All right. And really really excited to now that the season has concluded, we have a great champion, we had a great series where it went down to the last game in the last quarter and the last four minutes. And now we need to work on our TV coverage. ESPN has been a great partner for the WNBA for a long time. But we've gotta have more coverage, more games, more recognition, more sales and marketing capability to drive our players personalities. These women, they are so socially conscious and community minded. We actually had one of the best players in the league [ UNKNOWN ] take off this year to go work on Prison Reform and work with a particular person on death row in Tennessee. And they're so community minded and socially conscious. And whether it's around gun control, whether it's around Prison Reform the opioid awareness They just you know, girls in STEM, the mystics held a big girls in STEM event and it's we need more people to step up and sponsor us so that we can, you know, have an economic model to pay the players more and to give them a better travel experience. I mean the players share rooms in their first couple years. Can you imagine that And so, we need companies to step up and help us fund some of these initiatives. So, what is an example? Kathy doesn't know I'm doing this. We would like to be helpful to you. What is an example of a company that has supported the WNBA In a sort of creative way, and a way that has benefited that company Yeah, so believe it or not, we really only have one national sponsor. That's AT & T, every player wears AT & T on the front of their jersey right now. And that's been great, great sponsorship the way they activate it around a DNI platform. The assets that we have, the all- star game. We're gonna do things like a baller fest, cup plays. So we have a lot of ideas just coming in now that we're gonna expand the game. We'd love to expand beyond 12 cities, cuz when I talked to a CEO today, they said, well, you're only in 12 cities and I'm in 100. Hard to expand the brand when you're only in 12. And what do you need to do to expand? Well we need to get the economics for our 12 teams. We need to get our players paid more, give them the better travel experience, more fans in the seats. Then down the road we'll look at expansion because look at the Bay Area for instance. There's not WNBA team in the Bay Area. And if so much Of your economy is being driven by technology and you don't have a team in the largest tech sector place in the in the country. So everybody wants a team but you need to have people with the financial wherewithal them that know how to run a team and The depth of talent in this league is amazing. You could be a first round draft pick in the WNBA and actually not make the team. It's one of the only sports that happens. Wow. Because the depth of talent is so enormous but when you only have 12 teams, it's very difficult to make the team. But we also have a lot of positive things going on. I wanna mention that our USA basket Basketball team women's basketball team in Tokyo next year is going for their seventh consecutive gold medal. [ APPLAUSE ] And in the six gold medals that they've won. Their record 100 wins and one loss. This is like a dynasty of massive proportions. And when I was a CEO, Deloitte, I didn't know anything about this. I walk in and someone tells me that and I'm, nobody's talking about it. Why is no one talking about this? MBC did their One year run up in July even before I started on the Olympics ain't even talk about the women's basketball team. Why is this? Because again, less than 5 % of all media coverage goes to women's sports. So we need to change the narrative part of my job will be to do that, not just for Women's basketball but women's sports and, hopefully, women in society more broadly. Cathy, it's wonderful that you are transferring your power and all your skills to the WNBA. We wish you luck and thank you for coming back. Thank you everyone, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Cathy Engelbert on Her Past at Deloitte and Future at the WNBA

Cathy Engelbert on Her Past at Deloitte and Future at the WNBA

Cathy Engelbert, Commissioner, WNBA
Moderator: Pattie Sellers, FORTUNE

MPW Summit 2019

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Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Cathy Engelbert on Her Past at Deloitte and Future at the WNBA