Most Powerful Women 2021

Muriel Bowser: "I think there's a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurs." 

Washington DC mayor shares her leadership advice for the future 

Conferences

Washington DC mayor shares her leadership advice

I wanted to get some final thoughts from you on leadership. What leadership advice do you have for us going forward? Well um first I I want to say it has been a difficult year for female workers and leaders, but I think there's a lot of opportunity for entrepreneurs and we know that women will will lead in that regard as well. There's a lot of people have spent covid thinking about how they want to spend their time and their their professional energy. Uh And I think a lot of people are going to start businesses. Uh D. C. Is that type of place. Um People have noted how well women are doing in tech and starting in tech and attracting investment in D. C. We have one of the highest qualified and educated workforces anywhere. Uh So my thought on leadership um is that bet on bet on cities um because people are still moving there. Uh and that's where talent is and that's where you can grow your business and then there's no better place than washing. Please.

Sarah Friar: Our communities "want to see Nextdoor as a welcoming platform."

Nextdoor CEO tells us how social media platforms need to stop chasing growth at all costs

Nextdoor CEO: Platforms should be more responsible

when you look at what you've done so far and you've instituted various things on the platform. What has been toughest so far along the way so that going from talk to do um so important cannot underscore enough. And when we go talk to our neighbors were here all the time, they want to see next door as a welcoming platform. But what is welcoming mean? So some of the toughest decisions have been like that trade off between engagement and growth versus slowing people down. And I don't think enough platforms are doing that by the way. So for example, in working with folks like to take out, we work actually with Doctor jennifer Eberhardt out of stanford with her spark lab, we have instigated things that slow people down. So one of the first things we did actually want to do with racial profiling. So to your point, we will represent what's going on in neighborhoods. We instigated a flow that when you want to put something up on next door that begins to look like reporting a crime, we actually start to explain, first of all, make sure that it's really a crime right? Walking in the neighborhood is not a crime. How are you describing the person don't use race, used clothing and so on, describe exactly what they're doing. And just in doing that we took down instances of racial profiling almost 70 per cent and today it's small, it's .002% of all posts fall into that. Another just a quick one for you is what we call kindness reminder, which is actually an infrastructural thing. So when we see something happening, where we know this is a piece of content that will get moderated, right? We all are in tech, we have all goes and machine learning and so on. Why wait to after the fact we actually put something right in front of you as you're typing the first one with kindness reminder and it says, hey, great communities are created with kindness. Um, it looks like what you're writing will get moderated in the future states. There's a better way of saying it. And so it's doing a couple of things it's taking from this brain, right? Which is where all we all are biased, where biases sit and bringing you back here, your frontal lobe or you're taught how to deal with bias. The second thing we're doing is where humans don't like the feeling of being reviewed negatively in a future state. We all want to be good in the moment. And so again, we see over a third of people rewrite what they're saying, right? They stopped with the you moron, what the hell are you doing? And they say it a little bit more politely now that could impact engagement, which, you know, in the end, you often feel like you're being held to growth and engagement and at any cost, right? And I think that growth at any cost mentality is what's really damaging us in terms of areas like social media. So I'm really appreciative to folks like sciatica because she gives me so much courage to lean in, right. We ban the statement White Lives Matter. We actually didn't ban Blue Lives Matter. All lives Matter, but we banned them in as a retort to Black Lives Matter. But we put up again using that interstitial a little conversation to say, hey, do you know why all lives matter can feel very hurtful to someone so often. It's just about a little bit of education. A little nudge. People want to be their best selves, but often it comes from a place of ignorance.

Mei Mei Hu: "Where there's a gap is, frankly, in choice."

CEO of Vaxxinity shares her thoughts on what the global vaccination approach should be 

CEO of Vaxxinity on what the vaccination approach should be 

I'm curious for your sort of broader perspective given what you brought up about the just the fact that we have seen global vaccine access be a huge problem in this pandemic and in solving this pandemic. Um do you feel like the larger established vaccine makers are doing enough or what should what should be approached B this is a global pandemic right? We're not going to get out of it by vaccinating a few. So I think everyone is doing their best and that's actually the perspective I take into it. Um I think that where there's a gap is frankly in choice. I mean you just look at the U. S. Right? You have in general there's an anti vax population but it's actually very small in the U. S. Um but for COVID vaccines it's you know we have about 40% almost that are not fully vaccinated. And so where's that coming from? Um and I think one of it is is uh you know we need more choice and the other one is we need to have a respectful conversation that understands what people's concerns are. And so we hope to be able to facilitate that conversation. Um and to offer more choice frankly more choice in terms of having more products available, more types of vaccines or other types of choice. Yeah. Just choice in terms of different technologies, different platforms, everything's got its uh pluses and minuses. Um but but really you know there's some people that are afraid of certain technologies and so offering choice is important

Laura Coates: "It's a clear violation of the Roe V Wade precedent, frankly." 

CNN Legal analyst discusses the recent anti-abortion law passed in Texas

CNN Legal analyst discusses the recent Texas abortion law 

Emma and char who were just on stage talked a little bit about the texas abortion law and because we have a legal expert here, I just wanted to follow up on that and ask, you know, there have been a lot of challenges to abortion rights before. Um what is unique about this law that makes it a real threat to roe v wade? What is so unique about it? And what is so disheartening, frankly is we believe in the separation of powers for a democracy. You have the legislative branch, obviously the judicial branch, the executive branch and the whole point is to have checks and balances to be able to if there's a law that people do not want to be implemented or defend the constitution in some way you want to be able to seek redress in court. That's the whole premise of having the judicial branch of government. So imagine a way to be able to construct the law that cannot be checked. The idea of what happened in texas is unlike normally, if you don't want a law to go into existence, you're able to sue the state actor were official whose job it is to enforce the law. For example, if there is a law that says you have to shut down abortion clinics while the Chief of Police or the commissioner whose job it is to barricade or or bar them in is the one to be sued to say you have to enforce it. There you go, what they did in texas though, was to go around it an end run and say, look if there's no state actor whose job it is to enforce it. If there's no state official, no one can be sued. Therefore you have no way to get in court to make sure that it's not implemented. And it's a clear violation, not only of the roe v wade precedent, frankly, um which which is based off of the 14th amendment equal protection of course about the supremacy clause of having federal law. And of course president takes take precedent over things, but also a sense separation of powers. So you can imagine this in many ways being used in other capacities, christian if somebody has a law that they, you know, I don't want you to own a gun, 2nd Amendment issues implicated right. If I don't want you to be able to um say anything disparaging against the governor. Well, I could do an end run around things and make it so that you can never get to court. That's the scariest part about it. And one of the reasons I think this is not over not only as a blueprint, but of course as why it's so offensive to our notions of what democracy is supposed to be a question for you is business leaders. How do we enter this conversation and this debate like what's our swim lane to actually have impact that matters. That's such a great question. I think you've got frankly the widest swim lane and the most powerful you've seen over the course of modern american history from issues related to gun violence or race and culture that until corporate America speaks up, you don't really have the motivation sometimes on Capitol Hill right? You know, money makes the world go round. But you also the consumers are more um impactful than any other block in the entire world. Right? And so you think about how with Capitol Hill and voting in elections, certainly people think about voting through the ballot process, but consumers vote every single day by who they choose to actually buy from, where they choose to visit, who they choose to support and more importantly who they choose to boycott in a sense, economic boycotts. And I think that because corporate America and business leaders are in this extraordinary position to know that they can, for altruistic reasons put their thumb on the scale and light a fire. I think it's incumbent upon corporate America to view themselves as a necessary disruptor of the status quo. Because so often in Washington D. C. Political inertia rules today, it's the way it is because always been that way and until people can come in with power and necessary influence, who understand the mathematics of having people vote daily hourly by the minute on things that matter to them. There's not a lot that can disrupt that the inertia of the status quo. So I think that business leaders in particular and women specifically have the ability to compartmentalize but also to straddle all these different roles and identities and understand in a way that corporate America can be as influential as possible and influence what our elected officials do and accomplish. And the pressure that's on them. I mean look at things like north Carolina when there was the Final four and the N. C. Double A. Tournament and the pressure inflicted about um, the transgender bathroom bans and bills. Look at the discussions for places like Dick's sporting goods and the like about um what types of weapons are allowed in stores and maybe should not be. These are very real factors that Capitol Hill takes into account and it can move the needle in other ways as well.

Shar Dubey: "It's an important issue for businesses who have a lot of power."

CEO of Match Group discusses how Apple takes 30% of revenues from in-app purchases

Match Group CEO: Apple takes 30% in-app purchases

match pays about I believe 500 million in fees annually. And you've been closely watching developments like the epic the Apple ruling and legislation out of south Korea that pretty much bans such fees um, does the way that Apple and google charge developers need to change short answer Yes, but I am going to send spend two methods just to explain because it's a not something everybody understands. It's an important issue for businesses who have a lot of power and control to know. So there was this brilliant thing called the internet was a great innovation changed all of our lives obviously. But one of the really need things about it was it was free any business could create a website and reach its target audience for free. Of course they spend money to promote it. But it was largely free. All that changed when the smartphone came along and obviously Apple won the race with the iphone and they have the operating system which is the IOS. But one less understood thing that happened was they created a gateway to the internet and controlled access to all consumers through this thing called the app store. And then a few years later google followed with android and today much of the world is controlled through these two companies who are now the gate keepers, the internet. So to illustrate that we are one of our largest absence Tinder, 98% of our users use either the iphone and the android app even though we have a Tinder dot com website where we sell lower cost subscriptions. We barely can get any of our young audience in particular to use anything but apps so that's the kind of power they now have and they are picking winners and losers in the world. Like much of the rest of the world had is you know how they do business is determined by them. So to me uh it ought to come with some responsibility and uh you know enacting policies and practices that are fair and equitable in a pipe stands for in app payment that has not, that's not how it's worked out. So what they did was they arbitrarily Apple a few years ago um came up with a list of app categories that it said, you know what We have built this payment system, you're gonna have to use it and nothing else. And for every dollar you transact you're gonna pay 30% to us. Just because we can and I say arbitrary because the definitions very vague because if you um if you have an app that connects the driver to a writer, you're not subject to the great example of Tinder versus facebook dating and you pick up for the same exact service, they are picking which business models I'll go to win. So if your ad supported, you don't have to pay but if consumers are paying you directly you have to pay and it's a big tax, it forces us to increase prices for consumers. It prevents us from making investments in our people and our technologies in the business and the you know, finally the world has sort of woken up that are active investigations to your point, South Korea just passed a law making it illegal. We just found out Netherlands has also deemed it illegal. Which apples fighting. I think I just want to tell you made the point at when we talked before that um Apple is the number two biggest dating company in the world. Right? How did you face it? Well, they make a lot. I mean look, they make a 30% out of every dating company right out there. I'm not sure exactly how much they do. But yes, they, you know, for every one of the categories that is mandated by this, they are probably the largest players um in it, the so there's regulations now or active investigations in the US and UK France, eu India Russia Australia. But you know, the thing that I wanted to call out though is if the whole world is sort of challenging this, someone at Apple needs to take a step back and say this, does this still feel the right thing to do if your best defense for this is while we build it and we can and oh by the way, it may hurt safety and privacy, which It's ring so hollow to me because by their own admission, 16% of apocalypse are subject to this tax. And so all they want to do is do what the rest of the 84% do. So I don't know how that becomes a safety and privacy argument. But the worst of it all is the epic ruling. The judge actually ruled that not letting developers promote lower prices or other payment instruments within the app violated California law. And their response was of course we're going to fight it. But if we're forced to do it, we're going to make sure these links are non clickable and oxymoron I think. And thank you very hard. We're actually out of time that went so quickly. But this is very important. Yeah, My whole point is really, I mean, I admire the company so much. I just hope they recognize they take a step back and do the right thing.

Dana Canedy: "Resilience is what you do" during the difficult moments in life. 

SVP of Simon & Shuster talks to us about resiliency in the workplace

SVP of Simon & Shuster talks resiliency in the workplace

this is such an important moment. Talking about resilience. Tell us a little bit about how that you carried that into professional career. I mean your story embodies that. So I've been thinking a lot about what to say to such an accomplished audience here and so proud to be with you women. I still can't believe I made it onto this list anyhow. And I thought you know there are the things I say to entry level people when I'm speaking with them, things like you know how to answer that question in an interview, what's your biggest weakness? I always tell them to say chocolate. Uh but for this group, I do think that there are some things that are universal in terms of advice that we can all use no matter what stage you are in your in your career. And one of them is resilience because there is often an imbalance between what's going on in your personal life and your professional life and so the best of course, as you ladies know, is when things are in sync, but when things are out of sync, when your personal life, you're going through a divorce and medical situation or whatever, but your career scoring or vice versa resilience is what you do in those moments, you know how you uh maintain yourself, your professionalism, uh your your sense of purpose uh during those difficult times. And I think the fact that I started writing this book when I was morning Charles had only been gone um four months when I started the book, I'd only been back from maternity leave. I was a journalist at the new york times at that time for two weeks. He was due to come home in one month. And you know, I went from the happiest time in my life. I had this new baby a career that was soaring to literally, you know, getting that knock at the front door and you open it and there's the military there and you know what that is to collapsing on the floor. And so what I would say to all of you is that success looks different at different points in your life, right? Certainly, it was a successful day when I got the call and was offered uh job running the Pulitzer prizes as the first woman and first person of color in 100 years to do that. That was success that day, The day Charles died, success was getting off the floor a month later. Success was brushing my teeth. And so um resilience is about uh doing what you have to do surrounding yourself with your village to be successful, no matter what success looks like where you are. Uh So that's what I would say about that

Suzanne Clark: "It's going to require all kinds of solutions."

Chamber of Commerce President tells us what businesses should do to retain employees

U.S. CoC CEO: How businesses should retain employees

I want to move on to the subject of job, 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August a lot of them pointing to the idea of bad hours and low pay. What can business do to retain workers more. Um, and what should be done to try to make people want to work more and and not quit their jobs, especially when it comes to low pay. But I think this is a really multifaceted problem that's going to require all kinds of solutions, right? We see something like 2.2 million more open jobs than people looking for work right now. It is one of the biggest problems threatening the country. Every Ceo, I'm sure a lot of people in this room are worried about it and it's at the heart of a lot of the supply chain challenges as well, right? Just getting the workers and getting the economy moving again is so important. And I think, look, whenever we all took economics right? Whenever there, when demand out places supply than any Ceo has got to think about what they're doing to retain workers to be sympathetic to their workforce, to be a best in class employer, whether that's wages, benefits, flexible schedules, access to child care, better training. And so every employer in the country is thinking right now, how they're the most competitive. It's still that we don't have enough. Right? And so we are going to have to think about how we have become a country of people without jobs and jobs without people. And so what we think about in terms of training and skills development for the jobs of the future is as important as how we find truck drivers tomorrow morning. Some of that is that we need more legal immigration and some of that is that we have to do a better job of getting more people wanting to work and wanting to participate in the workforce, particularly women. Should businesses have the power to mandate vaccines for their employees? Should businesses have the power to mandate vaccines to their employees? I'd have to think that question through. Yes, I would think. Yes. So in other words, businesses should be able to mandate that their workers, um, that that that there may be, they should businesses be able to mandate vaccines for their workers and possibly for their customers. Look, I think this is a really, I don't know. I think this is a really complicated time and most employers at least have more than 100 employees. This isn't gonna be optional soon. Right. And so I think having clear rules of the road, um, is really important. At the same time, we have a big worker shortage and and and anything that we do that makes it harder for people to go to work is not gonna help inflation. It's not going to help consumer prices. It would just be sure is that a yes for vaccine mandates or you asked me if businesses should be able to not do they have a good day? Should they have the power? Yeah. Okay. Um, and should businesses be speaking out about January six and the people who attacked the capital? Should businesses be speaking out about January 6? I think you're making you're making businesses to homogeneous, right? I think every business has to decide for themselves, who their employees are, who their stakeholders are, who their consumers are and what their role is in a democracy. Should business owners be calling out election lives and claims that the election in 2020 was riggs? Let me know that it was not. Every business owner has to decide for themselves which issues they want to get involved in.

What WNBA star Sue Bird learned during the pandemic

Commentary

What WNBA star Sue Bird learned during the pandemic


So do I hear even you are working out at home early in the pandemic? Yeah we um at some point the W. N. B. A. Decided to do what we affectionately called the wobble season and that's when it started to get serious and I was like well how am I going to get ready for this? And I think what I learned in that pandemic as it pertains to working out was um There's always these small gains to be had. So even you know Heidi mentioned like a 10 minute intense workout, 10 minutes sometimes if that's all you can get in it's enough it's enough to to kind of get you set off in the right direction. And so I just in that moment decided like I can't be too hard on myself. Yes I'm trying to train for a season but nothing is as it was of course. So if I couldn't get on a basketball court I was like all right I'm just gonna go to try to go find a playground. A lot of the nets were tied up. Some of the rims were taken down and I literally would shoot into the air like just pretending you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Um But I think we all learned in that moment like how resilient we can be how you have to adapt and adjust and just because you know and I'll speak from a basketball perspective just because my training wasn't gonna look exactly the same. I didn't mean I couldn't get the results I needed just because it wasn't gonna be that same route that made me feel comfortable doesn't mean I can't get there in a different way and still have, like I said those results, so that's 100% what I learned. And then, you know, we lived in a wobble and that was bizarre. Tell us about it. What was the experience of being in the wobble? Like I mean this is the bubble WNBA's you following it? So yeah, so what was, what was it like um you know, it was, it was um you kind of got sick of seeing people uh particularly like, you know, other teams, other coaches, maybe you're playing them that night and you're in the elevator like, hey, how's it going? I actually don't care, but I'll ask anyway, the hardest part was actually seeing the referee's, Oh yeah, that was not an amazing because, you know, our relationship kind of strained as it is. Um So it was kind of interesting, but we learned a lot about ourselves I think as a league we learned um yeah, we were there to play basketball. It was amazing because it was the pandemic. The one good thing that came from it was we got way more tv coverage and now we're able to kind of ride that wave a little bit, The ratings have been way up, way up, way up. I mean, what do you know, you put it on tv everything a shocker. A shocker. Um but the other thing we learned was that when we, in terms of the social justice, when we, when we unify our voice, when we're one voice, that's where our power was. We don't necessarily have, You know, the individual platform to kind of make a message as big as we wanted to, but Wow 144 of us when we came together, I mean, some might say we helped flip the senate seat and and there's something really powerful in that and I think women, we collaborate in that way and and we, we already knew that about our our league, but it just, it just hammered it home and now we'll never do anything if we're not in lockstep. It was really, really incredible to watch. Um and you know, I was thinking about that and your relationship with Nike and the fact that, you know, Nike is also a company that has a history of engaging on social justice. Um you know, I think probably the most memorable for a lot of people recently would be the Colin Kaepernick ad. Um and you know, when you do that, you have a bunch of consumers, lots of different people buy shoes. Um you're gonna alienate some of your shoppers. So talk us through like what, what part of Nike's DNA allows you to take those stands and I know a lot of people are having these issues with their own companies. So if you have any advice please share that as well. Sure. Well this is probably worth a session zone we can talk about. But you know, I'd start with, you know, just the fact that it's uh easier to take a stand uh if you know who you are and what you believe. And like that's the advice right there, you know, as a person, as a company and you know, what drew me to Nike is that we've always known who we are, what we believe. And you know, I actually get up in the morning and think that, you know, we might be able to move the world like we move the world physically, but I actually think we can move the world and and you know, I I uh and we're and you know, Phil Knight always reminds us, you know, always reminds us that it's our job to listen to the voice of the athlete and you know, where we know we're better if we know what we believe and um if we listen to Sue, like literally listening to do and you know, so and I would just say especially uh you know, you talk Kaepernick, but especially as it relates to level playing field and uh and you know, so I think, you know, we'll talk about players because that's really important, but one thing I'm really proud of is Just um living our values with our employees and level playing field. And uh we have just announced over the last six months in our impact report that we're going to um we have targets of representation um through to 2025 um listed and named in our impact report and executive comp is tied to that. My comp is tied to those targets and I'm telling you that I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I look at my stats and my numbers every day. Um I'm proud that I can tell you that we're making progress and I can see it in the numbers already, just months out of the impact report and and and you know, really impressive, you know, progress there. I think we're making a ways to go and then okay, now I'm just gonna then talk about, you know, athletes because you know, probably the most visible way you see us taking stands is through voice of athlete and you know, um and we love the level playing field conversation Kaepernick, you know, with his dream crazy and dream Crazier was something we're really proud of and again, lines back to our values, but what I love about that, it wasn't just Kaepernick, it was then Serena and it was Lebron. And uh and I think Lebron's message was uh basketball players don't change the world until they do

“We have a large stable of lawyers and regulatory folks who help us navigate this stuff,” says Emilie Choi of Coinbase. 

Coinbase COO on operating amid outside skepticism 

federal regulators don't necessarily feel the same way when it comes to crypto so far. Emily coin base especially has been on the front lines of this, you recently had to cancel a lending product that you were trying to introduce because the FCC wasn't on board. And your ceo brian armstrong has been very vocal and aggressive in his criticism, calling me of the FCC in particular, calling the agency pretty sketchy. Mhm. So I guess it's a two part question. Do you see, what do you see changing or and if federal regulators continue in the skepticism of crypto um is direct confrontation going to serve your business well? Mm. So congress has a really rich heritage of having leaned into regulatory even, you know, when the company was formed, it was not a very intuitive thing for a crypto company to lean into regulation and that's actually what are two co founders, brian and fred did I think that, you know, we feel like we have a bit of a responsibility to the crypto ecosystem. We have obviously a very um large stable of lawyers and and regulatory folks who help us navigate this stuff and we honestly want to help both ourselves as well as the crypto ecosystem because we want innovation to flourish in the U. S. Um I think the U. S. Has had such a rich history of entrepreneurship and of innovation and tech innovation and what we're feeling right now is that there's this kind of paranoia around crypto because it's not as easily understood. And so what we're seeing is a lot of the activity has actually moved offshore, which is like the opposite of what you want. You actually want, just a very healthy, stable clean transparent system in the U. S. So that the innovation flourishes here, we want fairness, We want to be treated on an even playing ground with other financial services institutions. We want transparency. We felt like if we were experiencing this, that the rest of the crypto ecosystem was probably experiencing it. And so that was why are our founder and Ceo brian went out with a tweet storm about the experience we were having and will that do you see any signs that it's changing minds? You know, I'm really bullish. I'm really optimistic about how things are going to kind of evolve here because I think that even when we saw with the infrastructure bill, I think that it kind of came out of nowhere that there was this little piece of legislation that they were proposing for crypto and it was a bad piece of legislation and the whole crypto like community rose up and and they were like, why why would why would we do this specific thing? And I think that lawmakers were like, whoa, this is actually a big phenomenon, this there's something big happening. It's growing and it's a vocal community of people who are really passionate about the attributes of Cryptocurrency. And so I'm actually really optimistic that we're going to get to that place and and to that end coin base will be proposing a new regulatory framework for crypto in coming weeks, which we think is a really fair kind of blueprint for how legislators should think about regulating crypto.

Laura Alber, Williams-Sonoma CEO, discusses her decisions made amid the peak of the pandemic. 

Williams-Sonoma CEO on continuing to pay employees amid COVID-19 

Williams-Sonoma CEO on leading amid pandemic

you've said that, you know when the pandemic happened and before we really knew, knew that home furnishings is gonna like, boom, as a business, as everyone is like investing in their own spaces. When the lockdowns happened, Williams Sonoma continued to pay its associates. And you said that has paid off during the great resignation. They stayed loyal. How did that connect back? Like how do you keep them motivated and and really keep that engagement there? Yeah. So, I mean, truth be told. Like, I know he said trauma earlier, I'm like, uh, blocked it out. Like my three kids childbirth. Like why do we even have more than one? Except you can't, you can't remember it. But similarly, you know, those dark days of the pandemic. I mean, I thought we were gonna go under, uh, did you guys do that like exercise? We're running the cash flow. And you're thinking, how many months would we have? Okay, let's get some more debt, Let's do that. Call my friends, banker friends, get more money collecting money. And then I'm like, okay, so let's run it with paying them and not paying them. And the truth is, it doesn't matter. I mean, you still go under if you have no revenue. I thought e commerce was gonna close, I had this, I mean, I'm a catastrophizing. So I'm like, it's all going to close. Everything is closing and you know, the paying of the people was like groundhog. So we just came out and said, look, we're all in it together, We're all going to everybody's gonna stay working. You're not coming into the stores who knows when And every two weeks we got on the call and we said two weeks and they just looked at me like ok I wish it could be longer but you know at the time two weeks is a long time. Then we get on two more weeks, two more weeks, two more weeks and lo and behold we didn't go under in fact we did quite well but there were a lot of decisions that were made that made that happen and talk about this innovation thing. So these incredible people, you know there's always complaining about bad workers, whatever people, they're so incredible, they don't want to go to unemployment. Like these are amazing store managers, they don't want to go try to beg for a job somewhere. They were so proud that they started innovating and they were like well what can I do from home or wherever. And so we connected them with design chat, you guys online design chat. So you would call a care center to say I need to buy a work at home desk and you get you know julie from the K. O. P. Store who's like oh let me tell you all about the desk, there's this one this one this one and this one and not to mention can I help you with the rest of that room? Is that going into your bedroom, the living room And they started driving as much money as some of their stores rand. I mean we're like hell is going on then? They said well you know we have all the inventory in the stories. We know you don't have enough inventory over there, we'll ship the inventory and fulfill the online orders. We all know both fists, both opus all this omni lingo. The truth is they were in the stores, they were packing up. The glass is putting in a box and shipping it locally to you, our store people because they were so proud. And so when our stores finally opened, I mean lights out was like ribbon cutting we are back. You know we are so happy and today even when I go and I'm hoping to be able to see us from our stores in D. C. They are just they're so proud and they tell the stories of innovation and they say thank you and I'm just I can't say enough about the importance of treating people to respect and sometimes taking a big risk. Yeah.

Julie Sweet has created over 125,000 jobs in the last year and shares how she maintains her employees. 

Accenture’s Julie Sweet on how she grows her workforce

One thing I was blown away by is that you've created something like over 125,000 jobs even a little bit higher I think in the last year that's a lot of on boarding of culture to maintain, maintain I'm someone who just started a new job. I'm trying to figure out a culture in a new place as a leader of an organization. How do you make sure that everything stays intact as you continue to grow your workforce? Yeah it's a great question. So we are now 629,000 people and we hired just last quarter 54,000 people and uh it's created sort of two things at accenture that are new. Um one is what we call digital, digital. So it's really thinking about people and the marriage between physical and digital. So what happened before Covid when you started a job, one of the exciting views that showing up someplace and what we realized pretty quickly is that people we were hiring were literally like shutting their laptop and getting the new laptop from accenture and there was no sense of excitement or connection. And so one of the things that we've just started in the last couple of quarters is what we call welcome boxes where you get your things that you have to have like your uh you know, your computer but it also has a central paraphernalia to put in your desk, it has little posters with like leadership and sustainability. The kinds of things that you would see when you went to the office now get to be in your office and it helps people feel like they made a change And what we're focusing on is less about just the spaces and places and more about being connected and so, you know, Omni connections, we just bought, I think 60,000 Oculus headsets because we're having new joiners do a part of their new joiner training in the virtual reality. And why are we doing that? Because the way you build connections is also through experiences and it's super cool if you haven't used the latest special reality and it's a great way to like learn about accenture in a more engaging fashion, but have an experience with people that you don't get to be in a room with going through a new joiner training. So thinking about what we call Omni connections and how you do that as opposed to just are you at home or remote? And how many days we think it's really important

Pandemic unemployment is cutting into stock market returns for women, here’s why. 

Mellody Hobson on the financial impact of the she-cession

we've always had challenges as women. Uh we, you know, the pandemic has just accelerated our situation. And then for those women who did stand the in the in their job as Melody mentioned stress is really high. And so um those those who are still in the workforce, they're worried about, you know, their current situation, well, they still have a job, will they, will their income go down? Um and financial stress leads to lack of productivity, mental health, physical health. So that's something for all of us to think about as employers. But there was a bright spot. And that is what we saw from this survey is that there was a surge of new investors, both black and white men and women in the stock market. So now there's the same percentage of black women and black men, white women investing and that, you know, that's the beginning of financial security is really starting to participate in the market. Now. Of course we've got to make sure that they, you know, properly invest for the future, right? Yeah. You mentioned the survey, that's the area. While black investors survey, um, that really has some interesting data and I'm wondering, Melody maybe maybe if we can go to some of that data and just talk sort of broadly about at this moment in time when, you know, we're seeing these job losses are also seeing this incredible performance by the stock market. And so can you just give us a picture melody of at this moment in time, you know, who's investing, Who's not and as Carrie mentioned somewhere, those trends are going sure. The one trend that Kerry mentioned, which is so important. We it is called the aerial swab black investor survey, but we were able to keep them cut the data by gender until we could look at what white women were doing versus the overall population, what black women were doing versus the overall population. And that gave us more nuanced to what's going on when it comes to women investing in this country, particularly during the pandemic. The overall trend that Kerry mentioned. That was the most exciting, exciting piece of data that we had was that a lot of new first time investors are younger and they're participating at the same rate regardless of race. However, when you look at the total pool and you look over long periods of time at the big numbers, the numbers are much less uh, encouraging because just women participating in the stock market, white women just over two thirds, it's about 68%. Black women just have. That is a gay thing different over time and much less than white men, which were somewhere in the neighborhood of 78%. So when you put those numbers and you lay those numbers down, you can see there's a lot of catch up that needs to happen when it comes to both black certainly as well as white women and over time you say, what's the magnitude of this? It's the compounding. When you compound money over years, even little amounts make a makes a huge, huge difference. And so when we met on that 15 months out of the workforce, or not participating in the stock market, it has significant implications for our long term financial security.

“Power is to be able to do what I love,” says Brown. 

Bobbi Brown defines ‘power’ in her own words

Okay, so here's the story that I think for me brought the the normal bobby brown to light the most in the best way. So see um has turned down so many dinners, so many events as famous people to be home to be with her husband, to be with her kids. And I remember one story about saying noted in the region paul Gautier because he wanted to be in a robe and hang out with your husband and your kids. Yes. And and I also once turned down doing Nicole Kidman's makeup on a certain night live to go to geno Goldberg, 40th birthday. He's now 65. He texted me an hour ago said please say hello to poppy, I love you, but I love her more, you know, gold dinner. But you know, I mean this is a great story. I believe you turned down. By the way, you don't like just turn it down. You think about it, you talk to your friends, you obsess about it, what do I do, what do I not do? But I ended up making the right decision, but you don't know that at the time because then I felt bad. I turned it down, Oh my God shall never hire me again. Didn't you tell her this? I actually ran into her in a bathroom in the Bahamas once. Yes, and I told her so let's get to how you made that call though, because that's really important for those of us coming up or trying um because we often don't make that call and then we feel guilty and um how did you make that call and continue to succeed? Right? Because often times I think if I miss this, if I miss that, I won't make the connection to get the next thing. How it's not like you did that now, you did that as you were coming up. I did because I realized first of all, you know, look, I I was a working makeup artist, I was, you know, starting this cosmetics company and I worked in the city and I lived in Montclair New Jersey with my husband and the little kids. You know what, I could either get dressed up and uncomfortable clothes and go, you know, walk around the room, eat bad food, I'll wake up in the morning, I'll be bloated, my feet will hurt or I could be in my pajamas and you know bathe my kids. I kind of always made the comfortable choices and the more I am getting older the more I realize those comfortable choices, they're different all of us by the way. They just kind of feel right and they allow you to just do what's right for you, what I do isn't right for everybody, but what's right for you? You got to just figure it out and you have the power, what if power for you for me? Power is to be able to do what I love do what I believe in, give back, meet new people, experience new opportunities, you know, reach out to the amazing connections I have and that that's I don't know what else is power? Power is also being happy by the way, because happiness is the best cosmetics for beauty in the world. I'm not kidding, And this works, too, if you don't have blood. Mhm. Mhm.

Beth Ford, Land O’Lakes CEO, outlines key issues that she believes should be focused on. 


Land O’Lakes CEO defines how to close the digital divide 

beth I want to I want to start with you here. You know, you've been talking about the digital divide for years now, explain what it is and tell us how Covid really exposed this in a different way. I think it exposed a broader set of a set of folks versus what I had seen. So I took over as ceo this will be my fourth year and one of the first things I did was go out into the country. Now we are a farmer on cooperative by the way. It's national Farmers day today. Thank you farmer, thank you farmer. And so when I was out in these communities and I'm from Iowa originally my recognition is the deterioration of these communities and this means rural healthcare is unavailable. Education is a challenge. Fresh food, you know, 78% of the counties in America, that index that food insecure are in rural America. They don't have child care. I mean there are a number of key issues mama recognition was that there was only so much that we could do. But what, what I knew we had to do was put the greatest enabler of our time technology in place because then we can have um telemedicine tell education, we can access um you know, access and have job creation and job creation has lagged in rural communities. And so to your point, we started talking about this three years ago, it was made obvious to all of us who were now educating our kids at home trying to get telemedicine appointments, things like that. And it was it was made much more urgent, invisible to everybody and for that, I'm grateful, but yet a painful lesson for all of us to understand. All right, so the secretary, you're, you're poised to really tackle this issue in a big way, give us the background here. So, good afternoon, it's great to be with you and it's fun that we're back in person this year. So it's really wonderful to be here. Uh I agree with everything Beth said, I mean, I think covid exposed to all of us that broadband, high speed internet is not a luxury kids who didn't have it really didn't go to school for a year, 35% of Americans who live in rural America don't have high speed internet, 50% of people who live on tribal lands do not have high speed internet. So if you were a school age kid growing up on a tribal land, chances are you missed a whole year of school last year. There were these heartbreaking um you know, stories of people having teachers driving paper lessons to their kids at the end of the day, so the kids can fill out the worksheet. So, you know, this is real and as Beth said, it's not just school, it's, it's work, it's a small business. The businesses that went out of business where the smallest and the least tech enables and often didn't have broadband. So what we need to do, um his, you know, provide broadband to everyone. The Department of Commerce is in the middle of that, we have an initiative for tribal broadband. I'm, I played a big role in negotiating with the senate the broadband portion of the president's infrastructure package, which I really hope congress passes. And that will be $65 billion dollars to provide broadband. Some of it is laying fiber, you know, a lot of places, rural places don't have fiber, some of it. Uh, you know, I'm from Rhode island, there's no rural Rhode island. It's a city state if anyone has never been there, but a lot of people don't have broadband because if you live, uh, if you live in a affordable housing, apartment building, your community might have broadband, but it's not connected to your apartment building Or maybe it is, but it's $100 a month. So in implementing this, I'm going to be very focused on the details and you know, God's in the details, this is about execution and we want to be flexible. So if what you need is about affordability, then that's what we're gonna use the money for what you need, is laying fiber, that's, we'll use the money for what you need is digital literacy and hardware. You know what good is broadband, if you don't have a computer, then that's what we're going to really focus on. But at the end of the day, If we do our job right. When we're done with this $65 billion, every american will have high feed, affordable Internet. Mm Yeah.

Katie Haun explains what got her on board. 

Why Andreessen Horowitz’s General Partner came around on NFT’s

Andreessen Horowitz’s General Partner came around on NFT’s


Why Andreessen Horowitz’s General Partner came around on NFT’s


Okay. Open C. Open C. Uh, so open C. Is the world's largest N. F. T. Marketplace. And we're going to talk me how I hope about N. F. T. S because I think that's the question I get most is what is an N. F. T. And why? Why should I care what an N. F. T. Is? And everyone in this room should definitely care what an N. F. T. Is uh, as consumers. Um, first of all, we should all care as content creators. Um, so open C. Is the world's largest market place where one can go discover, learn about buy sell trade N. F. T. S. Um, and I like to describe it as think about what Zillow did for real estate. You know, before Zillow, you could have gone to the county recorder's office and figured out who bought what parcel before, but who's going to do that? It would take a really long time. Zillow put all of that data right at our fingertips. So opens, he does that for every N. F. T. Out there. Okay, so it's kind of an organizing function it provides almost like a public good. But in addition it's a marketplace. So like an Ebay or like an Airbnb, it matches buyers and sellers. People can trade N. F. T. S on open C. Um, but they can also go acquire them and sell them. I know you own some, would you care? Yeah. What, what do you do with them? What are they? Well, actually, it's funny, you know how many new NFC it would be a thing because I think I'm a great test audience because I was like I don't buy video game purchases, why do you want to own stuff? You know this was the old me. I was like why would you want to spend money on something that you can't hold in your hands? Right? But guess what? The young folks do their very comfortable paying money for things that they can't hold. In fact they actually prefer it. I'm starting to find because they're online more their online persona. Is there like a status symbol for them? And I thought I'm not going to be that. But you know interestingly I had a moment where about a year and a half, a year and a half ago. I was thinking well I'll just by the N. F. T. It's a great origin story. This female creator by the way she programs for N. F. T. Her artworks of I sell it or I lend it or I do anything with it. She always gets a cut of that upside always, which is really neat. Um And I thought well I'll just use it for my zoom background, which you know now we're on zoom a lot. And people were asking me about it and I started realizing oh I'm not going to spend money on a outfit anymore. I need to just wear a plain black t shirt. So my N. F. T. Pops And and I thought if I had that moment that was my moment and I was like I now understand what, so that's just one use case. I use it as a backdrop. It's my and people ask me about it, it's a conversation piece, like if you had something in your home and people said, where did you get that on your coffee table? Um So it's something that I spent a lot of my time online now, I don't know about all of you, and I always get asked about, wow, that's so pretty, where did you get who made it? And I tell this story um In fact, I have another N. F. T. By an artist in Spain and he's now left what he was doing and his full time he's making full time digital art. Uh I think the takeaway is that spend money on FTS, you'll spend less money on your wardrobe. So um not investment advice, definitely. Thank you. I really, really appreciate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

How to live your life like a diversified portfolio 

why did you say before that you should live your life like a diversified portfolio. So what do you mean? Tell us a little bit about that. What do you mean? Okay. Ladies work life balance is a lie. Do we agree? Okay. Yes. And I say that because when I was trying to do this work life balance and you know reconciling my own life balancing that never reconciled and I always feel like I was taking an l you know the s on the chest wasn't superwoman, it was spit. Um and so I just decided to use a different perspective. We're all in the business of financial services. And I said what if I live my life like a diversified portfolio? So here's what I do. I write down everything that matters. I'm an executive, I'm a mother, I'm a philanthropist, I'm a daughter, sister friend and we allocate because the truth is we do not have a 150% it's only 100. So you have to allocate just like the stock market, it will have its volatility. You give yourself permission to recalibrate. Right? Sometimes you have to sort the stock, I'll leave it there. But here's the point. What I know to be true is that starting a job at a as a ceo I've had to allocate more to work when my Children are needing me. I know I have to reallocate more to the Children but if you live your life like a diversified portfolio, just like a well diversified financial portfolio. You will outperform this thing called life. So in any given minute I may not be the best mom, but over time I'm a really good mother on any given day, I may not feel like I am operating at my best as a Ceo, but over time I think I'm a pretty good leader. And so I just think diversification gives you permission, it allows you to make sure that your intentional. And the last point I'll say on this is that I know as a mom That my Children don't get 100% of me, They get maybe 30%. And because that's the truth when I am with my Children, I am way more intentional about my time Because I understand it's not 100%. So within that 30% allocation, they get 100% of me. And that brings me joy. And I just think we can all have a great life if you're intentional about what you put in your portfolio, recalibrate and outperform this thing called Life over time. I love it. I love um Ok, we've left us with amazing words of system china. Thank you so much for being here. Really lovely. Thank you. It's great to be back

Dawn Ostroff joins Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit.

Spotify's CCO responds to Joe Rogan podcast pushback 

Okay, So it's not like musicians are not controversial, but once you get into podcasts you are providing platform for creators who are often very popular and you don't control what they say. Um And you know, there was some reporting recently that uh some Spotify employees were not happy with some of what has the content that had been on Joe Rogan's show. Um Joe Rogan, for anybody who doesn't know is incredibly popular podcaster, usually number one, number one in the world. Um and he Spotify recently struck an exclusive deal with him. So in this case it was misinformation around Covid. So what is Spotify strategy for dealing with this kind of issue, which I'm sure will come up again when you have that many podcasts. So, you know, look, first of all, we um there's a difference between the content that we make and the content that we license and the content that's on the platform, but our policies are the same no matter what type of content is on our platform and we will not allow any content that infringes or in any way is inaccurate. Um We are very uh we are very, very strict about our policies as it relates to harmful, threatening malicious content and we state all of our policies um online, but I think that they're there are definitely, you know, very um aggressive moves on our part to invest in not only the R. And D. Side of of content moderation, but also in our teams uh for trust and safety and we continue to invest a significant amount of money there because it's important for everybody okay.

The “Sway” host joins Fortune’s MPW Summit.

Kara Swisher: Facebook will not speak to me

so you have all this power. Everyone mostly talks to you and they keep coming back and everyone in this room probably read your column, subscribe to your newsletter. Congratulations on that. You have a new podcast coming up too. But um really just how are you going to use that? And do you feel you have a responsibility to use that now to affect more change? Because we have little kids, you have little kids and they're going to be using this and I don't want the damage to them that has already been inflicted on so many young people. What already thought I had a responsibility? I, you know, we're in the interview I did with many of the cigarette things started there. I was criticizing facebook for a decade now, so I think the responsibility continues not to, you know, um, once someone, someone at Uber, one time when I was really hard on them around a lot of the stuff, they were behaving there misbehaviors. They said um about Travis Kalanick, who I thought was entirely unqualified to be ceo their first lots of numerous reasons except that he was like a really hard ass guy. That's what all the guys said? I'm like, okay, but he's an asshole, but it's possible sociopath. But um, but the God of the Sea said, when are you gonna, when are you going to stop? And I said, when he stopped getting up like Stay down Travis because you're not going to do. And so that's how I look about these things. It's like, I'm not going to one of the things that fascinated with the Facebook thing is they literally will not speak to me now. I have 12 declines on everything. And in a weird way I'm part of me not all of the setting the agenda for them. A lot of this talk was because of discussions I've had with politicians or writing or something that they still don't talk to me. Why I don't, I would be like bear hugging me at this point because of the damage that they perceive damage. I don't think it's damaged its improvement. I will say that yes, you give her heart interviews, but you give fair and that's a there's a really big, they don't see it that way in the case, if you go back and look at those Mark Zuckerberg's, there's nothing I do that is unfair or I don't give him a chance to not say something stupid or he doesn't, you know, it's just like the Matthew McConaughey won, did you? All this and that way. Right. Did I was I mean to that nice man? No, I just let him talk and ask them voting rights. What do you mean by that? Someone is running for governor of texas? You know, the law in your state particular part, Do you mean the part about restricting them? Like, you know, it took like I didn't, I wasn't rude, I didn't say you, you idiot. It's not an idiot and give the, you ask the questions that are on all of our minds.

CEO Ana Sarnoff explains what it might look like.

WarnerMedia is preparing for the future of going to the movies

WarnerMedia on the future of going to the movies


WarnerMedia is preparing for the future of going to the movies


You've you've also said that you're going to go back to uh you know not exactly the way it was before um for 2022 but you know allowing that window to come back, we are pretty used to watching stuff on our couch, like I have gotten very lazy about how I consume content. How are you? You know how what makes you confident that people are gonna go back to theater? Yeah, it's a great question and um one of the reasons, by the way, one of the criticisms was why did you announce it for all of 21? Because you're in december of 20 nobody wanted to hear the pandemic was going to happen for a whole another year and here we sit looking at math but but the thing I said is look I believe we will be back in theaters but I don't believe will be shoulder to shoulder without masks at full capacity with everybody returned by next december. And I still think that that's true, I think a lot of people are still very reticent to go theaters and are very used to sitting on their couches and the content at home is so much better screens are bigger popcorns cheaper. Um So I think uh I think two things one we, the studios have to make compelling movies that will surprise and delight on the big screen, big sound then big cinematography, like we have Dune coming out next week, timothy shall amaze and DEA Oscar Isaac Rebecca Ferguson, it's an amazing movie, we opened it in venice to great fanfare, so we're really excited about that, that's a big screen movie and um so we hope that those kinds of movies will get people compelled them to leave the home and that's the movie theaters. I think they learned a lot in the pandemic. I think they you know they went through all kinds of um uh protocols in terms of making sure the theaters are clean and safe and more user friendly. Um And so I think the combination of us with the right kinds of movies and then with the right kind of experience is reserved seating, you know kind of comfortable chairs, the things that you want um that you you should expect in theaters, I think that will get people back So far what we're seeing is people under 35 have been more inclined. Um so are movies that targeted that audience did did much better and now we're hoping like bond did attract in over 35 audience. Yeah, that's a good sign. I don't know, I know a lot of my friends would like the first time they went back to the theater this past weekend so I think it's still a lot needs to play out. We are very in euro two being in our homes. Um but I think you know there will be a use case to going out and having fun again

Karen Lynch joins Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit.


CVS Health CEO: COVID Vaccines will become an annual event

Well, I want to start by asking you kind of your big picture outlook on the pandemic Of the about 200 million vaccine doses that have been distributed in the us CVS has given out about 34 million you are on the front lines of the boosters, the pediatric shots. but also the ongoing reluctance and resistance for vaccination and pockets of the country. What are you seeing and how much longer is Vaccination and the vaccination campaign going to be such a big part of our life in our business? Well, you know, as you said, we vaccinated over 34 million Americans since we started this. And if you kind of roll back the clock, we started testing in shrewsbury Massachusetts in the rain way back when and we've been doing this um trying to get us to prevail against the pandemic. Since very early on vaccines are gonna be with us for a while. Um, as you know, there is unfortunately a a lot of misinformation out there, a high degree of hesitancy and that's what we're working through right now. We've been spending a lot of time, you know, getting out into the local markets and trying to communicate uh to people about the importance of ex, you know, vaccinations. I have a daughter in law that works in a hospital. So I get to kind of see it, you know, real life and what was interesting she shared with me their day, what's happening now is young moms are coming into the hospitals and um they're delivering their babies. And then the moms are losing their lives. And so they're not, the babies are never gonna meet their moms. And what we're seeing is a huge, huge increase in hospitalizations as a result of being unvaccinated. And so, um, you know, the boosters are out. So those are, you know, when you have six months um, from your second shot for Pfizer, you'll have the opportunity to get a booster. I would encourage all of us to um get those boosters. Moderna is currently in um, you know, ask for FDA approval. They will be out very shortly and then the pediatric vaccines will be out as soon as they get approval. Uh, Pfizer has asked for emergency use of their pediatric vaccine. And so it's going to be with a a while. And um, the other thing I would say is we're in the midst of doing flu shots. And this is gonna be an interesting um season because not only will, you know, we see the flu, well, we will see upticks in coronavirus and um, we're encouraging everyone to get their flu shots at the same time. So, I think it's with us for quite some time and it likely will become an annual event. I want to ask a little bit about how you are communicating with employees around vaccine expectations in august CVS set of vaccine mandate for some employees. Um, by the end of October 34, by the end of October I believe is when they're expected to be vaccinated. What are you seeing in terms of up to? Yeah. So we made uh and it's a really difficult decision. We had to make a decision. And um I made the decision to have a mandate for vaccines for all of our corporate employees and all of our clinicians. I firmly believe that when you were all getting vaccinated, you expected your pharmacists to be vaccinated and you know, are you know, we're in the homes of individuals who are infusion nurses. You know, we have our many clinic nurses. So we made that difficult decision uh to mandate. Now we're asking all of our employees to load up their vaccination records. They have until October 31. Um and and then we'll be addressing that situation. We're in the process of sending letters. So those individuals that haven't loaded up their vaccines and uh and and then we'll have to address the situation in october at the same time, we're doing a massive campaign for hiring so that we can backfill um for those individuals that choose not to get vaccinated. But we're healthcare company. And you know in the end game as a health care company, it was a decision I felt that was very important for us to make um so that we really led the way

Kim Seymour: “It has felt taboo to me, forever, my entire career, really to talk about it so openly."

WW's chief people officer tells us what has fundamentally changed since the death of George Floyd

WW's CPO describes what's changed after George Floyd's death

each of you have a really strong connection and passion for the issue of diversity and inclusion for this. Really important topic. Either because it is your job title or you have made it part of an essential part of your job. So, George Floyd really shot about string across corporate America. And the question the question I want to start off with is has something fundamentally changed when you're looking across the entirety of the ecosystem? So I would love to start with you, kim. What do you think? Yeah, I think the most important thing that's changed in a positive way is that people are talking about, I it has felt taboo to me for ever my entire career really to talk about it so openly and the few who did were deemed as courageous. Um but now it's more a matter of course, and I think that that key to understanding and understanding is key to empathy and empathy is necessary to move the needle on this. So, I do think that there has been a fundamental shift. The question is how do you keep that momentum? How do you build on that momentum and keep it going

Valerie Montgomery and David Solomon discuss.

How to continue investing in women of color

I was in the morning session that was all about investing in black women as well. And it was interesting to hear about how, you know, yes, the numbers, the percentage of capital that goes to black women entrepreneurs is .3% or something like that. It's abysmal. But that that is not necessarily the answer to everything. So be interested in hearing from both of you and how do you take a more holistic look at what actually where money needs to go? And the type of business is, it needs to be sure. And this this issue around venture capital allocation is a big issue by the way. It's not just people of color, it's also women. Uh you know, just generally and that was something a number of years ago, you know, we got on, we created something called launch with GS. Um and we've committed over $500 million capital-backed businesses or whether it's women or people of color that or an asset managers, venture asset management platforms, etc. And that's been a successful program. But what we're looking at here, if you step back and you think about the life cycle of all of us, you think about, you think about birth, you think about childhood, you think about, you know, elementary education, you think about basic health needs, you think about secondary education, you think about professional career, you think about savings, retirement, financial needs, there's a life cycle of needs and there are all sorts of businesses that are out there and trying to find ways to bring people along. And if you can get capital into that ecosystem and make investments that can support and elevate those different stages. That's a much broader, much broader goal or mission than simply trying to start a new business, getting more funding, that's very important thing. But we're trying to take a much more holistic view. Our research shows that the average net worth of the black woman in this country is materially lower than that of a black man and obviously materially lower than white men and women. How can we make investments over the coming decades that will actually change that. So we have a different economic outcome that's sustainable for an extended period of time. And so we're trying to think about ways to really get capital into places that can make that difference by investing over a much longer period. I'm going to close with a quick question to the two of you. You know, this is I think it's it's all in the spirit of optimism of what can we do right. Um At the same time being realistic, there are some worrying, worrying uh indicators coming up and I know Goldman just, you just downgraded the U. S. Economy again, we're, you know, I think people are concerned about phasing out of covid relief and other things on the horizon, supply chain issues, all sorts of things, what should we be concerned about and you know, what's the call to action in the in the coming six months to year uh as it pertains to still having a focus on women of color and investing in women of color. What do you look at? You know, I think that we do have to look at when we're thinking about the return to employment, we are seeing black women continue to lag behind compared to other groups. We do have to understand the health consequences of what has happened with covid. Women were all black. Women already were disproportionate impacted by hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. And we also send delays of people having prevention and wellness checks like mammograms, et cetera. I'm not even gonna ask you to raise your hand if you desert your mammogram, you know, for for this year, because I know that many of us are behind And so we have to worry about whether we're gonna see the ravages of COVID-19 lead to a widening of the gap. And how do we invest uh not just financially but in human interaction and our innovation and our technology to narrow that gap. And many of you all have companies that have tools that can assist women with engaging around their health in a much more rapid way so that we don't see this widening of the gap. Health disparities, heart disease diabetes and hypertension. That's what worries me the most. Okay, Can you give me a 5 2nd answer? I like what dr I said the world is going to spin around. It's a complex moment. But if you stay committed to investing in the future to bring people along and improve, you know, tangible investments, you know, we will make progress. Thank you. Thank you to both so much for being here with us.

Adena Friedman joins Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference. 

Nasdaq CEO on the factors driving the markets

asset prices are just insane right now. We're all seeing our portfolios go north no matter what we invest in it feels like unless it's like oil and gas in some cases. But do you think that we are in a bubble right now? I mean I think that we have to look at all the ingredients that really are contributing to the market valuations. I think first is a true digital transformation of the corporate community and of everyone's lives. All right. So the technologies that are really enabling that bad transition have a long term growth opportunity that is massive and investors are looking for growth, they think they are rewarding growth, the rewarding companies that can deliver that. So I think that that actually really is just driving out the values up because of the opportunity that are in front of those companies. I think that also the monetary policy of the country um has is very accommodating which then is driving a lot more corporate activity. I'm an activity and other things uh the ability to borrow in order to drive and grow your business. Uh So I think that that also is contributing to the levels of of evaluations in the market. Um And then I think that also we have a lot more participants in the market today and we have you know the next generation coming into the market and making making using their money to make an impact. So E. S. G. Investing and those companies that are really helping create a more sustainable world are also getting rewarded. So I think all of those things are kind of combining to create the market valuations you're seeing today. Yeah we'll be even with factoring in the new participants it does still feel like the p ratio was elevated if that is the case right? Do you see something that triggers something level or do you consider this just to be the new normal that we're no longer looking at? We're no longer in our granddad way of investing. And that this idea of value investing, the traditional way of value investing versus growth investing is the new way to go. Well. I mean I think first of all my my father was an investment manager and he always told me that everything reversed the fundamentals. But the fact that the question is what are the fundamentals right? So how are we looking at companies? The companies are going public today are amazing cos I mean they are driving a technological transformation of the economy and so you know that is a 20 year trend. That's not a five year trend. A three year trend that's like a 20 year movement of 20 year trends. So I do believe that investors are very intelligent. They understand what the trends are. They understand how to how to lean in on those trends. And to me I I you know I can't sit there and say what's gonna happen you know if no one is first of all as the webs can happen in the markets. But I can say that these trends are real, and the companies that are coming into the market today are taking advantage of the opportunities that are in front of them, and investors are rewarding them for that.

“Content was something that fed our souls,” Ciara told the Fortune audience.


Amazon Studios head and Ciara say COVID-19 pushed them to create

AMZN Studios head and Ciara say COVID pushed them to create


Amazon Studios head and Ciara say COVID-19 pushed them to create


what has it been like producing content during Covid? Did you all just totally shut down At first, We didn't shut down. We sat in a conference room and everybody, I think had similar days in our industry, it was like, what was the marshal ninth or something? We were all sitting in a room and we had to shut down 60 productions all over the world that we're in active production, forget about things that were in editorial or things that were just winding up. So there's just tons going on and we had to literally get in a room. Hopefully, thank God none of us had Covid, because we were just sitting there with no masks on for 20 hours figuring out how we were going to deal with this. But it was happening in real time. We had to get, you know, um our team out, a team that was shooting a show in, in Prague out, they were closing the border, we had to rush to get them to the last plane, you know, you've got stars, you know, try Orlando bloom, trying to get out of the, get out of there. And so there was a lot going on. Um I'm really proud of the teams, the way everybody came together, it's, and it's this Covid protocol and everything we've done to keep everybody safe is incredibly expensive. The company's happy to invest in it, to keep getting content to our global audience in a way that keeps everybody safe. But it's a stressful thing. We've learned a ton. We we've learned, we learned more every week about this. There's a new challenge that comes up every week on a, on a production, but you know, the show must go on, we couldn't stop. So things were delayed, but we kept moving. Well. I felt like the creativity opportunity, the opportunity to be creative, fed my soul because I was pregnant and I swear to you, this was like the toughest pregnancy. My pelvic bones are aching, so bad. I thought I don't need a cane at some point in time. You have one of those pandemic babies all over ticked. Oh my goodness. Yes, pushing out a baby with the mass is something I'll never, but my dogs like put your mask on. I'm not okay. And then, uh, but that was an incredible, it was an incredible chapter and I think we all would never forget it. But content was something that I think that our souls, like, I think we discover so many funny videos online, people being silly and just like Just being in this moment that we didn't even expect to happen. And I think there was this opportunity that brought the world closer together because we were all on the same page together. We were all experiencing the same thing in our own way. But I feel like in that time a lot did happen for this pregnant Mama, um you know, 10 months pregnant. I made one of my music video for my song called routed, literally like one day before giving birth to my baby win. Um, please look at it online. You cannot believe. Um, yes, football. I couldn't watch football the way we used to can go to any of Russia's game. So that was different. We made a sweet in our house and we just had a good time. We were cheering on at the tv. So that was great. Um, and then also we were able to talk about our deal during this time and a lot of cool opportunities. We launched my husband, I launched our fashion house of L. R. And C, which stands in the house of love, respect and care. And I just say all this to say we kept going and as you said, the show goes on and it's like any other company. We were all figuring it out, finding ways to adjust the shipments and everything. Like I learned so much in this pandemic and I think the greatest thing I learned is that how resilient we are. You know, you really get to see how strong you are in times like this because the most humbling experience we could all experience no matter our social economic status. We were all experience experiencing the same thing and I appreciate that humility. I appreciate the challenge. Like I'm like, I'm a tech genius now. Like I can be a good teachers assistant, you know, like teachers signed me up. Like do a zoom class for the kids. It's no joke, you know, but it made for a great time that I appreciate it. Just a simple moment of being my family, So content and you learn to appreciate content. I was inspired to create more and I found a way to find the silver lining and allow it to inspire me. And rather than letting the world changed me, I changed with it. That was my attitude. And so yeah.

“I’m the beneficiary of a lot of people at various points in my life and career saying yes to me,” shares Brosnahan. 

‘Mrs. Maisel’ star Rachel Brosnahan looks to pay her success forward

Rachel Brosnahan looks to pay her success forward

so, yeah, we all know you as mrs Maisel at this point, I know you've done a lot of other impressive things before that as well, and you're, and you're doing a lot of other things. Currently, you also have a first look deal with amazon and you have your own production company, so tell us about that and why you started it. Yeah, well, I already had a home at Amazon, obviously working on the marvelous Mrs Maisel also, just quickly, it is amazing to look out into a room filled with women, it's so inspiring and I just, if we had a million hours in the day, I'd want to sit down and have a conversation with every one of you. But um, so I already had a home at amazon and had been talking to, jen and jen have given space for me to talk to her about what else I wanted to do, and I've been interested in producing for a really long time, and jen created a platform and an opportunity for me to launch my company's scrap paper pictures and have this first look deal with amazon, and it's been an incredible journey, you know, I'm the beneficiary, a lot of people at various points in my life and career saying yes to me, taking chances on me, uh both at the earliest stages of my career and, and still today, you know, essentially every role that I've ever played of significance was kind of an outlier, you know, for me, um I've had the opportunity to play to bring to life so many different women's stories who are so far reaching from my own and that takes a number of people at various levels to say yes. And so, you know, it's really important to me at this stage to be able to pay that forward, to be able to be a company who focuses on artists like jen and amazon Studios do, um and to be able to be that person to say yes, so like Sarah said, you know, we don't necessarily have one kind of programming that we make, but no matter what we're doing, it's all about the creators of those projects, it's about being there with artists from the germ of an idea all the way through the completion of something and supporting them every step of the way and expanding the world that we see on stage and on screen. Um, and one of the best parts of the last year, I launched my company in January of 2020. Um it's an interesting time to launch a company, but also left us the time to meet with so many writers and directors and, and young emerging visionaries. And one of the coolest parts have been bringing brand new writers or directors to jen and her team. And my favorite part is when they go low, we already know about them, or they've never heard of them and they do a deep dive and, and we found some of, I think the most exciting young, primarily female writers and directors in the business right now. And it's been, uh, it's been so gratifying and we're still young, we're just getting started.

These are the most important women in business.

Introducing the 2021 Most Powerful Women list

fortune's most powerful women list is a ranking of the most influential and important women in business. It ranks executives by doctors like the size of their business, their influence in the global economy and the trajectory and health of their business. We look at the arc of the career of the executive and we look at her social and cultural influence as well as a relatively new criteria for us, which is how she using her power. And it's not really important to us because business has changed so much in the priorities of business have changed that. It's very difficult for companies now to just be about the size and the revenue and the profits. Uh there's also the question of purpose. There's also the question of how you are helping your workers, How are you helping the communities that you operate in And you know, it felt very important to see that reflected on the list. I think what is interesting to me about the list is how many people at the top are relatively new in their job with five women in the top 10 who stepped into their current jobs during the pandemic. Karen lynch from CVS health jane fraser from city carol tomei ups roz brewer at Walgreens Boots alliance and the Underground Duckett at T I A So one of our newcomers on the list is jennifer salke, she's ahead of amazon studios and she really stood out to us because she is running this enormous budget. Amazon clearly is interested in taking on netflix and some of the other big streamers and she has been making some enormous moves during a year when the company as a whole has gotten even bigger and more power. What's interesting about this group is a couple of them really took a stand on some big social issues this year. Sure do be a match, for example, has been one of the only public company ceos to really speak out against the regressive abortion law in texas. NASDAQ Ceo Adena Friedman who's been leading that company since 2017 but joined the list this year after NASDAQ joined the Fortune 500 for the first time and after she one sec approval for a really groundbreaking for diversity proposal. The list represents 14 different industries, with tech and finance really being the dominant ones. I think the list really reflects how much progress women have made in corporate America. There are so many women at the top of companies and at the top of corporate America more broadly that just the breath of women across industries and the number of women in really powerful roles who don't make the list speaks to just how much has changed in the past 20 years. Mm

Most Powerful Women 2021

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