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

Leadership

CNN’s Dana Bash interviews the fashion mogul.
