MPW Next Gen 2023

Maytha Alhassen, Co-executive Producer and Writer, Ramy
Moderator: Alex Sternlicht, Tech Reporter, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Creativity And New Tech: Lessons From The Writers’ Room

Conferences

Creativity And New Tech: Lessons From The Writers’ Room

Weeks ago. On May 2nd, the Writers Guild of America went on strike for the first time in 15 years when contract negotiations began. Six months ago, the main contention points were focused on receiving residuals, better pay and more space in the writing rooms. What has evolved from those initial conversations is the use of artificial intelligence in lieu of or in conjunction with storytelling. Chat B four was released in November of 2022 gained public prominence in March of this year. Like many others WGA has expressed concerns about A I and they have asked the alliance of motion picture and television producers to agree to not utilize AI to write or rewrite stories, but rather use it as a tool so that writers can ensure residuals and jobs for the future to discuss the latest on the labor dispute and what the future holds for artificial intelligence in the writers room. Please welcome Metha, Metha Al Hasan, co executive producer and writer for Rami. She'll be joined by fortune tech reporter, Alex Sternlicht. Hi, everyone. I'm so excited to be here joined by who is actually fresh off the picket line. So thank you. For making it down here. Um I'd love to start with a question that I think is on all of our minds. Um What are your thoughts on A I in the writers' room? Is there a place for it at all? Yeah. So this is one that the A MP T P which is the conglomerate of studios came back with our demands around regulating AI with we'll have an annual meeting with information on advancements in technology. So they didn't even want to have this conversation on the table at all, which is frightening actually because not only are we striking on this A I issue? So is S A and D G A and they're in negotiations right now. So where A I could go and the perception that we are replaceable as writers is also confounding because it's the fact that art is the first frontier that they've hit as opposed to their jobs which are looking at ledgers and numbers is fascinating. Why are we drawn to art? Because there's something about the human touch that is encapsulated in what we write and how we see people act stories out. And I mean, if you use chat, chat GPT, you'll get like a breakdown of episodes, but it's incredibly generic. So we know that our power as writers cannot be replicated. However, those folks in the CEO position or executives just care about putting things through algorithms and not the way that we connect to story totally. And you know, as a writer myself, I would like to think that I can also not be replaced by a chat bot but, you know, A I is here to stay. Um So do you think, is there a place for A I in the writers' room at all or are we going cold turkey in your mind against A I, I mean, we're already using A I in some sort of capacity, right? We are using A I when we are looking things up that have been organized by something that is A I generated on the opposite side, maybe it is note taking. But again, the place is that we've designed in a writer's room and I think this is important for people to realize are part of the training to move up in ranks. And this is also the negotiations that we're having. So if you're replacing a writer's assistant to take notes, you're replacing somebody who's learning the process of being in a writer's room. So, I mean, I mean, to be honest, I would use it to write cover letters and things that are formulaic, but I don't think it has a place in art. So you're saying no, no, I mean, I would say no, yes, yes, I would say no. And by the way, my, my responses aren't a reflection of the WGA line on certain things. Of course, just, you know, we gotta, we gotta get this out there he's a W G. I'm a WGA member. Yes. Um So what about streaming? How has that altered the arc of your career? Yeah. So there are some advantages and disadvantages. I entered into the space when streaming was already full steam, the people that were there. And I've met folks on the picketing line that were at the picketing line in 2007. They were mostly dealing with standard networks that had 22 episodes and people that got production experience so you could write, go on set and you understood how to write for production and you had a job all year round. Now, with streaming episodes are getting shorter, there are 10 seasons are getting shorter. There are 10 episodes, there are eight episodes, there's six episodes and you're only working for a show for maybe nine weeks and you might think, oh, but look how much they're getting paid per week. Ok. Now you've got to take the manager's fee, you got to take the rep fee, you got to take the lawyer fee and then you get, they get the growths. So writers are making barely anything with these season orders that streaming has produced because all they wanna do is overproduce content. And again, the advantages is or are that we're getting stories that we couldn't get when there was only, I don't know, 2030 shows on network. But the disadvantages now that we've diversified, the storytelling were regarded as less valuable. Interesting. Um, does anyone in the audience have a question? No. Ok. That's all right. There is, there's a couple now just. Ok. Hello. My name is Zari Capra. Um, this is a great panel so far and as someone who is kind of outside looking in at this whole situation, I'm curious how you could support what kind of ways that we get involved. Yeah. And that's what's been really great about this time around is what we didn't have in 2007, 2008 is a robust social media. And of course, don't wage a war against a public narrative war against writers. You're going to lose with the public and with the public that is feeling the pain that we are all feeling across industries, right? So one way is to retweet, res support all the, the statements that we posted and your solidarity with the writer strike. Another way is to get employers to lend their support. Even the president has said this is unfair for you to continue and to not negotiate fair terms. And then a third way is we have a, we have two funds, we have a writers' fund and then we have an artist entertainment fund. I don't know the exact name, but that's for the other people who are not in the WGA that are losing so much the writer's assistance. And so they're going to be able to tap to this pool if folks donate. And what about unions? Like having, you know, walking on the ticket line uh daily. Do you think that unions are the best way for large groups of professionals to advocate for their causes? I, I mean, it's, it's proven a way to push the needle. Now, the, the only thing that I've seen in studying labor history that's been a challenge um is not being able to anticipate the, uh the, the way that an, an employer or C suite or whatnot is gonna squeeze you. And so again, like Starbucks unionizes and they close down that Starbucks store that, that has unionized, but I do think the power of the union is strong and W G A has proven multiple times that when they go full in and by the way, this vote was authorized 98% by our, our W G A body. Um that not only are we contending with um more power, more mobilizing power, but we encouraged S A DJ, all of the Hollywood unions to join us and they're renegotiating their contracts now too and teamsters as well. So teamsters are responsible for transportation. Um and before they weren't with us in 2007. Yeah, I mean, but what about, you know, you mentioned the squeeze. Yes, when you go back to work, which eventually will happen, do you think that there will be repercussions from executives um to people who are on the picket line? And we're super loud. Hm. Uh, I don't. Yeah, I'm, I, I wonder if that were to be the case, if they identified a target, if that would make them even more vulnerable. Because then I think people would feel like, ok, we're being punished for, you know, speaking out against our, our, you know, what, we're entitled to compensation wise. And I, again, I think that because this, this battle, I guess you could say this fight is being waged also on social media, but that's not gonna fly. Yes. Well, I mean, but I mean, I mean, I'm not gonna fly but of course, like, you know, when you're in your workplace and you've been super vocal about the way that you were mistreated. I think there's a lot of repercussions. I'm not, I, I'm not in the room. Yeah, I mean, I can't anticipate what that looks like. What is it? Netflix saying I'm not gonna work with this writer or they're not gonna be a co creator on this show or they're not gonna be staff maybe. Who knows? Yeah. So time will tell on that. I think we had another audience question. Thank you. This is incredibly interesting. My name is and I'm curious about um the responsibility and opportunity for shows and executives with writers to create the vision of the vision of the future we want to see to right size, the problematic narratives that are permeating our society and A I is generative of a world of the world we knew which might potentially perpetuate, right? Those problems. And so I'm curious about that tension uh because there are also a lot of show runners and executives who are out in the, in the world, sort of post jobs, et cetera saying, what can we do and what kind of narratives can we write? But if we don't have the people who are living those experiencing experiences writing that. Right. So I'm just wondering if that's been a part of the conversation? Is that a consideration of what is, what does that look like? Yeah, I mean, there's, you get a group of writers walking the line all day for like 56 miles and four hours. We're thinking a lot about things, right? And of course, a show like Black Mirror, if folks are familiar with it has eerily presented scripts of the near future that have been pretty consistent, isn't it wild? How Black Mirror seems to be projecting many different things that work? I mean, it's just like literally one step away. I think, you know, there are conversations that for so long we've invested in storytelling that has been this dystopian post apocalypse, lots of sand, lots of tattered clothes, not good food, vision of the world. I think we're interested in thinking about how do we harness technology and not be behind it and be in the front of it this time to create a vision of the world. And I love what you were saying that gives us different imaginary. So for example, why is an ai being used to replace all the low wage, minimum wage jobs that we don't want to do and let us do the art that we want to live and survive on versus the drudgery that feels like it's soul crushing. And what could it look like to say? Ok. A I handle how this, everything's going to be cleaned and A I do my taxes, right. Um Wouldn't that be amazing? So we don't have that much time left. Um In closing, you know, we all love TV, we all, you know, we love our writers and we want them to come back. What should people know about um the future of TV and the future of creative professionals in this strike? OK. So I'm going to tell you a couple of things and some numbers that are interesting and some facts that are interesting. So what we are asking for based on the revenue of the studios that are in a MP T P is less than 0.2% of their annual revenue per year and in some cases, 0.1%. So it's a fraction. And by, I think this week or next week they're going to have lost the amount of money they could have spent on negotiating this contract. Another thing is that in 2007, when there was a strike, what did they decide to do, renew a failing show called The Apprentice. So you're gonna get a lot of reality television. I think ABC just announced their schedule and it's literally 80% reality, like celebrity Jeopardy reruns of Avid Elementary that you can watch on Hulu. Um, it's a bleak vision for the world of storytelling that we would want to live in and I'm not knocking reality television. I'm a big consumer of it as well. But if you want that to be 90% of your TV, viewing diet, um, there are going to be consequences. Um, well, I, you know, love reality TV, but I'm also excited for the scripted shows to come back. So, thank you so much for your time. This has been a really wonderful panel. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for.

Lydia Bottegoni, Executive Vice President, Story and Franchise Development, Blizzard Entertainment Nicole LaPointe Jameson, Chief Executive Officer, Evil Geniuses Moderator: Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Gaming's Next Frontier

Lydia Bottegoni, Blizzard Entertainment 
Nicole LaPointe Jameson, Evil Geniuses 

Our next speakers are innovating and adapting to meet the ever changing needs of their consumers as technologies evolved. So has the gaming and e sports industry in the nineties PC gaming became increasingly more popular with the release of first person shooting games like Doom and Quake. In 1997 evil geniuses was founded by a clan of quake players who would compete against one another in cyber cafes. Wow. Remember cyber cafes as computers advanced throughout the two thousands. So did social and online gaming insider Intelligence reported that more than 532 million people watched sports in 2022 to talk about the future of E sports and gaming? Please welcome Lydia Bud Goni, senior vice president for story and franchise development at Blizzard Entertainment and Nicole Lapoint Jamison, chief executive officer at evil geniuses. Ok. Well, welcome. Thank you. So, Lydia uh big news, European regulators just cleared Microsoft 68.7 billion deal, billion dollar deal um to acquire Activision Blizzard. What does this mean for the company and the industry at large? Um Well, it means we just cleared a hurdle. That's because there's been a few that we haven't cleared yet either. So, um I'm not really sure where it goes next. I mean, it, it, you know, it hasn't finalized the deal. Um, we remain really hopeful that the deal closes. I'm personally really excited about the possibilities and what Microsoft will bring to our ability to scale and grow our franchises. So, fingers crossed. I'm, I'm staying positive. Awesome. And Nicole, um, you have a multi year agreement with Hewlett Packard enterprises to support evil geniuses, evil. Yeah, evil geniuses with industry leading A I services. How are you using A I to improve your talent pipeline and also generate these like winning strategies. Explain to us how that works, of course. So if you're completely unfamiliar sports is competitive video games and like pro athletes, all the information and data needed to not just recruit and manage but perform at the highest level, you have to be cutting edge. So we actually have partnered with HPE. It's a multi year partnership using their Green Lake Solution, their A I and M L platform to help create first in class insights around not just optimizing bioinformatics of our players, like muscle memory, fast twitch movement, eye tracking, but also natural language processing. How do they communicate in the game all the way to what are the markers of a good sports athlete to continue to create this entertainment platform for years to come? So interesting, we were talking earlier. What, what are some of the markers for a successful sports athlete range is by title. So as you can imagine a basketball player, what makes a great basketball player is not the same as a football player. And that finesse and nuance is also just as differentiated between a counter strike player and a league of legends player. So we look at seeing some variation by game but some similarities of the soft skills of what makes a great team athlete communication movement. But also those that carry themselves more with the physicality and mentality, hydration, sleep communication tend to be better pro players as well. So it's not just kids in basements who've never seen sunlight, those who show up and really care and do well on top of all of the more technical and mechanical skills very indicative of performance. And I found this fascinating Lydia. So I moderated a panel earlier on A I and it's been reported that Blizzard Entertainment wants to integrate AI into the art pipelines for games, which you know, that would allow companies to create art assets at a faster pace. But then there's also game developers that are worried about, you know, job security and what's going to happen there. Is that a real concern? And how do you see this A I powered future? Yeah, I mean, look, it's a, it's a huge topic. I think it's a topic that's been dominating some of the conversations today and some of your, some of your panels um I'm not an A I expert, I'm not the best person to really speak to that. Um But, you know, personally, I, I'm really excited about the opportunities it's gonna bring. Um, you know, I've made a career for 20 plus years in um managing and producing creative endeavors. And for me, it's just super exciting to think of like how much creativity it might unlock. Right? So what things that people do now that aren't always part of the creative process or that are redundant or things where we can um you know, uh speed up some of the the efforts might that be interesting? You know, it just seems like it's a really interesting opportunity clearly, we're at the infancy of it. Um I'm excited to see where it goes. We need it to happen carefully, we need it to be ethical, we need it to be lawful. A lot of those areas haven't really caught up, you know, the legal system hasn't really caught up with the technology yet. So, yeah, I'm just really excited to see where it goes next. Yeah. And I'm really fascinated and just digging into your background and work at Activision. Like, how do you encourage creativity and risk taking among the animators, the visual artists, these like game developers? Oh um How do we encourage risk taking? Well, creative people generally by nature don't have to be encouraged to think outside of the box. Um My experience has been usually you're kind of working in the office that there's a lot of big ideas and you're trying to pull them in and figure out what you can execute. Um Because, you know, we're always working against timelines and schedules and budgets at times as well. Um So, yeah, I, I think just really looking at ways to support artists and give them tools to do things faster, to make, you know, redundant processes, you know, more automated, allows a lot more free thinking. And in general, I think your question was about risk taking. I think creative ideas are all born out of some kind of, you know, what if we tried this or what if we approached it a little different. And as a company, you are very encouraging of that risk taking. Yeah. Well, for the team that I manage, I manage a trans team, so I don't manage game developers, I manage a team that makes cinematics and trailers and books and comics and statues. And again in that, in that circle, it's really exciting to see people try to do something a little bit different. Um We've had a campaign recently for a big game. We have coming out called Diablo Four. Um And we've done some really interesting new things. We had a new cinematic called by Three. They come, which was one of our most watched and best received and, you know, pretty groundbreaking visual experience. Um Our marketing team tried something new in um Europe, they did a collaboration with um during Milan Fashion Week with some fashion designers, we took over a cathedral and did a diablo version of, you know, cathedral going to hell kind of thing. I'm sure they love that. Yeah. Um but you know, just again, really different, interesting takes on things and so yeah, try trying to push that envelope. Um I'm gonna come to you guys for a question. So again, please raise your hand. Uh And we'll get a mic to you. Uh Nicole, you focus very heavily on data. Uh And you told me some really interesting lessons that you've learned. Um But can you share that with the audience and like what you've learned in building this out for the first time? So data is incredibly important, not just from competitive integrity and excellence, but also there's a huge tension in the gaming space where at least in the US, over 45% of women under the age of 35 are gamers. They play games on different platforms, but in my universe at pro play, less than 10% of pro players are female and that delta in between is confusing and also poses a business problem of we're not reaching the true breast of the competitors or the fans we should be. And so using data to be a accelerator to equity and an equalizer has led to some really interesting moments for us. I'll give one example, we led a blind combine through data scouting similar to what you saw and the symphonies back in the day and surprise, surprise with a blind combine, we were the first ever team to front a mixed gender roster in a non inherently gendered space because people knew some of the perceived cultural barriers would go away if it was about merit and skill and continuing to do things like that where we can show that results can come. And we cast Wide Nets has led to big wins for us. Most female head coaches in any e sports organization, over 60% of our staff on the gaming side are actually female coming from backgrounds, not just in gaming, but from the medical profession to Teslas and Googles and Data sciences. And without that data equity opportunity, I don't know if we would have had the the fast paced outcome that we've seen that's really helped us continue to lift trophies and my 14 year old daughters. Thank you for that. Who are gamers? They, you're, you're clearing the way for them. Thank you. It's really cool. Any questions so much? Alright, we'll come back. Um So going off of what you just said, uh Lydia there, there's, you know, still this perception that gaming is largely male dominated. Um But you said that whenever you talk to young female high school students, you remind them that if their passion is games, there are many other options beyond just being an engineer or a developer or something like that? What are some of the areas that you think present a massive opportunity for female or for women to get into the gaming industry that aren't as obvious? Yeah. Well, the, so the, the comment was really about wasn't really supposed to be gender specific. It was really about the notion that um working in games. It's a business, there's a broad array of ways to, to engage in that. I'm not a developer, I'm not an artist, but I was able to find a career in an area that I'm really passionate about. And so for me, I think it's just important that people realize we're so stem focused right now. Everything about math and science, math and science. Again, I have young daughters, they're not engineers, they're not interested in coding. And so they feel like they're locked out of so many opportunities by that. Um I just like to remind people, we have finance people, we have hr we have writers on my team, we have, we have writers, we have visual development artists. I have people who draw comics. Um I have a sculptor on my team. So really the point is, you know, there are a ton of opportunities in the gaming space and it doesn't just mean you have to be somebody coding and, and Nicole uh you are involved with some uh interesting organizations. How do you make sure you amplify these voices? Um So at the end. And I'll echo what Lydia just said. The like in game to board room representation of anyone, especially not just from the traditional gaming background is important because we need, we operate more like a traditional sports team. If you view or a collegiate athletics department where we need sales people, we need marketers and the innovation and thought that we bring to these areas to continue to grow is important. And that often oftentimes means you need disruptive mindset from different spaces. So we look to collaborate, not just with partners like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, but all the way from toy to LG to even we did a collaboration with the current Little Mermaid Hallie and Chloe to teach them how to play Rocket League actually. And so the more we can create exposure to the space, understanding, break down some of the stereotypes or connotations that exist, the better we're able to all move forward as a business. But also capitalize the facts that if even if you've never heard of sports, I evil geniuses, we reach over 300 million kids, boys and girls a month across social. We have active eyes and hearts and wallets and that's an impactful movement like fashion, like music. So how we embrace and shape emerging pop culture through gaming. Very valuable to pay attention to and what are, what are the age ranges of your target demographics? Well, uh who do you want or who do you have, I mean, uh Blizzard has quite a few legacy IP S games like World of Warcraft has been around for 20 years, the Warcraft franchise, almost 30 years. So you can imagine. And thankfully, I can say we have players that have been with us that entire time. Um We have a newer game in Overwatch, which is almost seven years old now, um which is almost aged out in the world of video games. Um But we've had new expansions on a great new content that that game is, you know, ex as exciting as ever. But it's at the um the other end of the spectrum for us, you know, you want the demographic that's gonna engage with your game, attach and stay with you. Again. My team is involved in bringing people into the ecosystem, not through gaming. So I don't work on the actual product of the game nor the sports, but kind of any other place that you touch the game. So comics or cinematics or episodes, we have novels and is the point of those other elements to attract a new audience in a different, yeah, we're trying to bring people into the franchise a lot we've seen in the gaming space. Finally, we're starting to get some really great content in linear media. We're seeing TV, shows like the last of us that it's phenomenal. Some, there have been some big movies recently as well that have done pretty good in the in the box office. Um And so, yeah, the idea is that we sort of meet our players where they are. And even if you don't play the game, the intent of my team is to find a way to connect with that audience. We want people who are going to come in and stay with us. So I don't know that there's always a target demographic coming from the film industry. You want the 18 to 25 year olds, but in gaming, you want them if they're going to stay with you too. And how valuable is it that it to retain that? I huge. I mean, it's what brought me to Blizzard. I had 20 plus years in the film industry working on a lot of really big franchises and titles. And when somebody reached out to me and talked to me about an opportunity to manage and oversee a small animation studio at a game company called Blizzard Entertainment. It was just, it was over the moon with excitement because the depth of the world and the universes and the amount of potential on those ips. I mean, I just literally saw it as an IP gold mine again in the film making business. That's what you live for. So, so I want to ask you both this question to kind of close up. But other than a I, what other emerging technologies do you see as having the biggest impact on the gaming industry in the next 5 to 10 years. What I love thinking about technology. So evil genius has been around since the late nineties. And if you think about what video games even looked like and how they were accessible from then now and the rate of technology and even medium development from PC to console to mobile, to handheld, the more we create accessibility, different price points and better bridge globally. Unlike Lydia and her team, we don't own the IP of the games. So we live in this in between space where our fans are very, very valuable because also unlike a sports team, you know, my parents went to BC. So by I was a Red Sox fan growing up. But like why are you a fan of an E sports organization that's digital and global? So how we create that brand identity and reach those fans is really our secret sauce and who we also have to keep sticky and loyal over years. And the more we create accessible gaming and accessible technology, we subsidiary receive the benefits of that. And so as things get faster, lighter cheaper, we get excited. It was just all thrown one additional thing. I know A I is the big topic and it's kind of the sexy subject. Interactive. I, even though I work at a game company, the work that I do and the history I come from 20 plus years of CGI and visual effects and computer graphics, the world of interactive game engines and the ability to render things in real time and the ability to do things today. At the touch of a of a mouse clicker keyboard button. That 20 years ago when I started my career in this industry, we couldn't even imagine how to solve those problems. Much less, make it instant the way it is today. So interactive technologies, game engines are so powerful, the tech stacks that are developed to run some of the big games like World of Warcraft, they're so powerful and finding the different ways to apply them for me is super exciting. Amazing. What a great note to end on. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Mandana Dayani, Creator and Co-founder, I am a voter.
Shannon Watts, Founder, Moms Demand Action
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Mobilizing the Next Gen Of Voters

Our next founders are inspiring political change through advocacy. They're harnessing public partnerships and social media to raise awareness on issues that affect many Americans. Madonna Diani is the creator and co founder of I am a voter, a nonpartisan organization that aims to increase voter turnout and raise awareness around civic engagement after the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012, Shannon Watts, founded Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization fighting against gun violence. They are joined by my colleague, fortunes editor at large, Mikal Lev. OK. So, um I want to start by asking you both about your personal journeys and we heard just a little bit about what your organizations do but, but tell us your personal stories, what led you to start them? So, and Donna, I'll start with you and you've done a lot in your career. You don't have to go into everything but tell us what matters for getting you to this point. Yeah. Well, thank you for having us here today. Um So I, I was born in Iran. Um and we fled, I would say when I was almost six years old and went to, you know, to Italy and then gained asylum to come to New York. Um So we have an organization called, I think that experience fleeing my homeland, coming to America was incredibly formative, not just in my patriotism for America, but also just this deep connection to refugees and what that experience is like. Um And really lived my whole life in this like pursuit of the American dream. My brother became a surgeon and I was told I had to become an attorney. And so, um I became a lawyer which I did not enjoy. And then I worked as uh as a talent agent and then I worked in fashion and entertainment and tech and I've had a lot of careers which I guess is for a different panel. Um But a few years ago when I saw, I was, I just had my second daughter and I saw the child separation policy unfold on television. Um It was incredibly just triggering to see, you know, that this country that had saved my family. Like I remember arriving at New York, I remember holding my mom's hand. I remember like this feeling of like, OK, we're going to be OK that the most vulnerable population in the world would come to America in pursuit of freedom and we would rip their Children out of their hands and in many cases, lose them. Um And I felt like this can't be right. And I got on a plane, I went to Torneo Texas. And I was like, it just felt that there was something broken in the humanity in our country. And so I went in this pursuit of how I could apply all the things that I did to help and met with different members of Congress and Senate. And everyone kept being like, well, if you want to make change in here and here and here and here, we just need higher voter turnout and obviously not knowing anything. I was like, that's not going to be hard. Um Think about how many brands and films me and my friends launch every year, like, like how hard is this? Um And so I did what I always do when I need to figure something out and I emailed all the smartest women that I know and we all came together and really started to build the beginning of this movement called I'm a voter um C A joined the town agency as our co founder. And yeah, it's been crazy. Shannon. Can you share your story? Yeah, I mean, I think there's some, some similar themes in there, which is, you know, I was a stay at home mom of five, living in a suburb outside of Indianapolis when the Sandy Hook School shooting happened in 2012. Um I had really never been politically active. I was in corporate communications. I was taking a five year break and like, I'm sure so many of you in this room I sat down and just sobbed as I watched the news that 20 Children and six educators have been slaughtered in the sanctity of an American elementary school. And like Madonna said, you know, this idea that humanity was broken, that Congress would likely do nothing after that happened. And I thought, ok, there has to be something like mothers against drunk driving, which was so influential to me growing up in the eighties. Um But for gun safety and I went online and uh I found a bunch of think tanks run by men in Washington DC. Uh I found some city and state organizations also mostly run by men. I knew I wanted to be part of a badass army of women. It's who I've seen get so much done in this country over and over and over again. So I started a Facebook page. I had 75 Facebook friends. I had no Twitter handle and I just wrote that it was time for women to rise up against the gun lobby and that went viral and it has turned into the largest grassroots movement in the nation. We are twice the size of the N R A now with 10 million members and we have passed over 500 good gun laws. We've stopped the N R A S agenda 90% of the time every year in state houses for the last eight years. Um And we've elected hundreds of our own volunteers to office So, um I, since, since you brought some of this up, I think it's a good segue. You know, there's, we see, we all read the news. I think it impacts us every time. I hope it does. Um But uh, you know, I think it's easy to walk away from reading all of that and thinking there's just, there's no progress made and you, you have a different take on it. So can you share with us a little bit more about, you know, why you do see progress there? Uh Just to be clear, special interests want you to feel hopeless and helpless. They want you to believe that this is the way it's going to be, that you're going to always have to put gun lobby profits above public safety if you go back in time, you know, that's not true. Otherwise people would still, you know, be encouraged to drink and drive. Um People would still have unregulated opioids like special interests have power until they don't and they are losing power. You know, I would not have woken up every day for the last decade and done this work as a full time volunteer. If I didn't think that we weren't winning, we are the NRA is weaker than it's ever been. They are hemorrhaging political power and dollars and meanwhile, we are stronger than we've ever be. And I, I was giving some examples in the intro of how much progress that we've made you know, last summer after the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, we passed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act in Congress. Why is that such a huge deal? Because when I started doing this work in 2012, a quarter of all Democrats in Congress had an a rating from the NRA today, not one does. And in fact, 15 Republicans signed on to that bipartisan Safer Communities Act. So we are making huge progress. Hopefully, you saw that in the last couple of weeks, we've passed assault weapons and sweeping gun reform legislation in places like Washington and Michigan and Colorado. And now Minnesota, these are places that were solidly red or purple a decade ago. Um So I, as you can tell, have a lot of hope around this issue and I just simply don't believe that any of us in this room are willing to send our loved ones into public places, not knowing whether they'll come home. Um Please raise your hand by the way at any point if you have questions or, or comments. Um But uh a, a big theme of this conversation is women pushing for change, right? And, and you talked about how you kind of called your, you know, your boardroom, you called the women that you are your, the smart women in your life. Um And, and one of them was Shannon. I'd love to hear more about just your relationship, how you guys connected in the uh vacation together. Now, apparently so. Um, yeah, when I, you know, when I was starting, I'm a voter. I didn't, I really didn't know what I was doing in many ways. I, I knew how to build a brand and I knew how to get people engaged and how to make people feel something. Um, and I was Deborah, who's one of the women who helped found I'm a voter and I were together and she asked me like, well, how do we figure out organizing grassroots movements? And I said, I don't know, we call Shannon Watts. How do we talk to Shannon Watts? And she, I was like, let me D M her. And um four days later I was at the airport and, uh, Shannon and my phone rings and it's like, hi, Madonna, this is Shannon Watts. You would think Beyonce was calling me. I mean, she, to me was like the biggest, like celebrity of all time. And so, and that's just what she does. She's amazing. And we got on the phone and I, you know, she became my mentor and one of my closest friends, but it really was, hey, Shannon, is it weird? I mean, we're 25 women. Am I supposed to care? Are there men that are supposed to be a part of this? And she's like, what are you talking about? Um, and you know, it really, all of us do this as volunteers. All these are the most incredible women. And so that it's so funny because it took so late in my career for me to embrace vulnerability. And, you know, I was the person that I always thought like no one was gonna come to my birthday party. So when we started, I'm a voter and we developed this idea and these toolkits and I emailed, I wanna say like 1000 people I had worked with across all of these different sectors, the panic and fear in me of like, oh my God, what is everyone going to say? And, and I just share that it was overwhelmingly positive that the response was thank you so much. No one has ever asked. Um And that was so important to me because I realized how many people have such incredible skills that they can put towards activism and the issues that they care about, but are so rarely asked or provided opportunities to show up. And I think by us creating a place and a mechanism for companies and brands and influencers and, and communities to participate. I mean, like we now engage with hundreds of brands and thousands of communities and people in cities. And um I think that's what you've done so incredibly well with moms demand action was just creating an opportunity and a mechanism for people to just get off the sidelines. Um Obviously, everything is so politicized and polarized now and what you're both doing when it comes to, to gun violence, um You know, voter voting rights. Uh all, all of this civic engagement um somehow has become so politicized. Um And I wonder if you have any thoughts on just how you carry on these conversations, how you get in the right rooms. Uh And you reach out to different people and, and I wanna start with you because I know when we were talking earlier, you brought up your family's traditions of Shabbat dinners uh to uh anybody who's been to a Shabbat dinner, I think every culture, every religion has a version of that, of course. But, but talk, talk a little bit about what Shabbat has to do with all of this. You know, I sometimes I feel like that same theme of we've lost humanity. Like, you know, with Shabbat dinner, you sit across from people that don't agree with you all the time, your crazy uncle, you know, we all have them, right? Yeah. And you learn to find common ground. And I think in some ways and I think that you do this so brilliantly with your work. But I, you know, I talk to companies about this all the time, which is like if you actually zoom out there's so much that we agree on and so much of that is within the values. And so like if you can say, hey, as a company, we agree that we want our employees and our customers to feel safe, we can all agree on that, right. And so maybe the mechanism in which that appears is something that we can discuss. But sometimes there, there's just so much more common that we share and this ability to just have conversation, have disagreement, learn from each other. Um has been so helpful in applying weirdly in, in this work. Um And, you know, I talk to companies so much and, and obviously a big part of Judaism is giving back and we talked about stuff and, and, and these incredible virtues and you know, trying to explain to companies that, you know, doing good is good for business. You know, customers more than ever. Now see that the purchasing decisions they make as an extension of their values. Like we make a choice every day between Patagonia and North Face. And so we know that that is a signal to others about our values. And so when we do that and we're putting our money for something, we expect brands to have our backs and we expect them to show up, we expect them to do good and it ultimately affects your profitability, like you're making all these investments in technology and efficiency, but it helps with employee retention, it helps with customer retention because at the end of the day, like you can have super clear like modern packaging and you can ship within 24 hours, but your customer is going to care if you're hurting someone that they love and those things are not separate, like to be a brand that exists and thrives particularly with the younger generations that cares more than any other generation and is more diverse than any other generation. These values that we talk about are inherent in your brand and your success. And while we're going over to you, um Shannon just real quick, same, same question. Um you, you, you also know how to like stick it to people when you want to for sure. So it's not all, you know, let's all gather and hug each other. But, but how do you just very quick take away is what you've learned on reaching across to people who may not agree with you all the time. You, you know, people always talk about gun violence prevention as though it's polarizing. It's actually not 90% of Americans support background checks. It's only polarizing among gun extremists and I'm not wasting my time trying to get gun extremists to support what we're doing. I'm trying to get what has been the silent majority to use their voices and their votes on this issue when we ask volunteers why they come. But then stay staying is the harder part with a volunteer base. It's two reasons. One they feel we're winning and that's because we celebrate wins. We talk about the fact that we're winning and two, it's because they find their people, right? Even in the toughest of states, the reddest of states where this can be a different issue in gerrymandered state legislatures are volunteers find their people and those people become the best friends that they've ever had. So, there's a, there's a reason that they keep coming back and it's, it's to find the people that they want to spend their time with. That's so funny. That's what you just asked me before. And you said, what's the most rewarding work I've ever done? And I said I'm a voter because it led me to these people in my life that I have today and that's completely changed my life and you didn't find them at the law firm. Apparently I did not. Ok. Question over here, please stand up. I am Jennifer a couple of so, first of all, um Thank you for um tackling these issues in the ways that you are tackling them and your optimism around them is actually incredibly refreshing. Um The question I have for you because whether it's on this big stage that you sit on or in smaller stages where we're tackling different issues, how you were dealing with or addressing the amount of progress that you think you're making or that you see yourself making because you've been working on this, as you said for many years. And I think when you sit and try to think about how much progress have I actually made to achieving what we're trying to achieve. How are you thinking about that? How are you um, not getting discouraged? Um because we're taking steps forward and taking steps back. Like, how do you stay motivated and stick to it because you believe you ultimately get there. Like, I'd love to hear your perspective on that. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, you don't get involved in any activism, but especially activism where you're taking on one of the largest, most powerful, wealthy, special interests that's ever existed. Right? You don't get involved in that and think I'm going to win this overnight. Although I kind of did, like you were saying, I thought, oh, this won't be that hard. Um Little did. I know I'm really grateful. I was so naive at the beginning, but we have come up with several mantras in our organization. One of them is keep going. Our volunteers actually get that tattooed on them. Um And then the other man like a real tattoo. Oh Our volunteers get tattoos every year. We have gun since university and all, a lot of the groups go get tattoos, our brand saying it's a thing. Um I've escaped that so far. But this idea of losing forward, right? Making sure people don't feel defeated when they experience those losses because we were very much David versus Goliath. And what we have said is yes, we're gonna lose, we're gonna win more than we lose. But when we lose, we're going to learn how to lose forward. So the next time we win and just for an example in Arkansas. When we started doing this work, we were really having a hard time getting a chapter there. Guns on campus. Sailed through the state legislature, the governor signed it standing next to an N R A lobbyist. It so incensed women across the state of Arkansas that our chapter grew exponentially, so quickly that we went in and carved out an exemption so that you could not bring your guns to a tailgate where alcohol is served. I mean, hello. So then the next year, two volunteers ran for office. One of them beat the guy that put the guns on campus bill forward by 12 points. A retired nurse who became a monster man, a volunteer. None of that would have happened if we hadn't lost originally on the guns on Campus Bill. So we really are always telling stories and I think Madonna would agree. A lot of activism is storytelling. What is our narrative? Our narrative is that we are winning and we are going to win if we don't give up? Take one more, very brief question over here. The story thing is such a big deal. I'm Britt. A and thank you for everything that you're doing. I think it's not just about um fighting the fight against those that want to have their weapons with them all the time. It's also the mental health piece of it. I have a 10 year old boy five years ago or so. He was going to kindergarten. I remember driving him to school on the second day of kindergarten and he says to me in the back seat, mom, we had a lockdown drill yesterday and I didn't even know how to react. And I said, what do you mean you had a lockdown drill? And he explained that they hid in the closet. Uh And they had to be super quiet because there might be bad people in the building, something like that. I start crying in the front seat as I'm driving him to school, totally unprepared for any of that. And fast forward to today, 10 years old every day. He says to me when I drop him off at school. All right, mom, I love you don't die today and he just is continuously focused on potentially bad things that could happen. And I don't even think he even realizes that it could be a mass shooting or something like that. But it's all of these things that are, are creating that anxiety for young people which we know then they grow up and then we have these mental challenges with older people, young adults who are trying to process their anxiety, their issues, et cetera. It's all connected. So what do we, what can we all do about it? You have, you have 10 seconds. I wish we can do about it. I think we all expect other people to do the work for us and we read the news and we hope that other people are getting involved and the reality is we all have to be activists. Walker says activism is a rent I pay to live on the planet. We aren't numb as a nation. We are traumatized. And so I would just ask you to become volunteers. Thank you so much for being here and, and sharing some hope with us. Yeah. Thank you.

Lesley Gold, Co-founder and CEO, SutherlandGold Group
Kathleen Griffith, Founder, Grayce & Co.
Cristina Goyanes, Founder, Revel
Brooke Hammerling, Founder, The New New Thing
Jane Thier, Reporter, Fortune Success, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Fostering A Personal Brand 

Lesley Gold, Co-founder and CEO, SutherlandGold Group
Kathleen Griffith,Grayce & Co.
Cristina Goyanes, Revel
Brooke Hammerling, The New New Thing


Lesley Gold, Co-founder and CEO, SutherlandGold Group
Kathleen Griffith, Founder, Grayce & Co.
Cristina Goyanes, Founder, Revel
Brooke Hammerling, Founder, The New New Thing
Jane Thier, FORTUNE

Erika Coleman, Vice President and Global Head, Diversity Recruiting, Goldman Sachs
Jodie Grenier, Chief Executive Office, Foundation for Woman Warriors
Allison Robinson, Founder and CEO, The Mom Project
Moderator: Alexandra Sternlicht, Tech Reporter, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Returnships And Inclusion In The Workplace 

Erika Coleman, Goldman Sachs
Jodie Grenier, Foundation for Woman Warriors
Allison Robinson, The Mom Project
Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE

Returnships And Inclusion In The Workplace 

Erika Coleman, Vice President and Global Head, Diversity Recruiting, Goldman Sachs
Jodie Grenier, Chief Executive Office, Foundation for Woman Warriors
Allison Robinson, Founder and CEO, The Mom Project
Alexandra Sternlicht, Tech Reporter, FORTUNE

Jesse Draper, General Partner, Halogen Ventures
Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Partner, Eclipse Ventures
Kirin Sinha, Founder and CEO, Illumix
Monique Woodard, Founding Partner and Managing Director, Cake Ventures
Moderator: Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Fundraising In An Economic Downturn

Jesse Draper, Halogen Ventures
Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Eclipse Ventures
Kirin Sinha, Illumix
Monique Woodard, Cake Ventures
Moderator: Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE

Reyhan Ayas, Senior Economist, Revelio Labs Neela Rajendra, Chief Inclusion Officer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Cheria Young, Founder, Grow There
Moderator: Amber Burton, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Prioritizing De&I In Layoffs

Reyhan Ayas, Revelio Labs 
Neela Rajendra, NASA 
 Cheria Young, Grow There
Moderator: Amber Burton, FORTUNE

Nicole Johnson, Partner, Forerunner Ventures
Avni Patel Thompson, Founder and CEO, Milo
Maya Mikhailov, Founder and CEO, SAVVI AI
Nasrin Mostafazadeh, Co-founder and CEO, Verneek AI
Moderator: Polina Pompliano, Founder, The Profile; Deputy Director, Live Events, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - How A.I. Is Shaping The Work In Our Homes And Communities 

Nicole Johnson, Forerunner Ventures
Avni Patel Thompson, Milo
Maya Mikhailov,  SAVVI AI
Nasrin Mostafazadeh, Verneek AI
Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE

How A.I. Is Shaping The Work In Our Homes And Communities 

Nakia McKenzie, Vice President, Compensation & Benefits, AARP
Kate O’Connor, Vice President, People and Culture, H&R Block
Tali Rapaport, Co-founder, Puck
Courtney Robinson, Global Head, Financial Inclusion and Policy Development, Block
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - The New Dawn Of Hiring: Pay Transparency 

Nakia McKenzie, AARP
Kate O’Connor, H&R Block
Tali Rapaport, Puck
Courtney Robinson, Block
Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

The New Dawn Of Hiring: Pay Transparency 

Tracee Ellis Ross, Chief Executive Officer, Pattern Beauty 
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE CLOSING RECEPTION 


MPW Next Gen 2023 - Pattern Making

After wrapping up on the show, girlfriends actress Tracy Ellis Ross wrote her first hair care brand pitch in 2008, not long ago, but following several meetings with potential partners and investors, she was met with little interest. She then chose to invest her own funds into working with a chemist and manufacturer who could develop the products. She envisioned ones that focused on curly coy and tight textured hair. And after more than a decade, she took the findings connected with Beach House Group to launch Pattern Beauty to discuss what's next for Pattern Beauty. Please welcome Pattern Beauty's CEO and founder Tracy Ellis Ross and fortune, senior writer, Emma Hinch. Hi. Um Hi, everybody. Tracy. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. We're so excited. So you founded Pattern Beauty based on your experience and to solve the problem that you saw in the beauty industry. What was that problem? It wasn't a problem. It was a gap. Yeah, a big giant gap. I felt like the products that existed for the curly coy and tight texture community were the same products that my mother and my grandmother had had access to that, the shelf space hadn't changed. It was still in the back of the store. And I as a curly coy gal had spent my childhood kind of making sense of my hair and trying to figure out which products existed and dreaming of having the perfect products that actually were effective, were safe for my hair and looked beautiful in my bathroom. And so and so pattern was born. I mean, it's a bit of a longer journey than that. I'm not gonna lie. Um From the moment I wrote my first hair care brand pitch um until we ended up on shelves. It was 11 years. Um It was right when I finished girlfriends and I really set out to create a company that was not just about sales, but really was also about the love of humanity. And so there was a lot involved in that and there were also a lot of nos and there was a lot of, there were a lot of naysayers, but it really was about filling a gap in the market that had existed for a really long time. Yeah, let's talk about that decade long 11 year journey. What happened over those 11 years. How long do you have? Um Well, it started with um I was not from a family of entrepreneurs, so I didn't know. And you know, a lot of people say they say dream big, but they don't talk to you about how you turn that dream into a reality. How do you take an idea out of your head and actually bring it into the world? And so I didn't know how to do that. So what I did was try and use what I access to and the resources that I had, which was really leaning into me as an actor. And so I was just trying to ask everybody, one of the things I had learned before I became an actor when I left college was ask people questions, say thank you, write a thank you, not stay in contact with them and then learn from that and get the new relationships. So I just started asking questions and I got a lot of nos. And the main thing that I was hearing, the main three things I was hearing was why you, you're an actor, what do you know about hair? You should partner with a professional. And the third was why do we need more products on the shelf? And I had all those answers to those questions, but I didn't know how to articulate those answers in a way that people could understand it. So it was why me because like so many others, I had become my own best expert because I was um uh a shopper and a beauty person in an industry that was not catering to the curly and type textured community. Um I didn't want to partner with an expert or a professional because I felt so many, I had become my own best expert in my bathroom because it was an industry that didn't, the beauty industry was not catering to us. And I um and why these products, why did we need more products on the shelf because there weren't products that were actually matching and suiting my hair texture. Um And so the journey began with a lot of, I'll just tell you, I won't tell you all the nos but some of the fun ones, one woman read the hair care brand pitch, who was my manager at the time, obviously, an acting manager doesn't know the beauty industry and she was like, I read it. It's amazing. We should do a line of wigs and I was like, I think you missed the point. Another person was like, I read it. It's amazing. We should do a hair TV show. And I was like, I am asking the wrong people. These people do not know what they're talking about. Um Ended up going through many other journeys um Before I found my operational partners and I call them my operational partners, my business partners. But I say that because I am the majority owner of the company, I have full creative control and the vision is mine. Um But I do not know how to run a beauty business. So I have a lot of business acumen but don't know how to do that. So I found partners before I found my partners, I actually decided that what I needed to do was find a chemist on my own that I had the brand pitch and everything that was in my pitch is actually what was in our launch. Um The skews that we had there were in our launch, which was four conditioners, a hydrating shampoo that was not going to strip your hair. I'm not going to go into detail. We only have a little bit of time. Um But um so I found, I wanted to find a chemist that I could speak to directly, that I really could start to explain because part of what I was finding in the industry was that I could either use formulas that existed or I could sort of give that part over. And the whole point was that the formulas don't exist. And so I needed to actually build the goop from scratch. So I found um a chemist that was in Los Angeles that I could speak to face to face and then um ended up meeting with retail partners with a little bit of group that I had and my brand pitch and ended up with retail partners before I found my business partners. And so 11 years, 75 samples patterns on shows 2019 I, that was a really speedy version. No, we love it. Um You talked about kind of figuring out the best way to articulate the opportunities you saw here we have a lot of founders in the room doing that for their own businesses all the time, figuring out how to pitch to investors. Yes. How did you do that? How did you figure out how to communicate the ideas you had? Um a lot of it came from the nos that I received. So when I would receive a no, I would usually take the hit, I would get very disappointed. Um And I would take the hit and then when I was ready, I would ask myself the question of, did I agree with the no? And what was in the know? So was the no something I agreed with that? Yes, there was no reason for me to create products on the shelves or why you or any of those things or was it that I hadn't articulated what I was? The effectiveness? Was I not effective in articulating what I meant? What that led me to by the time I went to my, the retail partner meetings is I had a hair Bible that really ended up being the road map for what has become pattern. And my vision, I can now articulate that for you guys. And what I would say to other founders and entrepreneurs as they're starting a business is the brand DNA for pattern is based on four things. It's based on number one, not sales, but the love of humanity. And our mission was born out of that. So it's meeting actual, an actual need. It's to exceed the needs of the curly cole texture community. And our content is focused around and centered around the celebration of black beauty. So our mission combined with our promise, the visual language of the brand, which is incredibly important because that's how I think you give evidence to your customer that you love them, believe in them and know who they are. And then the purpose of the brand, which is tied into our mission. And those four things are what to me makes that pattern. And I mean, I can go into detail on all those things. I wouldn't, but I think as a, as a founder, it's incredibly important to name what your promise is. What are you promising your customers and the mission of what exactly you are wanting to give them and what that is and why and then have purpose and combine it to that and then see if you can articulate in language, what you want your brand narrative to look like visually because I think those are the things that are markers and create a continuity of language with your customer. Yeah, thank you. Um I'll come to everyone for questions in a moment. So if you have any, I know I'm so, so it's great. Um You know, celebrity beauty is a crowded space. And even just yesterday, Beyonce hinted that she might be entering in hair category as well. We don't know for sure we don't. But, you know, she might be making salons. Anything is possible. Yeah, it's Beyonce. But how do you stand out and achieve longevity as a brand that's tied to a celebrity? Well, I think the key is that we're not a celebrity brand. Um, I am a CEO and founder and so I can tell you what I think the keys are for a successful brand, which I think is a lot of what I just stated, it's really knowing your customer. I think it's being hands on really being deliberate, specific and intentional about your language and what you're stating. You know, one of the things that is really important to me at pattern is that we name what we want, not what isn't. So we're always leaning towards that and that gives us a road map to where we want to go. I think that knowing the industry is incredibly important in doing your work, I think, you know, the difference to me and a lot of celebrity brands. And I think where that term comes from is yes, there's a celebrity, but often they are not. I'm a majority owner of my company. Um They aren't the founders of the company. Often they join a company that exists. The mission is born out of my experience. It's born out of my own experiential knowledge and like any other founder, it's um I, I am a celebrity but that's not the way I am at pattern, but I will say that I do use the um my notoriety in the industry to continue to open doors. Um And because I know that that gives me a particular kind of seat or access. And so I make sure that the access that I have is used not just for me and opening up the space for others, like maybe even Beyonce, she's like, oh patterns doing well, maybe I should get in that business. Is there an example of the time you've done that successfully that you think that who you are helped pattern grow? I think it's how I helped pattern grow. Yes, but I think it's less about that. It's more that in particular, for example, with my retail partners, there have been moments when I know that I have access to sit at a table with a CEO in a way that perhaps another founder doesn't. And when I do that, I make sure that those conversations are not only centered around pattern, they're centered around creating and expanding the access for all of us and making sure that shelf space is whether it's the pipeline or shelf space or the diversity and equity within the company is, is looked at in a particular way and that I'm willing to have those conversations even if they're uncomfortable and I have quite a few of them. Have you seen change over the past four years? I have, I think the biggest thing that I've seen is a willingness. I think a lot of people don't know what they want to do. But, you know, I have to give a shout out to Mary Dylan, who was the former CEO of, um Ulta and is now at Foot Locker. She was somebody who from the beginning before Pattern launched, I had a very close relationship with her because of all the things that were happening and I picked up the phone and called her with some difficulties that were occurring in terms of the relationship or what whatever was happening. And as a result, she got to have a first, a front seat to me as a founder and a CEO. And she saw in me something that I didn't know existed in terms of being a business person. And she was the one that appointed me as the diversity equity inclusion advisor for ALTA. And because of her, I have had a seat at many tables. I have had access to speaking with other ceos of large companies and really talking about what my personal experience with Pattern has been, but also how the industry has a blind spot and a gap in certain areas and what those gaps are. And sometimes they're as simple as the wash cycle for a black customer is different than another. And so the re upping on supply and how you purchase for regularity is different, many of those different kinds of things and knowing the customers. So those are some of the conversations that have happened around that I had access to because of pattern but have become a larger conversation because it is one of my missions to really change the myth that black hair care is a niche market. I completely disagree. And there's data to support that the black consumer has a spending power of 1.2 trillion at the moment by 2024 it's supposed to be 1.8 trillion and hair products alone is 2.22 point 29 billion. So this is this is a demographic, a vast demographic of people that is underserved and not understood in the right way. And that is my personal experience for pattern. But for any founders that are out there, it's incredibly important for you to really understand the data and merge that with your own experience, merge that with your promise and make sure that you understand the landscape that you're trying to enter so that you can really be informed and effective in getting where you want to go. How much of that market do you think pattern can capture? I hope it captures all of it every single 2.29 billion. And that is with A B. Um Did we have any questions for Tracy? I think one in the back right there. Hi. Hi, my name is Keisha. I'm from Atlanta was gonna say this last night and I'm gonna say it. So I have naturally gray hair. I use your products and if you are interested in a gray haired ambassador for the brand, I'm your girl. I love it just so you know, I also have gray hair. I just color it the curl gel. Oh, really? Your hair looks beautiful. Thank you very much. That was your question. My God. I thought there was going to be an entrepreneurial question. Yeah. One right there, Shay fellow, curly haired girl. Hello, curly. Um I'm curious what's next for pattern? And you know, I think Emma either you or Tracy mentioned salons. Uh I live in New York and you might know that the salon shut down. I didn't know that. And so there's actually very few places in New York that you can go to get your hair cut. Oh, really? I think that's not just New York. Yeah. Yeah. Like even in a city as large and diverse that that market is that under served? So curious if you know, as you think about all the different ways that you could solve our problems, uh meet your needs. I don't think you have problems. We are here to meet your needs and exceed them. You have your problems. Your hair is beautiful. Thank you. Uh Yeah. So just curious to what's next? If that's additional product lines, tools, salons, like where do you see pattern going? Well, I think this is a vast community and there are many, many needs like the one that you mentioned. So I think the sky is the limit in terms of what pattern will continue to offer. There are many things in the pipeline but I will not speak on those. Maybe I should just do a nefarious Instagram post. But, but I do love this idea and I agree with you. It's incredibly difficult. The the hair cut for a curly and my favorite thing is people showing these haircuts online where they got their hair curly. I'm like, oh my God, when you wash your hair, it's gonna be a nightmare. I'm like so frightened for you. It looks good right now and wait till you're in different level of humidity. Oh my God. Um So I agree. There's a lot of needs. There's a lot of spaces. We just launched the blow dryer, which has been extremely successful and was incredibly exciting for me because that was part of my original dream for the brand to create a blow dryer and to reintroduce heat into this community in a way that it's not going to be damaging for the hair. And we created a for the curly coy tight texture community blow dryer. That's not only beautiful but also selling out. Um And I think there's a lot more to explore in all of those areas. Do we have one more back there? I don't think so. Oh, well, maybe. No, no more questions. I see. There's one up front if we can get up here. Um, we might be able to hear you and give you just the, yeah, we have the live stream as well. I'll write that. Hi, Tiana. Curly girl. I see you. Would you mind standing up? You wanna stand up? Oh, sure. So, my, um, my battle is humidity, obviously, but it's also retention. Are you curl, retention, hydration, retention. Yes. Ok. All of the above. Exactly. Um, and sometimes certain um so I'm from Florida. Certain products work for the first day and then they say they don't work. Yeah. Later on one of the things is making sure you're looking for alcohol. You don't, you don't want alcohol in the product. Um because that will happen. One of the things that is at the core of patterns, um philosophy and effectiveness is hydration, hydration, hydration, hydration and, and you want lasting hydration and depending on the porosity of your hair, there will be a difference in how long you maintain that um moisture and hydration in your hair. So um number one, I would say try our product. Number two, you have them. OK, I have them. Yeah. And I would also say don't be afraid of humidity for me, that's how you create volume. And I also think that Frizz is really sexy. I think there's a big myth around Frizz. I have a lot of frizz going on right now. I think it's very sexy. So, um so I think embrace that. But um there is a product that we have that's down the line in the pipeline that will help you um maintain that moisture for more days. Thank you. And thank you. What about growth? Growth? Well, we have in our treatment collection, first of all, oiling your scalp and making sure that your scalp is clean is incredibly important. So you wanna make sure that the, the root of your hair stays clean. So that, that cuticle, the the the hair can follicle, that's what I'm looking for can come out. Um But we have the treatment collection. So there's the transition mask, but also the treatment mask, which it sounds like it looks like you don't do a lot of heat on your hair. So I would say the treatment mask is probably for you and use that for a good 20 minutes before you shampoo, use the hydration shampoo and then maybe the intensive conditioner just saying these are great tips. Thank you. Um We've heard about a couple of people's relationship with their hair. We can end. I'd love to hear about your relationship with your hair, maybe growing up in your career and how a launching pattern has changed it. If at all, I think it's actually deepened my relationship with my hair. I think you could chronicle my journey of self acceptance through my journey with my hair. I had to come to know my hair, um meet my hair where it was and then learn to love it and then how to be with it. And then I realized my hair could honestly do anything. If it was in good condition, I can put heat on it. I can wear it straight. I can wear it slicked back, I can wear it curly. I can do all the different things with my hair. I think what's happened now is there's no such thing as a bad hair day because I have the products that actually work and support my hair. Um I actually have products that can meet me in any bad situation. Like when there's been someone does my hair and there's too much heat on it or whatever that might be. But mostly I think it's that I now have a genuine um loving relationship with my hair that it just, you know, there's never a bad hair day. It just kind of is what it is. That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Christina Shim, Global Head of Product, Sustainability Software, IBM Corp. 
Nancy Mahon, Chief Sustainability Officer, The Estee Lauder Company 
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Sustainability At Scale

Christina Shim, Global Head of Product, Sustainability Software, IBM Corp. 
Nancy Mahon, Chief Sustainability Officer, The Estee Lauder Company 
 

Sarah Amico, Executive Chairman, Jack Cooper Holdings
Erika Lucas, Founder, StitchCrew
Susan McPherson, Founder and CEO, McPherson Strategies
Jennifer Stark, Co - Director, Center for Business and Social Justice, BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) Moderator: Holly Ojalvo, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights 

Sarah Amico, Jack Cooper Holdings
Erika Lucas, StitchCrew
Susan McPherson, McPherson Strategies
Jennifer Stark, BSR
Holly Ojalvo, FORTUNE 

Shreya Murthy, Co-Founder and CEO, Partiful
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - How Partiful is elevating the way we party

How Partiful is elevating the way we party

So our next speaker is reimagining how to plan and host parties. Party full has become the digital planning tool for Gen Z founders and venture capitalists alike who are looking to streamline communications without email or social media invitations are sent via text message and attendees RSVP with their phone numbers to receive any communications. They recently partnered with Chipotle to host a giveaway for friends who had never tried Chipotle before. I would like to meet these people here to talk about what's next for Party co-founder and Ceo Shea Murphy and fortune, senior writer, Emma Hinch. Hi. Hello. It's great here. So who here has used particle? So we're doing a lot of hand raises today, but please raise your hands. OK? A couple who has heard of part of OK, if you haven't yet, I feel like you will soon, it's really been gaining steam recently. So who is the Particle user right now? Yeah. So it's a lot of people who are on the younger side, typically in their twenties or early thirties, although we are seeing a lot of growth with college students and even high school students. So I think what defines the particle user is a certain jo de vive love for fun. A bit of a reverence and a lot of intentionality around making social gatherings a really central part of their lives, which is I think an interesting shift from eras in the past where we almost took socializing for granted. And after the pandemic, I think that's really changed. Yeah, that's so interesting. And just to, you know, set the stage for those who haven't used it, understand how it works. Um You know, why move to text message? What was the problem with how parties were being planned up until now? Yeah. So there were a few things, there's a functionality side of things and then there's also a social side which we think is really important. So as you mentioned, one of the defining characteristics of particle is that it's SMS based and that reflects what we see as how younger generations are communicating in general. In the past, you would communicate with people you knew maybe over email or exclusively on a specific social media platform. But now it's actually a lot more fragmented, the people that we communicate with both our closest friends and family and also our extended acquaintances and friends of friends. Those connections are fragmented over various social media platforms, group chas, Instagram, Discord, Twitter, sometimes you are texting people but a lot of times you might not have their phone number. And so the idea for particle was how do we create a platform agnostic way to rally a group of people. And so that means standalone event pages, a link you can share on any platform. And when you want to communicate with people doing that over via what we call a text blast, you compose a message on particle and we send it individually to all of your guests. So it also avoids a lot of problems with like noisy group chats. And then it's really good for last minute communications, which are very important for events, like something changes 30 minutes before you're able to make sure everyone knows to go to the right place to bring the right things. And so there's a certain intimacy that comes with it and a certain immediacy that we've really been able to harness. Yeah, you know, for a while, a lot of this kind of event, communications was dominated not just by email, paperless posts, but also like Facebook events, you know, what happens just Facebook events, email just not relevant anymore. Well, what we see is that we're in the midst of this generational shift away from a lot of legacy platforms. And there's many reasons for that people have a certain reaction to the platforms that they were using in the past that maybe people older than them were using. And so in the context of that broader generational shift, it creates an opening for new tools for new forms of communication. And so, yeah, there are a ton of people who aren't using these legacy platforms anymore. But without that, they don't have any good solution for something like planning a party and that's where we come in. Yeah. You know, part of has kind of had this, you know, if, you know, you know, movement, people have been using it for a while, but you've been a little bit word of mouth, a little underground, but you're starting to gain some steam with other kinds of users. I got my first business related part of invitation the other day sent over email and you did a partnership, a partnership with Chipotle very recently. Um How are businesses and potential enterprise? Not quite customers using particle? Yeah. So with Chipotle, it was really interesting because they reached out to us and obviously like we were screaming because we're, you know, like 10 people in a room and this is Chipotle, the brands like emailing us wanting to collab. So I think it was very opportunistic where it was uh Chipotle is another brand that's just beloved by our community. And so there was just a lot of alignment in terms of the tones that we take on social media, the fun that we want to have. And uh you know, we were like, hey, if our users can get free burritos, like that's amazing. That's like an act of public service that we all do. Um But, but more broadly, we, we're very much focused on being a platform for consumers. And where we are seeing businesses start to harness Particle is when they're focused on creating an authentic real world experience for their community and taking relationships with their customers that might have historically been very transaction. Like you are buying a product, I am selling and turning that into something that is a lot more about the people. You're meeting the community you're building part of isn't actually, I would say that great of like A B to B events platform. We don't have a lot of the robust analytics that you might expect. You know, our our platform collects phone numbers from guests so that we can send text updates, but we don't actually expose those to the host. And so you can't just like export people's phone numbers and use it for your marketing purposes. So if you were trying to run a marketing campaign on Particle, you would run into a lot of limitations. And so what we see is that the brands that choose to use Particle and actually some Vanessa's company from earlier today is one of them. It's when they are really focused on the authentic relationships that they're building at events like meeting their community face to face and they're focused on delivering an experience that's aligned with the values and the norms and the trends within their community like that. That's when they're choosing to use part of foregoing some of the uh bells and whistles that they might get somewhere else. Yeah. Why don't you want to, you know, build for business and B to B customers in that way? We think the market's really big. So on a long enough time scale, you know, I'll never say never. But we think that there's so much more opportunity in the consumer space, especially right now where our, our hosts and guests, if they don't have something like particle, they're really underserved because there aren't good alternatives given where they're at in their lives and the communication channels that they're using to reach people in their real world, social networks, like you look at social media right now. And even if in theory, all of our friends are on Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is or Tik Tok, the, the experience of using those products isn't really designed to keep us connected to those people. They're more oriented towards creators and brands and influencers. And so what that means is there's sort of a vacuum if 11 of the you're trying to do is build your connections and build your relationships with people in the real world. And that is our mission. At the end of the day, our mission is to help people make friends and cultivate their real world communities and do that through social events. And so building some, building the best product we can for consumers is such a long journey. And we really feel like we're only at the start Yeah. Um If anyone has questions for sure to start thinking, I'll come to you in a moment. Um You know, you mentioned the size of this market, this white space. I mean, clearly others agree with you. You raised a 20 million series a round a little while back. We haven't actually commented or confirmed any of those you haven't confirmed. Ok. Well, unconfirmed investors include Andrew and and initialized capital, you know. Um what do you think investors see in this space? How big do they think the market for consumer focused um event communications can get? Yeah. So it's, it's interesting because, you know, when we were raising our first round of capital, we were just two young women like co founder Joy and I with a party planning start up and very few people took us seriously and we just saw an unserved need in the market that a lot of other people weren't seeing. So, you know, events, social events in particular, they're evergreen. We've been partying since the dawn of civilization. Parties are not just this, you know, frivolous waste of time. They're how we build community. There's something electrifying about being in the room with people. There's something electrifying about being here in this room with all these incredible women. And so what what we saw was that this is something everyone needs. This is something everyone does. It's not a new consumer behavior. It's a behavior that goes back to our days. Of forming into tribes. And so when you look at something that is that evergreen as a space and has the potential to touch the lives of everyone like, yeah, that's a really big market. Yeah. Wow. Do we have any questions for your oh one over here? Thank you so much. And if you can stand up and please introduce yourself. Hi. Um my name is Catherine. Go nice to meet you. Um I'm curious when it comes to product and product strategy. Um How do you guys think about that? Staying ahead of the curve and being competitive, especially, you know, preferences change so quickly. And today you are focusing on the Gen Z tomorrow's the Gen alpha and the, and the like, how, how could you ensure that your consumers or you user base is sticking off with this thing to sustain for a long time? Thanks. Yeah, that's a great question. We've actually seen incredible stickiness within our user base. Like once you start using parti it's so useful and I would argue joyful that it's the type of place you want to keep coming back to. And so one of your taglines is parties for hot people. So that's the vibe. Yeah, obviously very tongue in cheek. If you follow us on social media, Twitter, things like that. We, we're very tongue in cheek. We like joking with our community because we speak to them like we speak to our friends. Um Yeah, trends are pretty vicious. And if you look at the broader, you know, consumer social space, there are a lot of companies that come and go. And so I think for us one, it's something we're very aware of. It's the product strategy and the product DNA that we have on our team and how we've built, our team has meant that we, we are really confident it, that we weren't just able to anticipate the current trends and the current aesthetics. But that the way we think the way we engage with our community will allow us to continue to evolve in the future. So there'll be some things you'll be seeing later in the year that I'm really excited to share down the road, which sort of speak to how we're evolving in that way. And then the other piece of it, which is different from a lot of consumer social platforms is that there is this really strong utility piece, you need a tool that does something like this. If you're a social person who has friends who wants to make more of them, who wants to cultivate your real world social network. And so we built the product in a way that hopefully it's delivering a lot of value to you every time you use it and you're building relationships and that need that the utility of that need uh transcends any particular trend. Yeah. Thank you. So, how are people partying today? What trends are you seeing my favorite question. So what's, what's been really cool for us to see is like, I think when I was in college and partying, like I just did it because it was the thing that everyone did and I wasn't particularly intentional about it. And now it's really cool. And what's so inspiring for us to see within our hosts is there's an incredible amount of creativity with how people party so unique themes, whether that's slide deck parties or presidential parties dressed up as your favorite president or like fruit tasting parties or water tasting parties. Because there so many sparkling flavored sparkling water brands these days. Uh People are really putting a lot of effort into how they party making those really memorable and doing more advanced planning than I think I did where I was really last minute like, hey, what's everyone doing? It's Friday night at eight PM. People are actually planning these things in advance, making sure they're getting socializing on their cal lenders and prioritizing that part of their lives, which I think speaks to our a reaction from the pandemic where, you know, to quote an amazing Fred again song, like we lost dancing, we, we lost this part of our life and, and now we're trying to get it back. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for everything you're doing to get it back for it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me

Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft 
Dr. Lisa Costa, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, US Space Force 
Moderator: Amber Burton, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Generative A.I. And The Promise Of Productivity 

Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft 
Dr. Lisa Costa, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, US Space Force 

Generative A.I. And The Promise Of Productivity

Sumit Chauhan, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Group, Microsoft 
Dr. Lisa Costa, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, US Space Force 
Moderator: Amber Burton, FORTUNE 


Nichole Hoskins, Global Head of People, NeuroLeadership Institute
Neela Rajendra, Chief Inclusion Officer, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Moderator: Holly Ojalvo, Managing Editor, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - State Of The Workforce 

Nichole Hoskins, Global Head of People, NeuroLeadership Institute
Neela Rajendra, Chief Inclusion Officer, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory

We are going to hear from former I B M, Ceo Jenny Rotti founder, Ceo and Chief investment Officer of a investment management, Kay Wood Only Fan, Ceo Amer Polygon and Pattern Beauty founder and Ceo Tracy Ellis Ross, just to name a few lots more to come. Um Just a very, very quick reminder of our policy. What's said on stage during breakouts is on the record. We do have fortune reporters reporting on these conversations, but whatever is said over one of the breaks on a walk over a drink, um obviously is private unless otherwise agreed upon. Ok, let's get down to business here. According to website layoffs dot F Y I, more than 190,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2023 we are just five months into the year. What does this mean for workplace culture? How are managers supporting teams through all of these uncertainties and scary times? We're thrilled to be joined today by Nila Rajendra, Chief Inclusion Inclusion Officer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Nicole Hoskins Global head of people at the Neuro Leadership Institute. They're going to be interviewed by Fortunes managing editor AVO and we're thrilled to have them start off our day. Good morning. Before we get started. I'm curious about some of you in the audience today. How many of you by a show of hands are actively involved in fostering positive culture as a core part of your job, as part of your job description. It's a lot of people in this room and now I'm curious if we'll have even more people want to ask this question. How many of you do this work organically? Just by gravitating to it. Show of hands that I think that might be all of us to. I don't know if I saw anyone who didn't raise their hand, which is fascinating. So I'm sure you will all have questions for our panelists. So think about those in the back of your mind as we talk and we'll go to audience questions soon. But first, Nicole, I'd love to start with you. Many workers are burned out uncertain, especially in mid layoffs and stressed out the big secret is. So, are managers and leaders? What would you advise your counterparts and other companies to do to foster a positive and trusting work environment, especially amid challenges like layoffs, attrition and slash budgets. Um Thanks for the question. I'm, I'm actually not sure if it's a secret that enough that everybody's feeling a little bit burned out. Um And to that point, I think I would encourage my counterparts to remember how important empathy is um and to be uh leading with empathy thinking about how um teams are feeling stretched. Um How can we be reallocating resources to make sure that they have the support that they need, especially in a time when we are asked to do a little bit more with less, more, do more with less. Um How can we be creative about making sure people have support? Um So that's, that's what I would first recommend. I love that. Yeah, Nela, last year, NASA unveiled a comprehensive D E I plan internal strategy plus a framework for other organizations to use. How have you been executing on this plan at NASA JP L? And what can other organizations learn from what you're doing? Yeah. So uh first of we actually just unveiled it in February. So just a couple of months into the roll out. Um and it's a, a diversity equity inclusion and accessibility plan and that was really intentional. Uh And, you know, the first piece that I would say is really important to making sure that a document like that is a living organism that is adaptable. Um That's not just sitting on a shelf. Um is, you know, there's a lot of ground work that needs to be done in advance of the rollout. So, stakeholder buy in shared visioning, um you know, so making sure all those pieces are in place first, you have the buy in before you roll it out. Second is making it really tangible. So, one of the things that we did at JPL was we created a manager's tool kit that we rolled out at the same time, that was a companion to the strategic plan. And these are evidence based research backed actionable bite size steps that are manageable, that are employable, that align with the strategic plan. What's one example of that? Uh Yeah, so one is um just about uh how do you develop uh a diverse candidate pool? And what are the steps that you need to have to um make sure that you're creating an inclusive and diverse selection panel? Um So it would be one example. Um Another example is around creating cultivating psychological safety. So, um you know, at the top of every meeting, there's really great research from Cathy Phillips around creating, inviting us to be our authentic selves in a way that's inclusive of underrepresented groups. And so being intentional about the questions that you ask to create social connection. Um So, rather than kind of relying on informal dialogue of like, oh, hey, what did everybody do this weekend being a little bit more intentional about the questions that you ask, so that you're inclusive of people who maybe don't feel like they are part of that mainstream culture. That makes so much sense. And that really takes us to the next thing I wanted to ask both of you, which is that there has been a lot of talk about culture and D E I recently. What's something concrete that you've done or seen? This is for both of you that you've done or seen in the past year that actually moved the workplace culture needle and actually made a real difference. Nicole. Uh Yeah, I think um what makes a difference is first establishing sort of a baseline understanding where your organization is um on that the E I journey and not just sort of um introducing interventions or initiatives without understanding exactly where you are, um where there are gap areas and then developing a strategic plan that's going to address those areas. I think that's what's gonna move the needle forward or that's what I've seen, move the needle, um move the needle in what way? Like what's a concrete example of something that's changed? So being able to um embed your commitment to diversity in your systems, your practices, your policies, are we holding people accountable through the way that we evaluate their performance? Are we asking them to demonstrate certain behaviors? And have we explained clearly what those behaviors are? Have we been very um deliberate about explaining how we expect people to behave what our expectations are from an inclusion standpoint? And then um making sure that we're holding people accountable when they don't demonstrate those behaviors. Wow, it is very powerful, Lela Yeah, just to add to that. So we, so in addition to having just rolled out our dia strategic plan. Our new lab director who is the first female lab director for JPL, which is super exciting is about to roll out her strategic initiatives for the next three years. And I'm really excited to say that one of the elements in workforce is the strategic plan for DEA but embedded in that is the requirement of inclusion being a metric for selection, evaluation and advancement of our managers and leaders and holding them accountable and having consequences for not delivering on those on that value is really critical for the consequences. We're still figuring that out. So curious. Yeah, but I think, you know, before, but uh um what when, as we're rolling this out, you know, giving leaders the tools of what, what do we mean by inclusive behaviors, defining that for them being clear about it and then giving them the guidelines, they need to be able to exhibit those behaviors. And then I think the consequence is, you know, it comes down to salary, you know, it, how does it have an impact on your, on your conversation with your manager about your, you know, your, your raise in the next year? Your performance, right? Evaluation, your raise, your raise is lower or what have you, you get a different target. Yeah. Fascinating. OK. Um We already are talking so much um and giving so much substance. I wanted to see if anyone already is ready with a question and if so I'd love to start hearing from the audience. I know it's early, it's the first session of the day and on the main stage. But if people have questions so far for or uh something to add to our Panelist, happy to go to the audience. Wonderful. Hi, Darcy Forrest. Um I'm wondering if you have um if you're building into the culture, just how are you educating on D E I? Uh So I love hearing about it in terms of your performance. But are there programs? How are you just educating the general workforce about D E I and A? That's a great question. Yeah. So prior to me joining JPL, JPL had already had a pretty robust set of trainings that were opt in around bystander training, inclusive leadership and a ally ships, practicing ally ship, which are all really great trainings. Uh What I'm doing as a part of the roll out of strategy is for any we call them division leaders. So division managers who manage, you know, several 100 people and have multiple leaders underneath them, any of them who are raising their hand and saying we want to learn more. We want to really embed this in our work. I'm actually, I'm designing uh essentially a package of learnings for them that's tailored to their organizational need. Given the fact that JPL is so decentralized and has so many different kinds of leaders and people from both business as well as technical. I felt like it was really important to create that sort of customized learning experience. So I'm taking a package of research, insights, making them practical and actionable and tied to the strategic plan. Um and then facilitating dialogues with them um about how do they apply this to their own organizational setting? How big is JP L? Tell everybody about almost 7000 people and how many of those are managers? Roughly about 808 100 That's a lot of people to roll out, right? Learning and make sure people are. But I'm going with the I, uh I have a mentor of mine um in this space and she always says in this work, you have to go where the doors are open. So I'm going first with the people who are raising their hand and saying we want to be first in line for this, let us be your guinea pigs. I love them and then they can help spread and, and exact each other people. Nicole. How about you? Same question. Uh I have the, the benefit of, of working at N L I where we've been able to develop a lot of our own uh you know, IP around um best practices as it relates to um you know, diversity and inclusion. So um we've made that all available to our employees, but in addition to that, we're redesigning our own internal um uh D E I strategy so that we can add some additional resources for them in terms of training as well. And do you have an example of resources or training um in terms of, of, of how we would share those out? Um So training around ally around decision making and mitigating bias in decision making around how to demonstrate inclusive behaviors on a day to day basis, just daily acts of inclusion. Um So we're talking about all those things. I love that. Yeah. So um just to take a little, a little different tack for a moment, representation matters. I'm sure everyone here can agree for both of you. What is a favorite program or event at your organization that has highlighted the contributions by people of an underrepresented demographic go? Um I'm really excited to say that um after uh President Biden, you know, May Juneteenth, a national holiday. JP L took that as a um as a beacon to um institutionalize that it through an event that we launched last year um in partnership with our Black employee resource group. And in our first um inaugural event, you know, we, we brought in um oh L A uh uh an L A restaurateur um who's Black to provide a meal for all of our, we call them communities of inclusion, all of our employee resource groups. Um And then we had an event where we had speakers from the community. We had an artist in residence who did um uh like a living um art installation in on our mall um lab leadership spoke and we closed the event with everyone doing the electric slide, including the director. Um I hope you have a video of this. We do. It was amazing. Um um And that really, actually, and then, you know, um several months later, we even did um when we finally got paid parental leave as part of our benefits package, uh We uh our new lab director um helped us host a dance party on dancing at that is one of my take away from this channel. You can really dance it that a lot of dancing. I love that Nicole. Do you have an example of how you've worked on um elevating under represented groups at your organization? I certainly can't um compete with dancing and, and uh the painting in the mall U F S. Yeah. Um You know, fortunately we have a fairly diverse workforce at N L I. Um and we're always working toward making sure that underrepresented voices are um elevated. And so, um you know, regularly, we invite members of our own team to speak uh during our weekly podcast. And um so we just recently did one that I was a part of on intersectionality and impostor syndrome and that was at the tail end of Women's History Month. And so we, we try to do that on a very regular basis. So I would, I would say that's probably my favorite, but um I'm, we're looking for more opportunities to do more things like that. I love that. Yeah, I just wanted to see if there was another burning question in the audience. I see there are a few hands right here. You just introduce yourself and ask your questions. Good morning. I'm Sherry hick from climate impact partners. One of the things our team is really pushing us to is put our money where our mouth is meaning like what targets are we setting and what are we willing to communicate externally? And I just wondered, how have you thought about that? And I think we all know some of this data is even challenging. How do we think about measuring D E? And I, and I'd love to hear what you're doing and, and where you think the opportunities are for us to lead. Thank you. Um, when you say, uh, measuring targets, you mean in terms of uh, targets for D E I, how are you measuring? Yeah. So I think the, uh, the initial assessment for that is so important, important because, um, you will set your targets based on, um, what's in the organization, right? What voices are currently underrepresented or have you identified where there are areas that, um, there are voices that are missing. And so you'll set your targets against that. Um And then in terms of what you're willing to communicate, being, being prepared to communicate regularly and often about your progress against the E I is going to keep you accountable to making sure that you're working towards those targets. So just, you know, being open about it is going to be part of the, the strategic plan. Yeah, so at JPL, what we did was we first started, we took a hard look at our historical data to really understand where those gaps were and evaluated that against the potential workforce population. So, you know, where is their opportunity, opportunity, where are we missing the mark and then that really guided our both our strategic goals as well as our strategic strategic priorities. So we've been, we're being really laser focused. So we're specifically saying that in the next year, we want to focus on increasing the number of uh increasing the number and retaining, increasing, sorry, increasing our hires and re and tension of Black engineers, uh increasing the number of women in senior technical leadership roles. Um And then additionally, um increasing psychological safety in our teams. So, um so we're, and so we're working on building out those metrics for our leaders and managers so that they can have their own dashboard to really see what their progress is against their peers, love using the data. We have another question here. Hi, I'm Stephanie Lewis. Um from her campus media, I was curious how you think about calling out certain work initiatives, things that you're doing as kind of our D E I work our D E I initiative, you know, this D E I workshop, we're hosting versus feeling like, you know, D E I are core values of us as a company and they're embedded in everything that we do. I think we're kind of trying to figure out at first in the last few years, it was, here's our D E I and here's what we're doing. And now we're starting to feel like if this is our D E I work, is this our non D E I work should just everything have D E I embedded and, and how you strike that balance. Yes. So, so briefly, go ahead. Yes, everything should have the E I embedded, right? It should just be part of the ways of working of the organization. So maybe initially when you're not, when you're just sort of um beginning that D E I journey and you're trying to get people aligned to what your goals are and understanding what the, what the behaviors are that you're expecting. Then you can say this is how we're, we're measuring, this is our D E I strategy. Um But ultimately, you want that to be just woven through all of your ways of working. I think, you know, a final word briefly. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's about um getting that buy in and commitment from the top. Who, who can say uh unequivocally that this is a, this is a commitment and this is critical to the success of our organization. And then, and that gives you the mandate to really embed the strategy um into the business. Perfect. Thank you so much, both of you for those wonderful insights. There was so much more. I hope we was hoping to get to, but um it was such a rich conversation as it was so. Thank you so much.

Sarah Kunst, Founder and General Partner, Cleo Capital
Vanessa Pham, Co-founder and CEO, Omsom
Dayna Quanbeck, Chief Operating Officer and CFO, Rothy’s
Moderator: Polina Pompliano, Founder, The Profile; Deputy Director, Live Events, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - The Svb Fallout 

Sarah Kunst, Founder and General Partner, Cleo Capital
Vanessa Pham, Co-founder and CEO, Omsom
Dayna Quanbeck, Chief Operating Officer and CFO, Rothy’s

Friday, March 10th, 2023 will be a day that many in the tech industry will never forget. Silicon Valley Bank, one of the most prominent lenders for startups collapsed that day when it happened. Silicon Valley Bank was the second largest bank in US history to fail. And less than two months later on May 1st S V B's demise was eclipsed by that of First Republic Bank which is now the second largest bank failure after Washington Mutual take that in three of the four largest bank collapses in history have taken place in the last two months. This has left founders with many fears and concerns as they navigate the future of capital investing and the diversification of company funds. Our next panelists will share their experiences as they have navigated the last two months. Sarah Kunst is the managing director at Cleo Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that invests in pre seed and seed stage tech companies. Vanessa Pham is the co founder and CEO of Amum, an Asian soft starter kits company that was banking with Silicon Valley Bank during the crisis. And Dana Klom back a former banker who weathered the 20 the 2008 financial crisis and is now Chief Financial Officer at Roy's, the washable and sustainable shoe company. They will be interviewed by fortunes deputy editorial director and founder of the profile Polina Pompano. Hi, everyone. Uh Welcome. So I want to start by quickly going to each of you and asking if you had money locked into Silicon Valley Bank and what your first reaction was when you heard the news that Thursday morning. Um Yeah, so the funny thing is it was like sort of schrodinger's money because we used a sweep account. And so technically, it was all with Bny Melo except you could only get to it through SCB and SCB was like hiding under the desk because they didn't want anybody to take money out. And so I'm telling my LP S like, technically, unless B N Y Mellon goes down, we're fine. And meanwhile, I'm like laying on my kitchen floor thinking the world is over. So there's a little bit of both. Wow. Yes, we had all of our funds with S V V and, you know, as a woman of color run brand, I definitely felt, you know, who's gonna, who's gonna have our back during this and immediately, you know, how am I gonna make payroll on Monday was the biggest priority you had all of your money with all of our funds? Yeah, so I had diversified cash parked at SVB and that was a heartbreaking moment because you think you're doing the right thing by diversifying and parking cash to keep it safe. And I was at my daughter's preschool with lots of other venture, people, everybody on their phones saying, oh, my gosh, can you get to a branch? Can you get a cashier's check for $40 million? So, you know, I think it was a little bit different. My experience is a little different from Vanessa's in that I didn't have to, you know, worry about payroll. But um, you know, that nest egg thinking that that was at risk was disheartening. Yeah. And Vanessa given that all of your funding was locked into this account. What was the very first thing that you did when you found out it was in there? Yeah. So the first thing we did was talk to our investors and get their perspective and we heard and what was their perspective? Everything under the sun, depending on who you spoke to. And that just really spoke to the uncertainty of the situation is that, you know, folks whose full time jobs are really focusing on getting capital in the hands of the companies that they're supporting, didn't really know how to navigate it either. Um And so we had to take in a lot of opinions and ultimately decide what was best for us. And so we opened a new bank account, multiple new bank accounts as soon as we could to try to get the money out, but you essentially could not get it out until that next Monday, uh, until we could not get it out. So we, we opened a new bank account, we initiated a wire and then we found out on that Friday that the money did not make it out in time. And so over the course of the weekend, that's when we were really scrambling to figure out. Ok, how do we make payroll? How do we, you know, continue to invest in inventory? We're about to launch a whole new product line. How do we make sure that comes to life when the, you know, investment in that inventory is happening Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. And, and practically speaking, because a lot of the people here may be founders or ceos, how did you communicate that to the employees? How did you say, hey, by the way, I don't know if I can make payroll, I mean, I can speak to that. So um the first thing I did was email my investors with kind of this is our action plan. The second thing I did was email our team and I basically let them know that with the money, we would be having come in from our recent sales that is going to go straight to their payroll. And so we would actually be making payroll, that's our first priority. And from there, we don't really know what's gonna happen. But like on Monday, you will see your paycheck and that was just very important to us. Clear communication. Sarah is an investor. There was so much confusion. I mean, I saw it with my founder friends and VC friends. Like, how did you? Because there was, there were two parties right? There was like, take all your money out, send it to us like we'll figure it out. And then there was the other camp that was like, leave it in. They were trying to quell the panic. How did you advise your founders? So, you know, when I started to hear, rumblings of sort of, you know, SCB had never been a bank that was on par with AJ or, you know, a huge bank. They were a small regional bank and that was fun if they were sponsoring your party. But you also kind of knew they were a small regional bank. And so when I started to hear rumblings that week, you know, I started with looking at one interesting thing different for C P G type companies, but for most startups is they don't actually have that much money at the precede, right? So you raise a million bucks, you immediately start paying out your lawyer, your payroll everything, 250 Ks, you know, BC insurance insured. So at any like kind of random moment you have, you know, call it probably like less than 500 K, maybe even a quarter million. So for those really early age companies, you know, ping them and most of them were like, some of them didn't use FCB, the ones that did, there wasn't a huge amount of risk. And so, you know, some of them were using sweep accounts, but very few people were using sweep accounts or money market accounts just given the situation with the interest rates where there had been very little yield to get. And so, you know, there was a range of things, the bigger companies that was sort of the scarier piece for them because a lot of them had, I mean, I think was it Roku that had like $300 million just sitting in an SUV bank account? Like not earning any interest, not at all protected and like via to that CFO but like Yike. Right. So like there was, there were companies that had a lot more exposure and even my companies that had, you know, mil millions and millions. And so, you know, with those companies, when I asked them, hey, how are you doing? Their immediate response was, oh, we've already started to move our money, our big investors want us to move it. You know, we are moving and, and you know, you don't, you owe loyalty to your team, you owe loyalty to your investors to your customers. You don't owe loyalty to a bank. That's only job is to keep your money safe when it turns out that like they were a little bit too busy vacation in Hawaii to keep your money safe. Dana. Um, as the CFO of what were the short term fires you were trying to put out? And how did you kind of try to maintain a sense of calm with the executives, with the employees? Well, it was mostly with my board. Right, because we had done a, a large primary round last year. And, um, how large was it? It was a $200 million primary round. And so, um, I think I'm in a little bit of a different situation from somebody that's very early stage and maybe had, you know, six months of runway. So I had, um, you know, I think for us it was like being patient knowing you had done the right thing. You had done nothing wrong, multiple calls with my board, you know, accounts were frozen, you couldn't move it. Um The irony is that we also had, uh, safe cash parked at First Republic. Uh, so, uh, what you should take away is that I, I picked the wrong safe bank. Um, but we had our concentration account at JP Morgan. And, um, you know, I, I, I think that Friday and Saturday, it was so, you know, there's so much anxiety because nobody knew. Is this done? Are we, are we done? Are we getting it back? We've worked so hard to raise the round, you know, and, and to lose it this way, I was like, at least let me blow it on, you know, whatever, uh, something else. Uh, this is not the way you want to lose money. But, you know, I think everybody sort of rallied around. There was a sense of calm, I think in Silicon Valley, or at least in San Francisco as people waited it out until we got the news on Sunday night. There was nothing else really you could do. Yeah. Huge lesson. and like, what can you control? I'm curious, are there any of you here who had money locked in E V? Oh, wow! Ok. Quite a few. Um So if you have any questions for our panel, please raise your hand and we'll get a mic to you and I'll come back to you uh in a minute. So uh Vanessa, you went a little viral with your post. Vanessa posted something on Instagram that was very, very frank. Um She showed screenshots of slack messages and text messages with her sister where she was like, what the is going on. Um But to me when I was looking on Twitter, there was a lot of um kind of villain organization of some of the founders. It was people almost cheering for the demise of some of these people. Like you should lose your money. You have so much money and it was like the the lack of understanding of what a start up or a venture backed company is. How, what is the reaction that you saw when you went viral with that. Yeah. Yeah. So for a little bit of context, um my sister and I are co founders, we run an Asian food brand and for years, we launched three years ago, we've been building a deeply intentional community where vulnerability Candor is at the heart of the brand. And so when this was all going on, like in the midst of it Friday night, we realized we weren't going to get the money. It didn't hit the new bank account. Saturday morning, we woke up and we said, you know what, we're, we're paying our employees, we need to get as much cash as possible. Let's just tell our community that we've built, we have over 150,000 people that are supporting us. Let's just tell them going on. Someone advised you against that, right? Yeah, we had multiple folks just saying like, hey, you don't know what's happening. Like, are you, do you want your company to be seen in this light? And ultimately, ultimately, we decided, like leaning into community is core to our values and is the only place we can really look to in a time of complete uncertainty and existential threat frankly. So we penned an open letter to our community about the collapse and what was going on and what we were concerned about what we were feeling. Um And we shared that on Saturday in the middle of the weekend and yeah, that post was just unbelievable in terms of the response it went viral, had over half a billion impressions. Um folks from all over were rearing it and I read that thousands of the re shares because I was very curious, what about this post really hit this, you know, struck this chord and a lot of it was to your point, this conversation of like, look, this is how it's impacting businesses. It's not just the businesses that you think. Um you know, like massive tech businesses that can't, that are untouchable in a sense. Um It's also small businesses, it's food businesses, it's women, color led businesses. Um And, and I think that's really what folks wanted to highlight and share. And did it help your bottom line? Were people ordering people? Certainly ordered. People certainly shared. It was, it was a massive kind of uh moment for us where we're like, oh, we kind of turned some lemons into lemonade. Any questions? Hi. Oh my God. Um Amanda is co-founder of sequel. I too had a lot of money in S C B actually all of it. Um And I ended up having some weird conversations with people. So for Vanessa, I'm curious about those close to you, your friends. How did you educate, I guess is the word, the people around you that really didn't understand what was happening to smaller businesses. I saw somebody post on my Instagram like a friend and was like, down with tech founders. I hate them all. Like, I hope they're poor and know what it feels like. And I was like, I guess you don't want innovation. That's cool. Um So I'm, I'm curious about how you open that communication with people that were close to you. Yeah. Ultimately, I just like, sent a post to people. It really laid it all out. It was multiple slides and walked, walked them through the whole experience of what we were coming up against like what this meant for our business. And I also did many, many interviews that I shared with folks as well where I told people that when these massive systems fail us, the people that feel it the most are the people that are otherwise already most marginalized. And so there are so many statistics about how hard is to raise as a woman, as a woman of color. And so when it's when it comes to asking V CS to, you know, write an additional check to help you weather the storm or be a bridge to whenever that F B B money hits, those are the businesses that are going to feel it the most. And so, yeah, I definitely try to use my platform um as best I could to speak on this had a chance to go on CNN prime time and NBC and do multiple interviews and, and yeah, I really just tried to highlight the realities of what happens when these systems fail us. Yeah. And I wouldn't piggy back on the, the other piece of it I think is that there is something real there to that frustration like we are not Jason Callaghan and I thank God for that every day. But the reality is that we do live in a society where, you know, there is massive inequality. We do live in a society where it feels like five rich dudes get to buy whatever toy they want and like ruin democracy or very least Twitter. And so, you know, there's this, this frustration that you are hearing because that who's platformed and that is who controls a lot of money. And then, you know, we were talking backstage like Pacwest, which is another regional bank and like dear God, I am not starting a bank run right now, but Pacwest, another regional bank, it's being treated as a meme stock. And so when you have actual banks and actual people's entire life savings being traded like a meme stock because the guys, you know, on Wall Street bets subreddit want to do what they think that the guys on Wall Street probably are doing like there are some like macro problems in our society that I think this helped lay bare. Um And you know, I think it's a moment for tech to be a little bit introspective about what perception are we putting out there that people are cheering for our downfall even though it means that the janitors and you know, the, like everybody who works at these companies doesn't get payroll gets laid off gets hurt. Like there's a problem in the tech world that has to be addressed. At some point around that you have a question there. Hi, I'm Nama Roberts. Um, many of us in the room are, are CEO S but also advisors to the C suite. And I'm curious when you all were dropping kids off at preschool, the moment was happening, your phone is blowing up. What's one pragmatic tool, resource person that you wish you would have had in that moment that you didn't call your lawyer. Always call your lawyer. They're a great place to start before you start to. Like, for example, you talked about moving your money and I had to end up moving a bunch of money to my lawyer's escrow account because you can't as a venture fund, move your money around any way you want as a founder, you can't just send me your money and I'll hold it like call your lawyer because a lot of the things that you do immediately to try to solve a problem turns out or may be sort of totally illegal and you could be in trouble for them later on, I have one person on my board and then I am that person on two other boards that I that I wanna advise on. And one that I sit on that is my go to gut check. Um, and this gentleman for happened to be in Singapore. I called him. I said, here's the situation, let's work through it. Called him probably 10 times. But I think finding that confidant, I had him. So I'm not answering your question but making sure you've got that one point person that you can be transparent with, that you can work through things that you can talk it out because sometimes there is not a clear answer and you've got a pro con pro you know, your path forward. I have two. Um I, although I did have them to some extent, uh two sides, emotional and practical on the emotional side, somebody to tell you, especially for first time founders, you did nothing wrong. Like even just hearing those words, I was like, oh I, you're right. I trusted a bank to store my funds like of course, um but somebody had to tell me that because I was writing these emails to my investors almost like apologizing um or feeling like I was doing something irresponsible. So that was the first one of my advisers and mentors just texted me that like, hey, just, no, you really did nothing wrong. Um And then the second piece is somebody who either is going to step up and provide bridge capital or help you get it and really be alongside you to say, hey, these are your options. Like if you're looking at short term loans. This is what I, you know, I'm helping you do research on them. I'm like, you know, reaching out to folks that I know, like someone who's really tactically working with you to solve the biggest problems. Perfect way to close this up. Thank you so much.

Ginni Rometty, Former Chairman and CEO, IBM; Co-chair, OneTen; Author, Good Power (Virtual)
Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Good Power: Leading Positive Change 

For this next session. We're so excited to be joined virtually by someone who has graced the top of Fortune's most powerful women list for multiple years. And former chairman and CEO of IVM Ginia Ratti, since her retirement from IBM Rometty has spent the last few years joining the boards of companies like JP Morgan Cargill and the Brookings Institution. She is also the co chairman for 1 10, an organization focused on closing the opportunity gap for Black talent. And if that's not enough, she's recently written a book entitled Good Power, Leading Positive Change in our Lives. Work and World. She'll be interviewed by Fortune's editor at large, Mihal Levron. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage. Right, Jenny. Hello, are you there, Jenny? There you are. Um It's great to see you. Um I am going to start with a little bit of a long winded question for you. So bear with me and audience, bear with me. But um I first met you nearly 10 years ago. I profiled you in Fortune and I remember walking down the hallway at I B M headquarters in with you and there's this great series of gold framed portraits of I B MS CEO S, all of your predecessors at the time. Um All male. There are quite a few because I B M has been around for more than 100 years. And now there's a portrait of you in that hallway and I know you didn't set out with your career to shatter ceilings necessarily, but you did. And so I'm just curious, what did that unveiling feel like? What did it mean to you? Uh Well, since the time, well, first I should thank you for having me. And also just to comment to the last panel which I got to listen to. I thought the women did a great job. They were both introspective and practical in their comments. So allow me to say it and that no disrespect. I'm not there in person. I've crisscrossed the country three times this week, so I just couldn't do it. I'm getting old. So uh here I am now, pursue that point. Um It was funny, I went back for the portrait veiling, you know, it takes a while and some people think that's a corny uh tradition. I was the night CEO and there's something to be said for tradition. And when I went back, joined me for it and it did connect my past in my future together. And it just reminds you in so many start ups in the room that when the business has a purpose, uh You do really feel that weight of stewardship. And so in that moment, I, I really felt this sense of both. I had gratitude to run the company, but also like uh sharing with the others that are still, that's in front of them just that, you know, never, never take for granted that responsibility. So it, it was, it was a much more meaningful moment than I had ever imagined it would be. And I love, by the way that uh when you posted this on linkedin, Mary Barra commented and Karen Lynch, so uh good, good group of folks there. Um This is a good segue to your book, Good Power. And I uh for those who are not familiar with it, I want you to just define for us what is Good Power, what does it mean to you? Well, it, it really got and at the moment how you solve them could matter as much as what you do. And to me, it is about doing tough stuff but doing it in a good way, in a positive way. So not through fear, but through instead respect. Um It is not about polarizing people, it's about celebrating pro progress and it is about loving tension and loving conflict, which, you know, if people loved it, we'd probably solve more problems versus pity against each other. So that's kind of my short definition. OK, since you brought it up, um One of the things that you've talked about for, for quite a while and you talk about in the book is that growth and comfort, don't coexist. Um, having uncomfortable conversations is hard for. I'm pretty sure everybody in the room, most people don't run towards it. So, what have you learned over the years in your positions of leadership and your time at I B M about how to embrace them, how to go ahead and have those uncomfortable conversations when they need to happen. Yeah. And it didn't even, uh, it's, it's uncomfortable conversations or it could be something you're angry about or bully a person. It could be an issue. And to me, I, I observed by watching someone one day and I saw this person who, whenever there was a problem, they always wanted to say I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll go work on it. I thought I started watching. I thought, why does she always volunteer for the problems? And I started to witness that a, the problems were never as you always think they are at the beginning. Um, b that she always came out with a stronger relationship on the other side. Almost always. I mean, there are some bad situations but nine out of 10 and it started making me say, you know what? I actually think this is a good thing. And so I, I would start to go after it because otherwise it takes so much energy from you and when you're doing anything hard, a business starting something up, you got to really conserve the negative and positive energy, you know, reduce the negative stuff. And so you a lot of positive. So I found it is a really important way to build resilience was to go. Actually, I would start to look for those conflicts, right? And, and by the way, almost the alternate title of the book Growth and Comfort. Never Coexists because you guys know I've been on that stage many times and I've said it a million times and you know, the story it comes from, but um that was almost my alternate title. But I, I really believe it's one of the biggest things to run toward conflict is a way to build resilience. OK? I wanna talk a little bit more about um sort of the, the introductory chapters of your book. And again, for those who don't know, um you really opened up about your early years, um your childhood, how your family shape you and some of the resilience that came from that. And I was so struck by the fact that you come from this long line of women who have been widowed or abandoned at a, at a pretty young age as moms as, as and became single moms, um including your, your own mother, of course, your father abandoned the family. Um, you were the oldest of the kids and really helped raise your siblings. And I want to know, I mean, I guess a couple of things. Um Why did you decide to open up about this in a much bigger way than you had before during your, your tenure at I B M? And what do you think are the biggest ways that this background, this family history shaped you as a leader? That's a great question. And because you've known me a while and I spent decades not talking about these things and to be honest, when I first, I wasn't going to write a book at all. So those of us that know me would know. I've never talked about it. And as I was retiring, people said, but you know, you've had such a unique journey. There is a lot people could learn. And at first I was like, well, I started to mold with the idea and I really wanted to write about this topic of skills, first hiring for skills, not just degrees. And I started there. And then people were like, oh, that's a little bit boring to just go right to facts. And it forced me into this very slowly. They forced me into this. The only way people learn is through stories and being vulnerable. And there's a reason you believe these things. And so to your point when I've been raised by strong women, like women, I just saw on the stage a long line, my great grandma was the last person in her family to leave. It was Belarus at the time in the World War. She would never speak English. She would clean bathrooms in the Wrigley building at night third shift and she would put every dime she made, we were just talking about money and banks into us. Savings bonds. I mean, little did we know one day those bonds would be the only reason we'd have a car. And then my grandma, as you said, twice widowed and she would hand make lampshades. And then my mom at the age of 34 my dad would abandon us. I would happen to walk into the garage and hear it. And he would say to my mother, I don't care about you. I don't care about any of you. I don't care if you work in the street and I watched him turn around and leave and that would be it. And my mom had never worked a day outside our home. She had never gone to have a job. So, what did I learn? The three biggest things? So, after all these hard first, I did learn may be outdated, but that hard work always made something better. I watched my grandma, my great grandma, my mom, fine. And then my mom went back and got a little bit of education, got an hourly job, a little bit more, a little better job. She never did get a degree, but she got enough to get us off of food stamps and off of welfare and to keep a home and that taught me aptitude and access for two different things. And it's a really important point, meaning, you know, the world kind of gods spreads all of aptitude pretty evenly, but um not so much in this world and my mom wasn't dumb. She was pretty smart, but she never had the opportunity to get those kinds of education. And then the other part which you kind of wrote about this when you, when you and I first met and you did that cover story. But I said my mom taught me not by her words, but by watching that never let someone else define who you are, you know, only you define who you are and those would be, oh, I should say alas because this is ironic. I, I felt God no matter what I do, I am going to be independent financially. I don't have to, I never want to rely on another person, another man and I just had my 43rd wedding anniversary with my husband. So, you know, I feel like I married for a different reason than my mom. Right? Great. Um So I, I, I, I wonder, you know, in, in light of everything you just said and, and again, you know, I think we both mentioned that you weren't open about a lot of this background while you were ceo um what advice do you have to the leaders in the room on how to be strong, how to be authentic but also be vulnerable at the same time because it does impact others. It it impacts in really, really profound ways. So what advice do you, what takeaways do you have? Uh I guess my biggest takeaway was um probably the greatest thing as a leader was to be authentic over time. And I, and I'll always remember a sort of a saying once said to me that the leaders job is to paint reality and give hope. That turns out it's actually of Napoleon who said it, but that, you know, painting reality is facts, giving hope is emotion. And it's in the book, kind of, one of my biggest learnings from people was to build belief in something you got to speak to someone's head and heart at the same time. And so I, if you could just always remember, and now the only way to do that is to tell stories, you know, and you have to be vulnerable. So I would learn over time to do it at work, not everything because of course, even people who knew me well and read the book and like, I didn't know all of that. And I'm like, well, I didn't dwell on all of it. But the, I think that part and, and honestly, I think I felt better even leading in that way. And that's what I mean by good power. I think if you can speak to people's heads and hearts at the same time, the followership is, is quite large. And, and that to me is probably one of the biggest signs of success in this world now is followership. And another thing you were very open about in the book is the fact that not everything at I B M while you were ceo went, you know, splendidly, right? Um And you made a couple of very, very big bets. Um And it was a time of transformation, I mean, in a lot of ways I B M is still transforming itself again and there was declining revenue, you were dealing with a lot of different shifts. Technology was, you know, is still moving more, much more rapidly than before. So talk a little bit about just what you learned about communicating to a very large workforce during such a tough time. Um especially at a company that was used to being the top dog and then was looking at, you know, quite a few quarters of declining revenue. How did you lead through that? What do you think worked? What didn't work? Yeah. Well, oh, boy, I do write, I, I write a lot about it, right, because I feel some of it is distance you get now and some of it comes with stewardship. Um And because people, my mother would often say she'd watch TV, and she'd say, oh, you know, boy, these are some tough interviews or my little nephew once said to me, he said, auntie, does that upset you when they say bad things and about I B M or you. And I said to him, Michael, it's ok. Well, first I told my mother just turn it off for now. And then I said to him, I said I'm doing what I have to do. And I think that's the difference when you're over 100 years. I knew some of what I had to do would be really hard and I was never a victim of it, just like my mom was never a victim of my dad. You know, we each get handed our challenges of a moment and, and so some of what I learned, big bets I placed, I mean, many of the entrepreneurs in the audience play big bets boy, knowing the difference between when you're scaling or making a market, they're profoundly different and what it is that you do. And certainly with a I, you know, we were making a market that didn't exist at the time. I see so many of the issues now, right? We were exactly right, which is one decade early and uh that there hadn't yet been trust built in that technology. And so I feel, you know, I'm very honest about, I say, look, get comfortable that make decisions you may not see the benefit of. And so things that we did, right? Like Red Hat, which has now been the foundation for I B MS really return to growth. Um They just may take time, but probably the biggest lesson I write about. And I think it's relevant for anyone in the audience. I know this is the next gen group is this idea of when you're under so much pressure to become something, it's to also know what should change, but what should not change. And you know, what part of you has to endure. Even if it's modernized, I would get in trouble when I would get away from that because the pressure is so intense on you to succeed or become something else. And when I would go too far from what we were at our essence. So my, my, one of my big learnings is, you know, really know what you are in service of, be in service of something and have it really firm in your head and then be willing to change everything else. But then not that no one has to endure. And the other big learning for people in the room is you grow in your size. Is that like I said, there's one thing about what you make, but then it's how work gets done. And I would underestimate for the first few years. The how part at a huge scale. Meaning I said, I would tell people, come on, I look, I saw it happening and I knew we weren't prepared and I'm like faster, faster, faster. And I would look in their eyes and I could see they work. They were just getting tireder and things weren't faster, you know, and I would be like, ok, people don't wake up going. God, let's be slow today. I mean, they don't. And I said, OK, that is, you know, leadership's job to change how work is done. Meaning some of basic, you know, layers, levels, decisions, etcetera. But the other part are like tools and methods and processes and back then people didn't do agile with a half a million people or, or design thinking and we would have to go do all that and start to pay people for skills, not for just, you know, what work they did. So I, I say it's really underrated to think about how work gets done in your company versus just what it is you're making well and speaking of some public criticism or, or probing questions, uh the, the headline for the cover story I wrote about you back then was, can IBM be cool again? And I know in the book, you said that made you cringe. So I apologize for that. But, but um but I wonder like to, to your point. Um is that even the right? Is that even a question that needs to be asked? Because if you're looking at the, the DNA of the company and what makes this, the, what has made the company strong in the past? Is that something that you needed to worry about that when I say cringe because part of the book is all about. Um And this came up in the last session about living in a gray area and that, you know, the book is all about tensions, right? Because I think that is the world we live in. There are no clear, good and bad answers to almost anything of importance. It's always, you know, you could be serving one and then you hurt the other. I mean, it didn't matter what decision I made. There was always multiple stakeholders, always a good and a bad reason for everything. Attention. And so to your question, it gets to that point when I say cringe the cooler, I would try to make us the worst. That was because actually knowing in your heart, you know, this is one of my big learnings. I, I, I tell the story in the book because, you know, Arnie who Marriott and Arnie has passed out, but he was a good friend of mine and we were getting into marketing software and marketing on the cloud. And I can remember calling Arnie saying a um you know, I'm very, you can, I'm a very aggressive competitor and I knew him well, we'd grown up together and I'm like, I don't understand why we're not winning this. And he's like, Jenny, why do you even care about that? He's like, you know, I rely on you for property management, you know, reservation systems like that. Why do you care? And, and I always remember it because I said to myself about to be cool. Right. I'm like, you're right. That, that what we are is mission critical. I realize that's not always what a consumer sees and we live in this consumer world. And so some of the many companies in here, very consumer, but there are others that are not in kind of that knowing what you are. And like I say, even if to be modern, modernized, that to me was a really big, big, big learning to me. So in some ways, that question was a really good question. Yeah, see now that I'm older and more wiser, I could say that not, I can say this is a, this was a very insightful question because you know, you, you want to be respected but cool is not, you know, and you want people to want to work for you and believe in your purpose, right? But you don't necessarily need to become something you're not. Well, it made for a very cool cover and Jenny, it's always a pleasure talking to you. So thank you so much for being here with us even virtually and, and sharing your insights. Thank you. Hope it was helpful. Wish I could do this.

Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group, Meta (Facebook) 
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE


MPW Next Gen 2023 - Meta’s Next Gen Ad-Ecosystem 

Nicola Mendelsohn, Head of Global Business Group, Meta (Facebook) 
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Welcome back. I hope you all had a chance to reset and make some new connections. If anyone's still finishing up breakfast and your sessions and networking. Come on in. We're ready. Um Now it's back to our main stage conversations after meta's revenue declined for the first time in its 18 year history. Mark Zuckerberg dubbed 2023 the year of Efficiency for Meta in February of this year, Nicola Mendelson was promoted to become one of meta's most senior female executives. She leads its global Business Group, overseeing the company's advertising business and technology while rising the ranks at Facebook over the past decade. She's dealt with extraordinary personal challenges including a little known form of cancer. Now, as she steps into her new role amid a gloomy economic climate for advertisers, she sees opportunities ahead for Meta in A I powered advertising messaging shopping and more. Let's welcome me as head of its global business group, Nicola Mendelson. Hi, Nicola. Good morning. Hi, so happy to be. Hello, everybody. I thank you everyone for coming back in and thank you for joining us, Nicola. Yeah. So you have been at Facebook for a decade. But you spent most of that time as Vice President of Europe, Middle East and Africa. And a few months ago, you were promoted to be head of medics Global Business Group. So can you tell us and explain a little what that job means? Yeah. Very happy to. So it's been a big change because here I am, I'm 51 years old now. And last year I was like, would you like to take on this global role? And I was like, yes, would you like to move to New York? Yes. So I'm having and you probably can tell that my accent means that I come from not New York or America. I come from Britain from London. And so lots of changes. But what it means is that I head up the global business for the company. I head up all the relationships that we have with anybody where we physically see people where we see our partners and also the business engineering teams as well. So very different from running Europe, Middle East and Africa. Yeah, big change. And of course, you're stepping into this more senior role at a difficult time for the company. Meta has laid off more than 20,000 workers amid this year of efficiency. Push as many companies have and looking back over the past year had three straight quarters of declining sales. Is there low morale in the workforce? And as you step into a new role like this. How can you combat that? Ok. So you've now asked me about 300 questions in one, let me feel some of those away. So we're actually just coming off um Q one earnings which were very good earnings, very strong earnings. If you look at um you know, the the size of the community, we now have 3.8 billion people that are coming onto our platforms every single month, we have three billion daily. And so actually our platforms and you know, the people coming on, it's the highest we've ever we've ever seen. Similarly, on the revenue side, we had our highest first quarter that we've ever seen as well. Yes, we are going through some changes as a business mark has dubbed this the year of efficiency. But what is at the heart of this is kind of almost getting us back to our roots, getting us back to being much more agile, much more nimble and being able to create and innovate new products in new and faster ways than we've done before. And we're already seeing that coming to coming to fruition. Yeah. How are you seeing that? Is that agility in progress now? Yeah, very much so. So if you look at the number of products that we're bringing, we're reviewing about 12 new products a month and just last week, we announced a whole load of new products from on the advertising side of the area that obviously that I love and I'm passionate about and this is really with, with A I at the heart of it. So last about August, last August we ran, we launched something called Meta advantage, which is a whole suite of products that has A I at its heart. And it's about really helping advertisers to do more with less, to be able to give stronger, you know, return on the advertising investments to reach people in new and innovative ways to measure in different ways and also to provide new creative options as well. So that's just one of the ways that I'm seeing some of the changes that we're seeing. You know, you mentioned the most recent earnings report which did see growth after a tough year leading up to that. Is that an indication of any strategies you've put into place? So I think we've been very focused on looking at how we can help advertisers get the returns that they want to see. And so, you know, I've been really pleased with the progress that we've made, especially on advantage, you know, the whole advantage suite of products, but also on some of the other areas like reels, which is our, our short form videos. I don't know about you, but I am loving reels. Are you loving reels people in the room? We're seeing a doubling of people sharing reels in the last six months and now two billion shares a day. So it shows you that people are really active and really enjoying kind of commenting, sharing and rearing. And I think about it, even in my, in my personal life, my daughter got engaged recently gay and both of our feeds have now completely changed. It's all about weddings, it's all about bridesmaids and our own individual feeds in our Instagram dms is like literally what flowers, what I've got some people nodding, who've also got daughters getting married or something. You know, it's all completely changed and a lot of that is being surfaced by A I because about 20% of the recommendations that people see is due to A I. Yeah, thank you, Nicola. I'll come to everyone for your questions in a moment. If you have anything, start thinking, I can talk about weddings but a new topic. Yeah, we can save that for after the networking chat. Um You know, you were promoted into this role after the exit of Martin Levine and of course her departure from Meta came following the departure throughout Silicon Valley of kind of a group of senior women, including Sheryl Sandberg. Looking back at Meta, you know, obviously there are a lot of other talented senior women at Meta. You have CFO, Susan Lee and other leaders as well. But does that worry you are there enough women rising in the ranks to take the baton from those who have recently left? So it doesn't worry me. I mean, Cheryl Mary or dear friends and, you know, one of the wonderful things of working at the company as long as I had is, you know, the close friendships that have been formed. But I think the testament to any great leader is the people that they leave behind and giving the runway for growth for those people as well. And so you mentioned Susan, but also Jen who heads up our legal, you know, chief legal officer, if I think about who is our head of product, I think of Maxine. You know, there's so many senior women, Angie who took over my role from me, Mia, so so many of us and so I met her has always been a fantastic place for diversity in all its guises. So I feel very proud of the work that the company does here and the amazing women we have. Yeah, thank you. Do we have any questions for Nicola? It's OK, we can come back. Thank you. Well, yes. Um Well, so some people here may not be familiar with your personal story. In 2016, you were diagnosed with a form of cancer called follicular lymphoma. It's a relatively little known form of blood cancer and it's currently considered to be incurable. You know, since then, you've been an advocate for families affected by this illness. And since then, you've also continued to rise the ranks at Facebook and now meta you know, what has motivated you to press on in your career and your life through such a challenging, personal period. Yeah. So cancer touches us all in different ways. But getting a diagnosis of an incurable cancer, which I did in 2016 is really challenging. And I know you're probably looking at me now thinking, well, she looks all right, what's going on? It's an unusual one in which, whilst I have no evidence of disease and I have had chemotherapy and I've had immunotherapy and I'm grateful to be. Well, it sort of exists on a molecular level, which we can't measure yet because we don't have the equipment to do so. And the typical person with follicular lymphoma will have between six and eight relapses in their lifetime. What motivated me is when you get a moment like that, I think you look at your life and kind of it gives you a moment to evaluate. But actually I think it was a practice that I had always done anyway in my life. And so I've got a great husband, I've got a great family community and I'm blessed and I love the job that I do. So when I actually looked around and gone, what should I, I love what I do. So I want to continue to do the things that I, that I do. And equally because I knew how fortunate I was. I also know how unfortunate many others are, especially many that are going through a diagnosis of follicular lymphoma. And so that's what led me to setting up a foundation in 2019. And our whole sole vision of mission is to, is to find a cure. So I'm determined to do that. Definitely. You know, what would you say? Oh, please, you know, you also founded, co founded a pledge called Working with cancer to help people experiencing health challenges and cancer in the workplace. What would you say to other women who face health challenges but feel they have to hide them at work. Yeah, definitely don't hide it because the pressure and stress of getting a health condition diagnosis is very, very stressful. If you add the stress on to that of not telling anybody in your workplace as well. Well, that's worse, right? Because you've got double stress and you definitely don't want that. So the reason we did the cancer, you know, working with cancer plus with Art Sadoon from publicist who also had had a cancer was a couple of reasons. One, we both realized when we went public with our diagnosis that very few senior leaders talked very openly about it. And so if you have people at the top that are not speaking openly, you create a whole kind of layers that go down where nobody feels comfortable talking about it. So getting it out, they're getting it open. And what we also found was that many companies actually do have good cancer care and treatment for employees. But people because they were nervous about talking about it didn't even go and ask about it. So our pledge is to try and sign up as many companies as possible and especially the large global companies to be able to say no, we want to make our workplaces a place where people can come with their illnesses and that we can provide the support. And I'm really proud of the fact that over 350 of the world's largest companies to date have signed to this pledge, which means millions and millions of people can feel more assured if they get such a diagnosis. So more work to do on this, but we're going to keep agitating. No, thank you. I want to check one more time if anyone has anything for Nicola, ok, we can keep going. You know, what are the things that an employer or boss should do when an employee comes and says that they have a diagnosis like this? So I think it's about um first of all listening, um I had a recent incident where this happened. Um and I can certainly empathize and I think people come to me because they understand that I can empathize on such a thing. But, but even if you can't make the space to listen, empathize as a human, which I know everybody would and then and take the cue from the person, see if they want to talk about it, see how you can be helpful, see if you can be supportive and just kind of give them the cotton wool that they need at that time where people are feeling the most vulnerable to be able to move forwards and, and continue with where they are. And then I was taught a really good phrase which is don't just say to people, how are you ask them, how are you today? And just putting it in the actual timing makes a real difference in terms of how people answer, answer that question. And it feels like it's genuine as opposed to we all just say, how are you? Yeah, fine. That's your answer. Yeah, it's a great tip. Um You know, another way that you really have, you know, brought your whole self to work over your career is that for much of your career, you worked a four day week and chose to take a pay cut and take that time to focus on raising your four Children. You said that, you know, clearly you were able to be extraordinarily successful in your career working those four days. But how did that looking back? How did that choice impact the direction your career has taken? Yeah. Well, it did impact because I was also offered CEO jobs at that time, which I didn't take because I didn't think I could do a good job, both for my family, but also for the, for the job as CEO at that time. And so I actively stopped doing that there was a book I read at the time, which was called On Ramps and Off Ramps, which really spoke to me, which is women and blending the whole how you work and how you don't at different times, what the impacts on your careers. And it's like at some points you're really pushing hard and at other points you might just pull back a little bit. But what I've also learned as I think back on that period is that I, I have four Children. Um, every time I went away and I took maternity leave coming in the UK six months, maternity leave is pretty standard. Now, I took full six months each time I actually grew as a person through that time, it gave me a different perspective. And if you grow as a person, it means that you grow as a leader as well in terms of what you come back on. So I'm proud of the fact that I've promoted many women over the years now on maternity leave because I could see the path that they were on. And I didn't believe in the, you've got to be present for another six months after you come back. If the person is good enough, it doesn't matter if they're on maternity leave or not, then they should, they should go forward. So, yeah, it was the right decisions for me at that time. Yeah. Hi. I think we have one question up here. Please stand up. And introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jill, uh CEO and co-founder of Motherly. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm gonna go back to the health concerns. Uh So I really appreciate the concept of if you see it, you can be it. And I think that leaders high in an organization, especially when it is visible as me, it's very important to be sharing health concerns. And as such, I was diagnosed with MS three months after launching motherly and as a venture backed organization and as a CEO as an actual executive raising venture dollars, I didn't feel and talked to legal counsel that I could share that in that first year or so because these things are often misunderstood. And so my question to you is being an employee is a little different and I have since been very open about what I've done. But would your advice be to others that maybe are in CEO positions that are, you know, the buck stops with them going out to raise venture dollars or working with investors? What would your advice be to them on how to share this in a way that doesn't impact the future of their business? Yeah. So I think it's a really important question and I certainly, I mean, I had, when I went public, I had a couple of ceos that said to me, I've got the same thing as you and I'm not telling anyone and I had people that were younger in career said the same thing which is, and they were in big companies saying I can't tell people I've got this because I think it means that they'll overlook me for promotion. I think that's probably true. I think there are probably companies or investors that probably wouldn't invest. Then the question has to be, are those the sorts of people that you want as your business partners? And the answer is probably no, because actually all of us as humans get things that come in our lives that we can never envisage and can never happen. Yes, you back a founder, but you also back the team and the vision that the founder has as well. So you look for the strength and the depth also. So that's how I would think about it. Now, it's an easy thing to say when, you know, you've had 30 years in industry, a harder thing to kind of get your head around when you're in your twenties and your thirties. But I absolutely believe that those principles remain true. And I think if you believe in yourself, you'll find the right partners and the right money or the right employer.

Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; Board Member, Qualcomm,
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her,
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Reaching Gender Parity On Boards 

Sylvia Acevedo, Girl Scouts of the USA
Jocelyn Mangan, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, California Partners Project
Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA; Board Member, Qualcomm
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Moderator: Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

Sylvia Acevedo, Former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA
Jocelyn Mangan, Founder and CEO, Him for Her 
Olivia Morgan, Co-founder and Board Chair, California Partners Project
Lindsey Stanberry, FORTUNE

In 2018, California was the first state to pass a law requiring publicly traded companies to have at least one female board member. And in 2021 NASDAQ announced that they would require listed companies to have at least two board members who are women and come from or come from another underrepresented group. While we did see progress made on boards in California with the number of companies with no female members dropping from 28% to 1%. Last year. The state court overturned the law with all of the economic uncertainty. Right now. Many fear that female leadership could stall today. We'll hear from board leaders and advocates on the importance of diversity on boards and how we as leaders can advocate for change to discuss how we can continue to make progress on corporate boards. I'd like to welcome Jocelyn Mangan founder and CEO of him for her and board member for Papa Johns International Wag Labs and Chow now Sylvia Oso, former CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA and board member at Rito and Qualcomm and Olivia Morgan co-founder and board chair for the California Partner project. They'll be interviewed by Fortune's executive editor Lindsay Stanbury, you all for joining us. Um As Emma mentioned in her intro, California passed the board law in 2018. At the same time, Black Rock also came forward and said that they wanted to see two women on all the boards that they're investing in. It's been five years then the law was struck down. Things are constantly in flux. Olivia. I wanted to kick it off with you to talk about how the law being struck down has changed things and what you're seeing with your research. Um Thank you. Um Thank you for having this conversation. I'm so glad we're jumping right in on the importance of a woman on board. Um The S B 26 is sort of a good news, slightly bad news story. The good news being, there was such an enormous transformation in the number of women on boards when the law was implemented from 15% of board members in California being female to over 33%. And the sort of trajectory like this from 700 something seats filled by women to um 2100. Um, the, the bad news and, and we're just putting these numbers out today is the last two quarters show, not only has that trajectory paused, which is maybe to be expected. I mean, it could only grow at this rate for so long, but there's actually been a little dip just in the two quarters since, um, the two quarters of numbers we have since the law was overturned. I'm curious, I am assuming many people in this audience want to be on board, maybe you already are on board. Can I take a poll? How many of you are already on board? Ok. A number. How many of you would like to be on board that are not yet? Ok. Um, just on a big part of what you do is help women find board seats. I'm curious, can you tell us a little bit about how the women in the audience can go about finding a board seat? Sure. I mean, today, the vast majority of board seats are filled through personal networks. Uh That's why we started this organization. And so some of the bias that I like to give is also to clarify when I say network. What I mean by that, which is the people who put people and ultimately make the decision about the board member is typically a CEO an active board member or non gov chair or an investor. So one of the most proactive things women can do is to make a list of the people that have those, those roles in your personal networks that you already know uh to reach out proactively to those people and express your desire to sit on a board to remind them what you bring to a board because these are people that may have known you from earlier in your career, for example, and then to ask to stay top of mind with those people, Sylvia, I there is often a, you know, an entry way, so to speak with women serving first and nonprofit boards. And then moving to for profit boards, you have had a very varied career but did serve as CEO of girl scouts and more recently have moved into serving on uh for profit boards. I'm cur you know, how did you make that transition? And how do you recommend other women take the same jump? Well, thank you very much Lindsay and thank all of you for being here. We really need more women in the pipeline for corporate board. So this is so great. So I'll address one question first, which is nonprofit for for profit board. Is it worth it? Um You know, there is kind of a rhythm to how boards work. And so a really great way to learn is on a nonprofit board. So you begin to learn about committees, you learn about the structure, you learn about non gov. So that gives you a lot of confidence about how boards work and then how I was able to make the jump from when I was leaving Girl Scouts to then get on corporate boards. You know, what's so important is when you're on corporate boards, you're not an operator. So that's really important to understand and to even know what that word means, right? You're So when you're on a corporate board, three key things, it's about strategy, it's about governance and that one employee that you manage the CEO that's it. And so you have to be able to communicate that that's how you look at the world that you look at the world from a strategic perspective or from governance or you understand, you know, how to manage and work in ac suite. So when I was the CEO of Girl Scouts, I didn't talk about girl scouts as a philanthropy, I talked about how Girl scouts was helping to solve the critical workforce strategy, workforce needs, especially in technology and in particular in cyber security. And so I, I met many people back to your point. My network then got extended to meeting many ceos of technology companies because they were very interested in developing that pipeline for women. And so they got to hear me talk about how I thought about things strategically. So literally when the press release came out that I was stepping down from the Girl scouts within minutes, my phone rang and the board chair of Qualcomm, who had heard me speak about that and had partnered with me when he was at Paton Networks. He called me and said I want to sponsor you to be on the follow on the Qualcomm board. So it's very important, especially if you come from a technical background, how do you translate your skills or what you're doing in a strategic manner in talking about the language. That way, I want to make sure that I have an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. So be thinking about them, Jocelyn, we were talking backstage a little bit about titles and how varied they are and how you can be a CEO of a small company and not be doing quite as much as a VP at say a Netflix. I'm curious, you know, how, what are the challenges that women face with this kind of pipeline issue? We're where boards are thinking, you know, we need a CEO in order to have a woman on the board. Well, I think the strategic CEO S and boards are asking what do we need versus who do we know? And when they're asking the question about what do we need, what we find? And we've seen over 1200 board opportunities in the last four years is that the, what they need comes to us in terms of competencies and fall into buckets and that could be functional, that could be industry, that could be scaling and growth. In fact, scaling and growth is the number two thing that we hear on the inbound of opportunities. And so yes, when you think about Google or, you know, Microsoft and some of you are here actually, I mean, the purview in which those women are operating inside those large corporations is actually larger than some of the private companies that need the board member. And so titles don't mean a whole lot competencies do. So I do think one if, if you're on the opportunity side and you're saying I need a CEO or CFO sometimes that actually is true, but double clicking to make sure that's true is really important. And then for those seeking the opportunities realizing that you are more than your title and titles, you know, are a part of what you do. But it is really about the competencies that you have and that you bring to that board role, want to open it up to the audience. Are there any questions? I think we're on the side. You don't mind standing up when you ask the question and introducing yourself to uh nationwide. Um We hear a lot about hot topics in the boardroom. So I wanted you all to double click into what are the most prominent hot topics that we should be taking in consideration. I can just keep from a board meeting. So that's an easy one. You know, it's always cyber security, very key. The board I sit on two semiconductor boards. So if you ever think about what's going on in China, all those types of issues top of mind. So, you know, geopolitical issues are really big right now, obviously, cyber and then also climate E G are also very important issues that when you think about what your investors, what your stockholders, what your shareholders are asking about it really, there's a lot in that and I'm just gonna add to that, that the data shows that companies that have women on their boards do better on, uh, E S G issues. Hi. Hello. Yeah, with Comcast Cable. So, uh, first of all, I love the girl scouts. So thank you so much for being here. Um, and so do my girls. So thank you. Um, I did have a question around so now my mind is starting to roll a little bit. I've served on nonprofit boards but not, I haven't really considered for profit boards, but uh you mentioned something right now regarding scale. Uh So Comcast, everything we do has to be at scale. So can you talk to me a little bit about if I, if my mind is starting to go in this direction of serving on a for profit board? What's like the first step? So you said like network and I'm like, I, I'm blinking a little bit. So can you just, what is the next like small step that I can take? Right. So, well, one I would ask who's on your nonprofit board? I bet there's a lot of people sitting around that table who are connected to for profit companies and they've already seen you operate in a board setting. So don't forget that, uh don't forget your own board if you have exposure to them at your own company and if you don't ask for exposure, um can you sit in the board meeting? Can you at least see the materials I was first brought to the boardroom at 28. It is a different altitude. It is a different level of discussion to get exposure to the boardroom where you have that opportunity. And then I think there's this, we mentioned it backstage, the translation of what you're doing today and into what does that look like inside a boardroom? And that's along those kind of six areas of expertise. And I'm happy to spend time with you one on one to do that as well. So, hi, I'm Lisa Cost. I'm with Space Force. Um I am on a um uh corporate board and uh uh what I have found is that when you have one woman right on the board, it is a, it is a dramatically different conversation than if you have, for example, half the board being women. And so, um I just wanted to put that out there as a conversation topic because I have found, you know, in my own experience that the things that you talk about are fundamentally different. Um and, and very customer focused when you tend to have uh more women on the board. So just wanted to get your uh insights into that. I I'll just speak to it from the legal perspective. What you have experienced is indeed a general experience and that the benefits that come from having women or diverse boards in general, which are numerous really happen when there's not just a token but multiple. The magic number is three. Uh, generally women on boards. France's law requires 40% gender diversity in either way. But the California law is three for boards of, uh, more than five directors and it's exactly what you, what you said to. That's when the magic happens. Can I add to that? Um, I've been the first woman and the first independent on two boards. So I feel you, um, one is not enough, one is not what we're up here to change. Um We're up here to have more than one woman on board. The reality is because the numbers look the way they do. Many of us, many of you will be the first independent and the first woman. And I think the key there is asking what's next. So in neither of those boards, I'm the only woman anymore. Um So asking the CEO asking the board, what's the plan for? Number two, number three is a really critical step. I'm curious, you know, the law being struck down was a big issue. I think the fallout from SEB also, there was some really nasty op EDS about how diversity on boards is one of the reasons that they got into the mess. I'm sure we all have feelings about that. But I'm curious, are you concerned about that? Creating a bigger fallout of women on boards? I will say one of the reasons the California Partners project jumped on this issue. It was actually a law, one of the last laws signed by Jerry Brown on his way out of office. And when Jennifer Sibel Newsom and I co founded the California partners project, we took the focused on gender equity. We took this on because it was new, it was a like living experiment here in California. Um And because there were already studies coming out showing that it was detrimental to the companies in California just to have this law passed. And it was such, it was junk science. It was like stock prices had gone down. I'm sure it was, you know, there are other things happening in the market. Um but it is disheartening to me, it's just fuel like to keep to the facts and keep telling the positive um examples of what happens when you have a diverse board, anything that you would like to add, you know, to add just a little bit to that. You know, the other thing is we're experiencing, experiencing inflation and we hadn't before. And so when you're having so many changes, you find that people kind of shrink their networks and go back to their most trusted friends and advisers and networks. And if you think about it, you know, we've been really fortunate that we haven't had a lot of inflation. So it's been now it's a couple of decades back. And so they go back to those networks which many times did not include, you know, a very diverse population. And, and I think being able to, again, that's back to your words, you use the positioning that you use about how you're able to deal with, you know, high inflation times, how you're able to really, you know, look at things geopolitically how you can really grow and scale companies. Those are things that it's very important to make sure that you're communicating in. And then when you're on a board, you cannot lose sight of governance. So you, that's your job. And you've got to ask those questions because literally that is your job. You have three jobs, right? Strategy governance and the CEO. So you, no matter where you are, don't let the energy and the emotion of the time make you forget your actual role and responsibility, right? It all sounds a little intimidating, right? How do we very quickly prevent imposter syndrome in women going after board rolls, you're qualified. Um No, I I think it really is for those of you who are interested in serving on board, there's an incredible lever for change in our society. It's incredibly important uh that those women who are interested break through this, what I would call demystification of a room that many of us haven't been exposed to. And, and there are very clear ways to do that many of them discussed here today. So that's how I would leave it. And I would add that the average compensation for a company, a public company board director ranges from about 100,000 to $300,000 a year. So maybe it's an incentive to help you combat your imposter syndrome. Yeah, great point. The other thing is, you know, the first person you have to convince is yourself, there's a ton of great sources. Make sure you've got, you know, like your board bio that's different than a resume, get your C B in order to get those things. But then look at the mirror and say I deserve to be there, right? Thank you so much. Uh Hopefully we'll find them and ask them if they have questions. Um Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you everyone.

Nicole Nolette, Executive Vice President, Operations, Dominion Voting Systems 
Interviewer: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Dominion Voting Systems’ Victory 

Late in the evening on November 3rd 2020 Fox News called the State of Arizona's election results in favor of Joe Biden. Soon after a series of potential voter fraud claims came from Fox Network. These claims specifically called out voter voting organizations, Dominion voting systems and Smartmatic in March of 2021 Dominion voting systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News with claims the News Network spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about Dominion last month, just days before heading to trial Dominion voting systems settled with Fox Corp for over $780 million. What may be one of the largest defamation settlement cases in us history to hear more about the impact of that settlement and what's next for Fox? Not for Fox? Sorry for Dominion voting systems. Please welcome Nicole Nolette, Executive Vice President of Operations for Dominion voting systems and Fortune editor at large, Mihal Lavra. Ok. Nicole is definitely not here to talk about what's next for Fox can speak to that. That's great. Um So, uh we're, we're gonna turn to you guys for questions very early on. I know when you introduced yourself yesterday. You got like a so I think people will wanna ask their own questions as well, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick things off here and I wanna start with something that was just in the news uh over the last uh day or so, which is uh these reports rumors that as part of the settlement agreement, which we just heard about, we all know about, um was this clause that Tucker Carlson would be fired? And do you wanna set the record straight for us here? I think you guys have already commented, but if you could please comment on, I would, I would love to continue to hammer this point. Home Tucker Carlson was not part of the settlement agreement between Fox and Dominion. Ok. And, and uh I think that's pretty clear. Um, but, uh, you know, this whole settlement was about this whole lawsuit was about um misinformation, defamation. Um And here we are again, you know, this kind of started spinning very quickly. So what does that tell us about what has changed and what has not? So, I think that's really interesting. I mean, number one, thank you so much for um for inviting me up here. I feel so fortunate to be part of this incredible group of women, um and to be able to tell my story and, and hopefully it resonates, um, little pieces of it will resonate with each of you. I just, I love this opportunity. So Thank you. We had two main goals when we, when we decided that we were going to take legal action against Fox News and, and several others. Fox is the first of seven legal battles that we have and we still have a very long road in this, in this legal battle. But um, it was, we had two mingles and number one was to get the truth out. And number two was to be compensated for the damages that Fox caused our company. I mean, our, our brand is destroyed at this point and we felt we wanted to get the truth out, the truth about Dominion, the truth about election and election processes and specifically the 2020 election. And um, and also, you know, compensate uh for those um the, the uh the destruction of the brand of the company. So there, there has been criticism out there, of course. Um as we all know that um an apology demanding an apology was not part of the settlement. And I'm curious to hear, I mean, from your perspective, um why wasn't it a part of the settlement? And, and, and what would it have done if anything if you had demanded an apology from Fox? Yeah. So the honest answer is is that it wouldn't have done anything. Um A forced apology on air was not something that was going to change. Our company was not something that was going to change the outcome or not. Something that was going to change elections and disinformation in the elections industry. And quite honestly, if we would have saw this through to, you know, some sort of jury decision, they couldn't have forced an apology anyway. And so it wasn't one of our main goals. Um We really just wanted to get the truth out there and I think we were incredibly successful at that. Um I wanna hear a little bit about your own personal story here because, um, while the company certainly took a big hit, um, you took a hit as well. Um, and, and you were docked and your parents, both navy veterans, um, house, their address was, was posted, uh, online. Um, and I, I think we all are curious to hear just what was it like for you personally going through the last few years? So it was, it's incredibly difficult. Um, it was, um, that moment in time and it wasn't just me, I mean, there are other employees at Dominion. Our customers certainly, um, have been threatened, their lives have been threatened. Um, this was, I, I was coming out of the doctor's office and I had missed a call from a customer and he, um, his customer is a very big customer of ours. Um, and he called and left me a voice mail and says I need you to call me back immediately and he, uh, forwarded me the, the link to this website that was enemies of the people which, um, just, it struck home, um, in an incredibly bad way. I mean, I'm a navy veteran. My parents are army veterans. And so to see that there was some, to see that there was anyone who would think that what I was doing was something contrary to democracy or to the goals of the United States was incredibly hurtful. And then to see, not just my safety threatened but my parents safety threatened because it was um you know, a picture of their house, the FBI is knocking on their door later that evening. And you know, to hear my mom go through that and to hear my mom have to have that experience when she's retired and she's worked her entire life to have a very boring retirement. She's worked very hard for that. That was incredibly unsettling and it fueled a fire that had started to burn right at that moment. Ok. Questions from the audience. Any questions for Nicole, please raise your hand, we'll bring a microphone over. Is this all relatable to you guys? No. OK. Well, let me, let me, let me try to, to make some of it relatable and please just raise your hand. We'll, we'll bring a microphone over question over here and at any point, feel free to raise your hand and if you could stand up, introduce yourself. Um I live in Atlanta and so Georgia, obviously, you know, it's a little complicated. Um I don't really have a question. I think I just have a comment because we've been watching this play out for so long. Um And I just want to applaud the efforts of Dominion. I think it was a big step um for a company to take on a new channel like that and to take on a culture like a, a society with all these culture wars where we like politicized lifestyles and politicized uh personal choices and politicized reproductive rights. And the fundamental thing that even my, my mother, uh father and grandparents fought for and marched for was voting rights. And so I just want to say, thank you. I thank you very much. And um I really appreciate your comments and it reminded me of something that Jenny had said when you were interviewing her a little earlier this morning where she said, um she was really impressed with the women that were going out and seeking conflict and, and I was reflecting on our own situation like we did not go out and fight conflict. But what we did do is we stood up to it and we're going to continue. Like I said, this is the first of seven legal battles that we have and we didn't go out and seek this conflict, but we are standing up to it and that's really important. And I Kesha thank you so much for, for your comments. I think 10 years ago, if you had stood up here and said, you know, you work and Dominion, by the way, has been around for 20 years. Uh, but if you had said Dominion people would be like, oh, what's that? I wonder we have another question over here. Hi. Um, I'm Erica Fisher. I'm, um, with, um, a software company and we've been talking today and yesterday and in various forms about how hard the last several years has been for a lot of people at operating roles, but you win. Um, so not, not a, not a prize to win, but, um, thank you. And, um, I guess my question is for a lot of us who are on the either, you know, sort of middle of, or other side of various forms of crisis. How do you, when you get to the other side of it, or at least a pause point for you personally in your career? Like, where do you go from here? How do you think about your identity and sort of what you carry forward and finding a different rhythm or, you know, when the sort of curtain closes on the, um, adrenaline? Like, how do you think about that? Because I'm sure you didn't expect this to define however many years of your career at this point. That's exactly right. And that's a great question, Erica. And thank you so much because I haven't had much time to reflect on it. But as I reflect on the, the important priorities that we have right now. Number one, I mean, or one priority obviously are the legal battles. But number two, we have an incredible amount of, of women who are supporting elections, there are customers, they are other vendors who are supporting election technology and this this enormous cohort of amazing and tenacious and bright and driven women are protecting democracy right now. And so when I think about what, you know, the next step is or another really important kind of pillar of how I'm thinking about moving past these, these crises or these legal battles is that I still need to support these women that are on the front lines and they are, you know, protecting voters, they are protecting their right to vote, they are protecting the vote counts. And that is one thing that really keeps me going because it's what keeps Dominion successful and what keeps me successful in an operating role is really focusing on those customers and ensure that they have the support through the life of, of those those government contracts. Question question up here. Can we bring a microphone over? Hi, I'm Jennifer. So you talked about having to deal with your parents and the experience that they had, obviously, this is an issue for your company, but it also became a very personal issue. And so it lit the fire for you to want to fight as you thought about settling. How did you make the decision that the right decision for the company was to settle because at least from a outside looking in perspective, you were winning the narrative and there was a lot of like, take it all, all the way to the end. How did you sort of say, ok, we're at a point where this is enough. Um Or how did you make that decision? Yeah, that's an incredibly, I mean, that's an incredible question. And um it, it was, it wasn't that it was enough, but it was right when we were on the heels of kicking the trial off. Um, you know, our uh one of our big strategies was to, you know, to, to get the truth out. And we did have a lot of information that came out um as part of the discovery process and as part of the motion for summary judgment. And so we felt like we, um one of those goals we had accomplished um with all that motion for summary judgment, discovery information coming out into the public. But secondly, um as we thought about um a long drawn out trial, I mean, our estimate was that this trial was gonna last the better part of two months. Um And we thought about the emotional toll that it was going to take on our employees as they got called to the stand and testify. Um our customers and some of our other partners in the elections industry, uh we decided that, um that, uh you know, having gotten the truth out, um, and saving our customers and our employees. Um, a lot of hardship going through a drawn out trial that, um, it was the right decision, although, you know, very mixed, very mixed emotions about that. There's no question about it. We felt like it was the right, um, the right decision for our company and for our customers. And just to point out also, I mean, you obviously you had multiple goals with this lawsuit, but one of the main ones was to compensate for damages. And I think it just checked that box. Hopefully, I I, you know, honestly setting the precedent of one of the largest media defamation settlements, puts a huge exclamation point on this. And so, you know, for some people who may think that, you know, it, you know, it doesn't make that much of an impact. I think setting that precedent, I think it makes a huge impact and it gives me a talking point when I'm up here saying that, you know, we set a precedent and that's really, it's really important. And again, it's the first of seven. OK. We'll take another question, one more question over here. Uh Christina Deloitte partner. Good to see you again. Um So my question is now that you have this success and this great platform, what's your future strategy? Uh What do you plan to do with it? Yeah. So um they're trying to get her to talk last year by the way. That's true is a big step already. We, you know, are, we're still going to continue our legal battles. But we have what, what you all may not know is that pretty much every Tuesday somebody's voting. And so, you know, since the presidential, all of 20 21 2022 which is a midterm cycle and thus far in 2023 nearly every Tuesday somebody's voting. And that's just, it's, it's incredible to know that because it's throughout the nation, somebody's at the polls voting on something on a Tuesday, not all of our customers vote on Tuesday, but most of them do. So. Um The, you know, the the other strategy is just to continue to support our customers in these local and special elections that are ongoing in this, in this odd year. And the presidential cycle for 2024 is going to start earlier than it ever has. I mean, there are jurisdictions that are shifting their primaries earlier then Super Tuesday, Nevada is going to start early voting at the end of January if you can believe that. And so really the presidential cycle is we are on the doorstep right now and so continuing on the path of supporting our customers and being as prepared for these elections is, is one of our main focuses right now. Well, uh we are going to to wrap in a second here, but I just wanna um thank you for coming here and supporting this community and being a part of it and sharing your insights. I'm guessing you're quite a hit at dinner parties over the last couple of years. Hopefully, we didn't ask you any of the annoying questions you usually get, but really, really appreciate you being with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Cathie Wood, Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer, Ark Investment Management
Interviewer: Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-Chief, FORTUNE 


MPW Next Gen 2023 - The Future According To Cathie Wood

Cathie Wood, Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer, Ark Investment Management
Interviewer: Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-Chief, FORTUNE 

Ami Gan, Chief Executive Officer, OnlyFans
Interviewer: Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Calling All Creators 

Ami Gan, Chief Executive Officer, OnlyFans
Interviewer: Polina Pompliano, FORTUNE 


After discussing the evolving creator ecosystem. Throughout the last two days, we would be remiss to not mention the subscription based platform, only fans. In just seven years, only fans have amassed more than 220 million users sentencing. And in 2021 it made nearly $1 billion in annual revenue. Amra Polian took the CEO position in late 2021. After being the organization's chief marketing and operations officer, she spent the last 18 months reverting from a short lived plan to ban adult content creators to focusing on broadening the public's perception of the platform here to discuss what's next for only fans. Please welcome only fan Coo Amra Polygon. So a quick show of hands. How many of you are users or creators on only fans? Oh, wow. OK. So not a single hand. I don't, I am. There we go. Um So I would love to this. This is perfect because uh we've talked a little bit about um in private about the delta between the current user that you have and the user that you want to attract. Can you discuss and the creator, can you discuss that? Absolutely. So to take a step back first, you have to understand what only fans is. It's a social media platform meant for creators 18 and over to monetize content that they normally would be sharing for free elsewhere, the platform launched in 2016. Um and it kind of came to fame in the cultural zeitgeist during 2020 and the pandemic. Um And that's when everyone started to associate what's going on there. They're seeing uh a lot of women sharing like, oh I'm, I'm on only fan, subscribe. My only fans link in bio and the platform became known um even before 2020 for having adult content creators, we do have a very inclusive content policy. And in all honesty, that segment of creator was the savviest when it came to understanding how to monetize their content before you know, the rest of the creator economy and influencers came on. So looking at our platform, yes, we are, you know, there's lots of spicy content, spicy creators, but we also have comedians, chefs, race car drivers. Um The types of creators you're seeing on only fans now is truly across the board. And that's continuing as the creator economy has been shifting and what's something practical you're doing to attract a different type of creator? Like should I be on only fans? I, I like as a writer, as a writer, there's an opportunity really, it's anyone who has a community or wants to create a community and also be able to engage with them without the distractions that you will find elsewhere. Um On only fans, there's no ads, algorithms, um things like that. It's truly about the creator and fan connections. Got it. So you said that 2020 is the year that the influencer became the creator. Can you explain the slight difference and nuance between what you consider an influencer and what you consider a creator? Absolutely. And you did your homework. So thinking about that in 2020 everyone was kind of at home, everyone had access to a cell phone and different apps to edit content. And then that's when the people's kind of passions or hobbies could transition to become a way for them to make money and thinking at it, looking at it, you know, you have the word influencer, you have the word creator when you break them down, an influencer is someone who has, you know, a large amount of followers um across different social media platforms. Um You know, they probably are doing brand deals, things like that, a creator, a creator is someone who, you know, may not be looking to have a big following. They could be in more of a niche category. Um You know, we have a range of creators and influencers on the platform and it's really up to anyone how they want to leverage social media and what their goals are with it. But there is a lot of overlap between influencer and creator and looking at our platform, we have over three million content creators. We're in over 100 countries. Um We've paid out over $10 billion in creator earnings. Since being founded in 2016. Our business model is very similar. Um It's an 80 20 split, meaning uh it's all in favor of the creator that 80%. And for every dollar we earn as a company creators earn four. So that's really where we are a true creator, first platform. Yeah. And you mentioned that you want to make only fans a place that's more inclusive of all sorts of um creators. And I think many of us here, maybe we have our own companies and there's a certain stigma or reputation that the company may have. Can you share the rep practical things that you, you and your team did to reframe the only fans brand? Absolutely. So thinking about the business, really something to always keep in mind is to just own what your business is like. You know, we are a platform for all kinds of content creators, which includes adult content creators. That's something I've been very firm to never shy away from. I'm very proud to be a content inclusive platform. And the reason to not shy away from it is because it's you want to embrace everyone that is using your site and thinking about um all the women here and businesses. There's probably a lot of people who come in and like, oh, have you thought about this? Are you doing this? It's like this is who you are and that kind of goes to the kind of second key learning of really just control your narrative and that's, you know, important for you to always own, you know, what you're about, what your company is about and being very clear and true to that, despite we live in a world where people like to mansplain things and share their own opinions, but you know, your business best and no one else can take that from you. Um And also really getting in touch with your kind of end user for myself, that's getting to know a lot of our creators having my finger on the pulse of the community. That's also why I have an only fans profile because that's where I'm sharing content. None of it's spicy, but I'm also messaging with our creators and a lot of times they send me really nice things, they send me things when they're like, oh, this isn't working or have you thought about this? And it's real feedback that I can then share immediately with the team. So I think that's something to keep in mind for everyone here in your, your company is like, OK, who is the end user? And how are we engaging with them to get feedback? There's, there's many times I've been approached by people at other companies, other executives, they're like, oh what do you think of this or this for my business? And I'm like, I don't know what you do and I don't, have you talked to the people that actually use your, your product or service? But that's really great advice. Basically as a CEO you're using the product and soliciting feedback from your users directly. Um We're gonna open it up for questions. I, I'm sure you have many. So please just raise your hand. We'll get the mic to you and I'll be back to you in a minute. So author Chris Brogan once said this quote and I love it. He said the difference between an audience and a community is which way the chairs are facing otherwise? Is it like, you know, direct audience, you know, interaction or is it more of a circle? How have you because only fans is very much known for its community, how have you helped creators build a community? And also is there an example you have of a really great creator who has cultivated that? So only fans is a community that's where we have those over three million creators who have all built their own communities on the platform. And it's really an opportunity for creators to continue to engage with their fans in a unique way. And you know, we're very proud that we've had over 1500 content creators have made over a million dollars through, through the platform thinking about community. And what that means it's really about connection and engagement and that's what's happening on the platform. Any questions? Yep. Hi, I'm Courtney Robinson. So you're talking about the expansion of the brand and how it's much more than just the spicy content, as you said. Um And the other things that you produced, I know my first awareness of only fans came up during the pandemic when Beyonce said hips tiktok fans on demon time, I might start my only fans. So uh with that being said, did that moment sort of resonate or create any sort of measurable that you could see brand recognition or acknowledgement of the fact that only fans is for creators and not just creators in a certain industry. Absolutely. Um I remember uh that song is still one of my favorites and it worked that that was a moment for the business when no one knew that there was gonna be a, a reference to the brand. It kind of just became this viral moment where it's like, oh people are talking about only fans, it's really the first time um in a major way, only fans was put in the cultural zeitgeist and you fast forward from that and we've continued to be referenced in Saturday Night Live and TV shows uh in different tongue in cheek ways. But in a way that there's been the real impact of people having this brand recognition of only fans and that's where I've come in. And uh really made an effort to be like, yes, we do have spicy content. We have a range of creators to kind of control that narrative better. Um Also, I was fortunate enough to see Megan Stallion at Coachella and when she played that song, um I it was just very exciting moment. Yeah. Um So only fans is obviously a giant platform. I mean, almost a billion dollars in annual revenue is insane. Um But a lot of times like when you've kind of made it to the top and you're in this groove, a lot of companies and founders and ceos tend to become complacent. So how do you continue to make sure that you're taking risks and like experimenting while being CEO and like, what's an example of a recent risk you took that may or may not work out? First of all, I never want to be complacent. I always want to be looking at what else is out there, looking at the platform to connect with our community. I think being complacent is not uh necessarily a good thing. It's, you know, it's good when you, you know, you know, like, oh you might not be in a bumpy period, but you wanna always be looking for towards the future and looking at at how things are evolving for myself. I've been really aggressive on OTV, that's our free to view streaming platform and app. I've been kind of doubling down on investments into content supporting different creators, helping them bring their ideas to fruition through OTV. And for those who aren't familiar with, it's all free to view, it's all safe for work content. Um Apple Android, Os dot TV, shameless plugs. But that's where you're seeing content from. People like Whitney Cummings who also has an only fans profile. Not a comedian. Yeah, she's a very popular US comedian. Um Nothing spicy on her page but she was having issues on other platforms or her content was getting kind of taken down or flagged and where his only fan, she's able to have real freedom of expression. And we've also given her um kind of the full rains over creating her own show for O F TV. So that's a really exciting synergy. Um and just one of the ways we're working with creators. Very cool. Well, thank you so much and we probably thank you.

Allison Horn, Global Talent Lead, Accenture
Melanie Rosenwasser, Chief People Officer, Dropbox 
Lorraine “Lo” Stomski, Senior Vice President, Associate Learning and Leadership, Walmart
Moderator: Maria Aspan, Senior Writer, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Creating A Continuous Learning Culture

Allison Horn, Global Talent Lead, Accenture
Melanie Rosenwasser, Chief People Officer, Dropbox 
Lorraine “Lo” Stomski, Senior VP, Walmart

Creating A Continuous Learning Culture

Allison Horn, Global Talent Lead, Accenture
Melanie Rosenwasser, Chief People Officer, Dropbox 
Lorraine “Lo” Stomski, Senior VP, Associate Learning and Leadership, Walmart

Sancia Dalley, Senior Vice President, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 
Anna Frellsen, Chief Executive Officer, Maternity Foundation 
Andrea Hailey, Chief Executive Officer, Vote.org
Hannah Mendoza, Co-founder and CEO, Clevr Blends
Sarah Jones Simmer, Chief Executive Officer, Found
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Editor-at-Large, FORTUNE; Co-chair, Fortune MPW Next Gen

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Activism 2.0: Purpose Driven

Sancia Dalley, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Anna Frellsen, Maternity Foundation
Andrea Hailey, Vote.org
Hannah Mendoza, Clevr Blends
Sarah Jones Simmer, Found

MPW Next Gen 2022- - Activism 2.0: Purpose Driven

Sancia Dalley, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 
Anna Frellsen, Maternity Foundation 
Andrea Hailey, Vote.org
Hannah Mendoza, Clevr Blends
Sarah Jones Simmer, Found
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, FORTUNE

Gissou Nia, Human Rights Lawyer 
Interviewer: Alyse Nelson, President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Women Led Revolution In Iran

we're going to move on to a very important and timely topic. The death of an Iranian woman while in custody of the country's morality police triggered weeks of protests across Iran decrying the religious regime. Demonstrators have faced an increasingly violent response by state security forces. International activists are now taking the fight to the United Nations seeking to have Iran ejected from the U. N. Commission on the status of women. In our next interview, an international human rights lawyer lays out potential lovers to pressure the Iranian government to change its policies. Please welcome human rights lawyer interviewed by Elise nelson, the president and ceo of the Vital voices Global partnership. Good morning everyone. Um I'm so thrilled to be here and if we think about this topic it's I think so relevant for not only the theme right realizing our power nowhere in the world. Is that more on display than in Iran right now, where we are seeing women and girls, the average age of those arrested is 15. So women and girls not only as the spark but also as the engine um for this revolution that's going on there and that has led to solidarity protests around the world and today marks two months from the day that Masa Amini was um well died after a coma in you know after being in the custody of the morality police. So I'm so thrilled to be joined today by one of the world's leading experts on how we can um remove Iran from the commission on the status of women G Sania who is been an extraordinary partner to all of us at vital voices in this campaign, but before we get into that. So I wonder if you could give us a snapshot into Iran right now because obviously this is a country that's cut off from the world, even in a social media era. Um it's hard to get news that we can trust coming out of the country. Yeah, thank you Elise and thank you um to this conference for having me and focusing on this topic. So, um probably a lot of you in the audience have seen, you know, social media posts about what is happening in Iran or at least seen it somewhere in traditional media. Um but essentially this is a feminist uprising. Now the protests have spread to all 31 provinces in Iran. There have been almost 1000 recorded protests. And the significant thing is that this isn't an authoritarian state. So it's not like if we were organizing a protest here and we wouldn't necessarily need to worry about state security forces kill With bullets there these protesters are literally risking their life to talk about their demands for social change. There have been recurring protests in Iran since December 2017 with shortening spaces between each spate of protests. But the very significant thing about this current more than two months long protests is that it really came about because of the outrage around these restrictions on women. It came about because the people of Iran want respect for their basic human rights and dignity. And so it wasn't triggered because of economic considerations or because of water shortages or things that might have been relevant to the prior protests in the past. This is very much at its root a demand for social change and it's now being described as a revolution because with the prior protests, they would eventually peter out. State security forces would come and kill hundreds, if not thousands of people and the protests would end Now, people are in the streets and they're not going home despite the incredible risk. Um gen z is at the forefront of these protests. They were really out on the streets. A lot of people under the age of 25 were leading this and as we saw women and girls, even girls as young as 12, we're taking off their force to job that the state mandates that they wear a head covering um and basically saying death to the dictator, wow, wow! So in so many ways, what's happening in Iran is very much linked to what's happening in Afghanistan. What's happening even here in the United States, what's happening around the world, which is thinking about the fact that women are losing. We are losing if we haven't already lost that right of self determination, right to control our own bodies, our own lives, our own futures, our education, where we work, what we do, and can you talk a little bit about how women around the world have really stepped up um and supported this effort we and and and and I think the value and importance of that, we obviously came together with you um for freedoms, a number of other Iranian women leaders as well as women leaders from around the world. Nobel Laureates, former presidents, current current Heads of State um from Malala yusef side to descend Ardern to Hillary clinton to Oprah. Um And we put out a letter in the new york times. Full page spread in the sunday new york times. I think we have an image of it and that really said we we want the U. N. And Member States to remove the Islamic republic of Iran from the U. N. Commission on the status of women as Mahal said this is one of the most significant bodies um Within the U.N. but one of the most significant bodies where you know leaders and countries come together to look at the advancement and empowerment of women. So one why were they ever even on it in the first place? And why why would it be so historic to get them removed? Yeah. So they were the Islamic Republic of Iran was elected to this commission in 2021. And the thing is these are noncompetitive elections. So there are these different regional blocks at the U. N. They all advanced candidates. And then if there's no competition, everybody who's being advanced will get the open slots here. I think enough U. N. Member States and people who were part member States that were part of eco socks which is kind of the parent body to this this group that really dictates and governs the status of women's rights. Um I think they didn't care enough to come together and say let us encourage the ASia block which the Islamic Republic of Iran is part of to advance another candidate. They had Lebanon china Pakistan. A few candidates move forward. They could have recommended South Korea. They could have recommend there's another country. They could have really put their power behind doing that but it wasn't enough of a priority for them at the time. I think um what does need to happen now though is that the Islamic Republic needs to immediately be removed from the Commission on the status of women. They should have no leadership role in deciding what women's rights are globally and shaping those norms. Um The Islamic Republic is one of the only governments that mandates this sort of discriminatory gender framework to the extent that it does against women. If I was in Iran my testimony would be worth half that of a man in a courtroom. I would have very restricted rights when it comes to marriage, divorce custody, inheritance. I would be forced to cover my hair and wear loose clothing even if I didn't want to and the list goes on and on. Um so it's completely unacceptable. A lot of countries obviously have misogyny patriot. Those are global themes, but the Islamic Republic is definitely an outlier and that it's actually enshrined in their laws, so all of this is legal. Um and and that's very concerning now, what needs to happen is um the Islamic Republic started a four year term on this commission in March 2022. They absolutely need to be kicked off. But this is unprecedented. There has never been a member that has been removed from this commission in the past and there's never been any members that have been removed from any of the eight functional commissions that are part of the U. N. Economic and Social Council of which the CsW has one, but there's a first time for everything and they absolutely need to be king. And this letter definitely, you know, if it's signed by Oprah and Michelle Obama and Malala, it definitely turned attention to this issue. I think people around the world were surprised that the Islamic Republic would be on a commission at the U. N. Actually deciding what women's rights should look like. So we've gotten some very encouraging signs new Zealand Canada, the U. S. Government, the U. K. They have all announced that they intend to kick the I. R. I off the commission on the status of women and we need to make sure that they follow through with putting forward a resolution um to call for the formal removal. And so we'll make sure to do that and we hope to do that before the end of the year. And then we need what, half more than half of the votes 28 I believe of the 54 member states of the Eco stock would have to agree correct. So that's, you know, now it's the campaign and that would happen by when, Well, it could happen at any time. So last week, myself and some of the Iranian women signatories on the letter met with the president of her name is ambassador Story Eva we had a conversation with her, we delivered the letter to her and had a conversation. We've got an image of that as well, I think. Yeah. Um there we go. I think I'm not in there. But yeah, you were taking the photo but were there there was a conversation with her about when this would happen. And what's clear is that echo sauce doesn't need to have a regular meeting for their next regular meeting is in December seven for elections. But this can be done at any time. So it really just depends on the will of a country to want to invest in this and bring this forward. So when vital voices got engaged and I want to go out to all of you if you have questions, um we'd love to get your thoughts. So let me ask one more and then we'll go out to all of you. If you have if you have any questions, please be thinking about them. Um when we got engaged, one of the first things that we do, we work with women leaders around the world across 184 countries. We went out to our network and said, Okay, how can we be supportive? Because you know, you never want to do anything that could backfire our harm. Um and one of the greatest things that we heard was what all we need you to do is amplify our voices. Right? Retweet us repost talk about it. And there was also a feeling that there were not enough women leaders talking. And what was incredible is that as we went out and reached out to all these leaders who signed onto that letter. Now an additional 100,000 people have signed onto the letter to remove the I. R. I. From from the Commission on the status of women. But what was amazing is how quickly women wanted to sign on, which I thought was really interesting that they didn't ask who else has signed. It was like, yes, absolutely, I'm there. Why is that so important to a young woman right now? You know, in Iran probably coming home from a day of protests, why is it so important is that news getting in that things like this are happening. And really it's it's it's women supporting women, you know, the Vice President of the United States, obviously a woman tweeting about this really saying, you know, I'm going to play a leadership role. That was pretty huge talk about what that means inside the country. So it's really important. Um so Iran was an early adopter of the internet, I think they were the second country in the region to adopt the internet. There's a high level of internet penetration, there are disruptions of internet because the state is purposely cutting the internet off because they know that that's a way that people mobilized to protest obviously. Um but among the protesters, they're young girls, you know, 1920 21 they all have Tiktok accounts and it's just indistinguishable from any young person anywhere really. So the barrier between inside Iran and outside, Iran has actually gone away over the past decade, I'd say a decade ago, it was a lot more difficult for me to talk with people all over the country because I couldn't go inside the country and not be arrested. Um but now it's actually a lot easier despite these internet disruptions, everybody uses a VPN kind of circumvent the bands on different sites and they're pretty tech savvy. So they actually see what is going on outside and they're asking us to amplify this and I want to let everybody know that when you post and you share and you talk about it, it isn't this meaningless performative activism. It actually makes such a critical difference because the globe is crisis saturated right now. Um Ukraine Afghanistan reported food shortages. Climate crisis, there's a lot going on when there is a tension on Iran's women and girls actually elevates the priority level for the folks that I meet. So when I meet somebody in the government's foreign ministry or when I meet representatives of the U. N. Member State, it makes a difference to them and they know that they need to prioritize this file. So your shares are not meaningless. They're actually incredibly supporting these women and girls inside the country and those women and girls absolutely see what we're doing on the outside. Right. What what questions does anyone have in the minutes we have remaining. Yes. Sorry, coming to you with microphone, please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Brown. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Brown from Workday. I have a question about the I understand the uh the protests and getting um ri off of this commission. How does that change the women's rights in this country by doing that. That's one question. And how do you protect the protesters out there in the meantime, as you go through this process? Yeah. So that's one strand of I would say a multi pronged strategy on how to help protesters on the inside of the country. There are so many different efforts to try to build an economic base for the protesters because a lot of the workers at oil refineries and whatnot are going on strike, but they can't necessarily afford to go on strike. Right? So there's that sort of like economic prom there are efforts to bring free and easy to access internet inside the country, can't give too many details on some of these things for reasons you might appreciate. But there are a lot of efforts to support the protesters and then there are the efforts that we can do from the outside that involve multilateral institutions like the U. N. So the thing about kicking the I. R. I. Off the Commission on the status of women is that the Islamic republic has used that body and that platform as a way to shape the norms from the inside. Their position is that women's place is only in the home and that we should only be in the domestic sphere. And so they hold a lot of side events at the U. N. In New york in Geneva and discuss this and I know it might sound a bit odd to us, but there are receptive ears across the world who say, yeah, you know, that's right, we kind of see the truth in that. So I think our aim is to ensure that they don't have a leadership position on a body that is influential in deciding what U. N. Women for example should work on the agency. Um but it's a separate effort from looking at how to support protesters in their daily effort to take to the streets and I should note that unfortunately there are more than 15,000 individuals who have now been arrested since the start of the protests two months ago. A lot of them are facing torture in custody. A lot of them are gonna be sentenced to long draconian sentences for nothing more than peaceful protest. And some of them are even being sentenced to execution and that's simply for exercising their freedom of expression, assembly and association. So we need to make noise for them and ensure that that doesn't happen. Thank you. Thank you for the very good question. Just I think in wrapping up um you can certainly all of you in this room you have power. You have voice, we need you to amplify the voices of these women. Um We need you to join this campaign. You can go to woman life freedom dot today or you can go to our website at vital Voices dot org. Sign on to the petition on our website. We also have content ready made content for you to post on your social media. Please do it. And what else can they do? So in these last minute or so what else can people do in this room to be supportive? Well if you're really motivated, you could write or tweet at R. U. N. Representatives or at secretary Blinken or at linda thomas Greenfield and say that you want the I R. I kicked off the commission on the Status of Women today. And if any of you live in other countries, please treat at your representatives as well. So that would help a lot. Great thank you and thank you so much. Thank you.

Sima Sistani, Chief Executive Officer, WeightWatchers
Interviewer: Emma Hinchliffe, FORTUNE


MPW Next Gen 2022 - Back To Basics

many brands had a bumpy ride during the pandemic and among them is weight watchers which struggled to manage the crucial digital pivot coming in hot as the firm's new Ceo Sima Sistani calling the calls the company the original social platform high praise from the woman who co founded social media phenomenon House Party. Do you all remember House party started the pandemic? Yes lots of happy hours on that. Um in our one on one conversation we're going to ask how weight watchers can blend the best of digital and I. R. L. Interactions to help people around the world better manage their weight and their fitness. Please welcome to the stage Sima Sistani, chief executive officer of weight watchers in conversation with my colleague Fortune senior writer Emma Hinchliffe Hi again everyone and thank you CMA so excited to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. Hello. So this is one of your first interviews since taking over as Ceo. And what is your first live interviews at least And you know why did you take this job and what have you been up to since March? That's a great question. And actually I want to start out by um mentioning the conversation that we just witnessed as a first generation Iranian. I cannot tell you how important that conversation is and for you to all amplify those voices and that actually brings me to why I joined weight Watchers from my mother she is um sorry I got emotional thinking about an emotional conversation. Uh so my mother she came here from Iran and they didn't expect to be here uh you know the revolution happened while she, they were effectively studying abroad, but she earned her PhD in food science. She actually graduated the same time that I graduated my undergrad degree and so um she's registered dietitian and wellness, nutrition has always been a part of my life and um when I had my first child, I gained £60 and I had a really hard time uh losing that weight and she was watching me do every fad that was out there and after like my third juice cleanse, she was just like, if you're not gonna listen to me then at least do weight watchers, it's science back, it's livable and I was like, okay, so I lost £60 on weight watchers and it really worked for me, I later developed a thyroid issue, I had a difficulty managing my way through that. I turned back to weight watchers again, but as a product person, I'll be honest, I wanted to throw my phone against the wall because I was just like, this isn't a digital first experience. Um uh but in 2020 as a house party was really taking off with the ambition of bringing empathy to online communication, I had an aha moment about how critical the support system and the connectivity between the members on weight watchers was to the success of the platform. And so that's when um and I would say, I didn't say the original social platform, I called it, the O. G. Social network. Um but that's truly what it is and it's bringing people together around a shared interest of weight loss, of health, of wellness. Uh they're showing up with their abilities and they're connecting with each other in these ways that are actually so much more empathetic and positive because they're behind a paywall and so that was a real unlock for me and I was introduced to the board at the time, I wasn't ready to leave house. Party things were moving in that direction, but I wanted to be a part of this company and the universe has a funny way of finding you because two years later they reached out with this opportunity and I jumped at the opportunity to continue my mission of trying to bring empathy to online communication and in this way through a community that's built around healthy habits. Yeah, that's quite the story and thank you so much for sharing that. That's amazing about your mother and thank you very proud of her and my father. Yes. Um so so you joined in March, what has your focus at weight watchers? So we I keep saying words about the original CAC which is community accountability and coaching for us. Those were the things that really helped weight watchers become a movement in the early days, but when Covid happened, 80% of our membership move to digital only. And so that means 80% of our members aren't experiencing our gold standards. That's been my focus is how do we retain, what is amazing about what we do? We've always been about science retaining the science back efficacy, the livability, but creating it in a digital first environment with an expression that that takes into consideration that most people are engaging with us on advice. And so, you know, we're doing that through being more data informed. We're doing that through putting the member for, we're doing that through evergreen innovation and a lot of things that come really natural through growth tech but are is a new muscle that we're flexing at weight watchers. Yeah. You know, so you've mentioned your experience at house party, you're the founder of that app you later thought acquired by Epic Games where you spent some time as an executive and now you've stepped into this role as the ceo of a public company. So you've been a founder executive post acquisition. And now Ceo of weight watchers in those three seats, very different roles. What have you learned from sitting in all three of those types of roles? That's a great question. Well, in the through line in all of those experiences has been about digitizing social connection. Whether, you know, I will say even before that at tumblr was about fandom. That house party was about video chat with Fortnite, It was about the social layer the third space. Um and and now it is about this community of healthy habits and in in each one of these roles, the most important thing to me is how we show up and live our values and I think that if you choose that and you choose your intention first, that breeds the outcome. And so, you know, one of the things that I love about how, what we're doing is that we do have the 60 years of heritage, we do have a team of phds that is completely new to me um that are keeping us foundational e honest, it isn't about move fast and break things, not when you're talking about people's livelihood, so that's a critical difference and making sure we infuse the right parts of tech but retain all of things that made us who we are for the last 60 years. So that's what I'm focused on and that really, I feel like showing up being mission driven, being purpose driven was true in every single one of those roles. Yeah, I'll come to everyone for questions in a moment. So if you have anything for sema, please start thinking. Um but you know, the conversation around health and weight is always evolving. You know, we have, we have some founders in the room, I think of some new companies focused on weight management and then of course there's kind of the growing popularity of the health at every size approach to health care medicine and just, you know, lifestyle. Um how do you think about that as you navigate the role of weight Watchers, not just your members, but in today's conversation is, you know, the Weight Watchers brand isn't out of step in any way with where the conversation is today around weight and health. I'm glad you asked because I think that body positivity is amazing, right? It liberated us all from the standards that were put on us by others and nobody wants that. But there's a false dichotomy that that we have to be at odds in that conversation. And and the the undercurrent in all of those conversations is shame, right? Shame for gaining weight, shame for losing weight, shame for loving the body. You're in shame for wanting to change the body that you're in. Who are we to judge? That was the point of body positivity is to love ourselves and accept ourselves no matter what our personal decisions are. And so I think that it's really important to be in this conversation and and to show up and say if this is something that you choose, we're here to support you and and that's what we're here to do is not put a judgment on it. I sit in workshops every day and all the bodies are different and all and the and the through line, there is what we're trying to with behavior change is we are preaching body acceptance. Body love. Um, were there to be a support system. It's the same finance. Honestly it's like a lot of us are privileged enough to have the upbringing and the education to understand how to manage money. That's not true for everybody. Some people need the support system of understanding how to build those healthy habits, how to manage their diet diet. Turn turned into a bad word. But it initially means, you know, satiety nutrition, how you eat. What are the habits? As I mentioned, my mother, she's a registered dietitian. Her PhD is in food science were for people who love food, we don't want to be about deprivation. We're just there to help with the behavior change in the science and to bring that support to people who do choose for them whether it's High cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, joint pain or maybe they just want to move through the world £20 lighter. If that's the choice that they made, we want to be there to provide a science-backed solution. Yeah. And how do you, you know, obviously for weight watchers, part of the goal of the businesses to attract new members and new users, you know, how do you bring those new members in which you know, is necessary for you as a ceo of a company without um, while you know, staying true to that mission of only bringing in people who already have this goal and already want to be there not putting that goal onto them. Yes. Well, and I think that's a big pivot and change from the way we've potentially shown up in the past. Um and there are definitely parts of our past that I'm not proud of, but we have worked really hard to change those um, those things and you know, the parts that are positive are that for 60 years we have been science fact, we have been um about supporting women. Are members are majority women, our team is majority women. My board is half women. My leadership team is half women. So so we want to be a part of that conversation and support people. And so when it comes to acquisition, um, I think we've relied too much on marketing to do that work for us versus the product to actually, you know, we have members who love us the NPS is really high and and to, you know, give people the tools again, this is about community building, to be able to go out and showcase that and bring people into their journey. And obviously there's a brand that is a part of that. Um but that's what I've been thinking about it, especially having built social networks in the past, nobody downloaded a social network because they saw an ad that told them to write it because you you heard it was a great experience, you you wanted to be there, you wanted, you wanted to support, you wanted to, you know, the connection and so those are things that we're thinking about in terms of how we change, but I do think we need to rely right now on the marketing, the brand too, Make sure people see that we are showing up in a different way, a more modern way. Yeah, and you know, obviously this is a transitional moment for weight watchers. Your stock is currently trading under $5, you know, why is that where investors have valued weight watchers right now? And is there anything you think they're missing? Look, I think that it's also important to remind people when they're looking at the stock price, we're a profitable company, um that is very different than, again, a lot of the growth tech that is out there, but what we haven't done is grow. And so that is what I think the market is waiting to see is are we going to do that? And the signs are there, the signs are there, it's a subscription based business. So when we look at membership and subscription, you know, there are a lot of headwinds for us to, to show that from a revenue perspective, but from a sign up trends perspective, we're already seeing those trends moving in the right direction and I'm confident that we will move to growth and uh, next year and that we're doing all of the right steps to get us there. But yeah, transformation takes time. Yeah, any questions for Sema. Oh, I think we have one over there, please, just introduce yourself. Hi Emma, my name is Windsor and I run a gen Z media company. So my audience is young women, teen girls college women. And as I think about a company like weight watchers, I'm curious how you think about interacting with your next generation of consumers and how you think about the impact we all know about insta graham and Tiktok and impacts on body image and young women, eating disorders etcetera. Um so how do you think about that demographic specifically? Because targeting young women is important for every brand that targets women, right? It's the next generation. But I'm curious about that particular and you're pretty active on Tiktok. I am oh, that was a secret. But yes, I do. In fact, I appreciate Tiktok because I think that people are more authentic there and and you know, part of the reason that I wanted to build house party was to be a more, you know, human way for people to connect. So they don't just know the right emoji but actual like facial connect connectedness and empathy. And so, um I do get really worried about the perception and the bodies and body image and all the aspiration that is associated with content that particularly young girls are receiving on these platforms. And so you know, actually this is one of the challenges is that we get lumped into even though we are science backed livable program that is literally about trying to help people do if they choose weight management if they need weight loss to do it in a healthy way. We're both into the pills, the snake oils, the potions. Um, and so what happens is things like uh conspiracies and and and you know, solutions that are that are deeply concerning are the ones that end up proliferating across social media. And so, um I think we have a responsibility to to be proud and loud in that conversation that um, you know, we too are about body acceptance and and and hopefully help young women build that confidence and um, and and show up in the conversation in a way that that supports the great work that is being done to shift culture so that it isn't about other standards, but about, you know what you choose for yourself. It's a really good question. It's a hard one to to solve and to think about, but I think that we're all seeing the impacts of that culture and it's really a proud moment for me as a woman to see how the conversation has evolved. I think we have one more question. Hi Whitney Magnuson Northwestern mutual. I was curious. I know a few years ago weight watchers went through a very fairly well publicized rebrand W W And I hear you again today talking about weight watchers and not w w so I'm curious about what the status of the brand is today and what you and the rest of the executive team learned from going through that transition. Yeah, so, Um, well I wasn't around when that transition happened, but certainly the learnings are there and I think that we are WW still that's our corporate entity. We're also weight watchers and there is so much legacy and heritage in who we've been. And we were started by a female founder. No, most people don't know that gene nice 60 years ago. I mean, she may have been one of the first women to take a company public. Uh and so there's a lot of pride in who who we've been and I think that um the move to w w was about building in a little bit more modernity, um and and trying to infuse more wellness into the brand and to put that out there and sort of with a stake in the ground. And so um that being said, yeah, we're both were weight watchers were w w but I really believe in us showing up authentically that's who we've been and the onus is on us to change the stigma associated with the word wait. And and so that's why I felt it was really important for us to also embrace the path and to be a part of changing to be responsible as Windsor asked earlier about how people think about that. Uh so so yeah, call us, you know, it's like coke or coca cola, great. Um so another topic that has always been a big passion point for you has been paid leave when you were at house party before the acquisition, you kind of lead this effort to improve the access to paid leave across silicon Valley, especially for early stage startups where there was almost none. Is that still a point of passion for you? And how are you approaching that issue today? Absolutely. And it's, it's actually um infuriating that still, since that time, I think we were talking in 2018, maybe 2019. Um, and still, since that time were one of the only countries that doesn't offer at a federal level paid parental leave policy. And so I think the onus is on the private sector to meet the gap. And I'm so grateful that I am in a position to help lead and do that. And we actually announced this week to our employees that we would be giving them six months paid leave. And that is for the birthing mom as well as the non birthing parents because gender equity and caregiving is critical as well. And we know that health outcomes. Yes, let's do it. That health outcomes, economic outcomes improve when you provide that bonding time when you provide that leave, uh, for both the, you know, Children, mothers, families and we're really excited to be able to do that. And also for our part time employees who are benefits eligible. So, um, you know, in the meantime we're going to continue to fight the good fight around the public policy and um and hopefully getting winning paid leave for all. But I hope other business leaders will will join me because this is actually a moment because of all of the cost cutting, because everything is happening. People are it's going in the opposite direction. People are pulling back on offering uh paid parental leave. And so, you know, we need to lean in at this moment. We need to give our our our parents the stability, the support that they need to be able to come back to work it for their mental health, for their economic health. And it's certainly for their family health. And I think we all the R. O. I. On that will be positive for everybody if we we all embrace um better forms of paid parental leave. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Emilie Arel, President and CEO, Casper Sleep (joining virtually)
Interviewer: Emma HInchliffe, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Forcing Ahead

the last few years have been difficult for many companies. We saw a change in consumer spending and engagement and Emily RL is no stranger to this. She's now at the helm of Casper once darling direct to consumer mattress startup that has gone from public to private in the last three years. Emily now faces her biggest challenge yet turning a profit. But how is she going to get there to profitability by selling mattresses to midwestern moms And I'm sure there's a lot more to her strategy. Of course. So we will hear all about it, joining us virtually today to discuss this turnaround plan. Please welcome Casper's president and Ceo Emily, R. L. And M. P. W. Next gen coach er Emma Hinchliffe. Hey good morning Emily and hi everyone. Good morning, how are you? Um Emily thank you so much for being with us. Um Yeah so I can be there in person but happy to be here. Yeah, so you've been navigating a lot at Casper and it's not necessarily been an easy time. You know, a mattress is a big ticket purchase that can be cut during a recession. So what's the state of the Casper business? Yeah. Look the last month, are we in November year has been pretty difficult in our business. Uh the mattress business and other big durable goods are good signal to upcoming recession or economic difficulty in consumer spending and so we really started to feel the pain in our business in Q4 last year. Um and it's been a tough tough year from a consumer spend standpoint. You don't need, everyone needs a mattress of course, but most of you in the room probably don't know how old your mattresses or when you bought it, you don't know when the seven or eight or nine years is up for the replacement cycle. And so those are the purchases that we see push off. And so it has been a tough year demand wise. Um, and we just announced that we want private last november. So the company has gone through a lot of change both in leadership and an ownership structure and with the consumer spending, but we are chugging along. Yeah. You know, you bring up a great point. You took over from Casper's founders after an unsuccessful I. P. O. Followed by that deal to go private. You know, how do you approach leading through so much turmoil in those challenges? Yeah. Look, I've been very lucky in my career to work for a lot of amazing people and side by side with amazing people throughout my time at Target at gap, old navy and private equity at amazon. And when I started at Casper almost three years ago, there were five pounders, all men, um, all in their twenties and thirties. And that was a very different leadership environment for me to learn to navigate through. We went public, we faced the supply chain crisis like everybody else and the founders began to leave the business and then phillips who was our ceo left in november when we announced we were going private. And so that's a, that's a lot of change internally for for a company, particularly when a lot of people who had been at the business a long time. The focus was not on profitability, it was on building a great sleep brand and that's what the founders did so brilliantly. Um, and there's also, and we need those people to found new amazing companies and pick new amazing ideas to really scale. And so I'm very happy with the team we have here now who are really operationalize, operationalize in the business in a different way. Yeah. You know, a focus for you is really motivating teams through that transition. So you've touched on this a little, but how do you motivate those teams when the goal shifts so drastically? Yeah, I mean look, I want my team to have fun at work, but I'm also like realistic, we're not going to be sort of hugging in the hallways every day and like high fiving, especially in the middle of what is a very tough economic environment. And so what I want for my team is that most days they're happy to get up and get on zoom or come into the office um that they understand what we're working towards. And I think for many of us women, we believe that our past, the ceo is to being a founder and there are many other past the ceo, I was never gonna be a founder, I'm too risk averse, I like somebody else saying my health insurance, but I'm good at operating a business and I think it's important that we all remember those are those two paths and so I think what I have is a great group of mostly women, I will say running a business and learning how to continue to fight every single day for market share. Yeah, I'd love to talk a little more about that. You know, you came up through Target and Gap inc and you know through those jobs you really kind of came to this conclusion that you were ready to be a Ceo, you've been a Ceo three times, but you were not interested in founding a business and we often hear from founders on this stage. So how did you kind of realize that about yourself and pursue that goal through that path? Yeah. You know I grew up in a family, we had a family business, I was working the minute I could count change and see above the counter at my dad's store and I'm very tall, so I was very young and I grew up in an entrepreneurial environment that it would have made sense for me to want to, you know figure something out on my own, just not my gig. I like big companies, I loved, I loved working at Target, I loved working at the gap, I mostly liked working at amazon and so through all these different places, I had to get to a point where I said, I'm gonna stop chasing the stories are here or maybe what feels shinier and do what I'm good at um and I think what I'm good at is helping people find their potential and helping teams work together towards a common goal. Yeah, I'll come to the audience for questions in a moment, so if you have any start thinking, Emily is kind of a straight shooter and tell it like it is, so take advantage of the opportunity, um but you know, you mentioned amazon uh specifically you were the Ceo of Quidsi, the former diapers dot com, so what did you learn from the ultimate failure of that business that you're applying to this moment? Yeah, I mean, look, I wouldn't call that business of failure, I think what we did, um I'm very proud of, I came in right after amazon acquired the business, the business was losing a lot of money and I had never been in a business before that was losing money. I'm coming from Target and the gap, like I didn't really understand what that meant. And so that was really a real life training and how to run a business and get a business too cash flow positive and that's important. I'm using those skills here now, but I think also that was like my training of what I'm doing at Casper is to take what was a founder led business that had a very different focus and transitioning into keeping some of that culture alive, but also building a business that can sustain itself. And ultimately we folded that business into amazon and that was the right decision for amazon proper. Um and I moved down from there. Yeah. Do we have any questions for Emily? No, okay, we'll come back. Um You know, so your strategy at Casper moving forward, we've talked about how originally Casper was kind of selling mattresses to this consumer. It was a new york city brand new Yorkers in the room. Probably remember when Casper advertising was all over the subways and you're really targeting kind of this male consumer often in the, often in their twenties, usually buying kind of like one mattress for their apartment. And now you've really shifted that strategy. Um talk about that, What is the new strategy for Casper that differs from that original model? Yeah. When I started almost two years ago and looked at what was happening in our consumer, over 70% of our sales were coming from men in their twenties and I don't, you know, I started to know there's lots of different ages here, but men in their twenties don't really have that much money and the families live in the summer. And so this market was not going to get us to where we needed to get to. And so we really started focusing on who actually makes the purchasing decisions in the family. We know it's mostly women and particularly as they're thinking about beds for their Children that for a second home, but for their primary bedroom et cetera. And so we made a big shift at that time to really, this was a very masculine brand, which is great. It was five men who started it um, to really start thinking more about lifestyle, to start thinking about what soft touches and we put around the mattress, how do we make the mattress aesthetically pleasing? Um, and we've shifted that dramatically. Majority of our purchasers are now women, we sell a lot more beds to women for their Children and for their primary home, we're a lot more focused in the suburbs. I'm from Minnesota originally and although I've lived in san Francisco and now live in new york. There are, there is lots of people in the middle and we were really ignoring all those people and so we're very focused on how do we grow our brand awareness where there are a lot of people with a lot of money to spend on mattresses. Yeah. You know, do you think that was a missed opportunity originally for Casper's original model that, you know, you mentioned it was a company founded by five men, they were marketing to people who they knew and understood was that a missed opportunity or was this just a transition that had to happen later. Look, I think it was the transmission. I mean I admired so much that the founders did. It's incredible to invent a new way, for example, the shop, but this does not happen very often. And now when hopefully you're all playing Casper, when the Casper arrives at your door, when you carry the box up your stairs or into the room, you don't even think twice about it. That was revolutionary eight years ago. So I think every business has to start somewhere and continue to evolve and that's what we're doing is continuing to evolve definitely. Okay. Anything for Emily. Oh, we have one over here. Please wait for the microphone and introduce yourself. Hi Emily. I'm the chief legal and compliance officer calm vault, which is a publicly traded data protection company. Um, as the market is starting to create a momentum to demand responsible and sustainable growth instead of growth at all costs. And while we all wait to see how long the market will demand that for whether it's a year or three or five years, how are you, how are you think About how your culture has to change to retain and motivate your talent because tech companies of, you know, two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago in the culture is dramatically different when you have to be on a sustainable growth path. Thank you. Yes. This is a question. And a lot of what we have dealt with over the past year. It is very sexy and cool to grow 50% a year, but it's not that cool to lose like a ton of money while you're doing it anymore. That used to be fine. Not okay anymore. And what my team is focused on is how do we exactly like you said sustainably grow and right now with a very, we're in the worst mattress market in 26 years. So that was really super fun to take over in that market. But that's what we're dealing with. So right now, what we, we're up against us, how do we take market share and sometimes market share in an environment like this means we're not actually growing the top line, but we are outpacing our competitors. And I think for me as a leader, what we really have to do is put all this in context for our team because when you are used to see the line going like this, like that and it starts to go the other way, it's scary. And if you think about the majority of the people, you are leading on your team, the majority of people, I'm leading candidly, probably a lot of your financial backers that you're in a public company, if you're in a private company have never seen an economic environment like this And that can cause a lot of people nervous. A lot of people making irrational decisions, maybe doing something that for the short term are good for the long term by long term right now. I mean 12, 18 months are not good. I think you have to have a very steadfast constitution, um, stay calm and make sure you can keep the people around you calm because it is a very different environment to lead through anything else. Oh, I think we have one up here. We have to be popular. Oh wow. That was not the kid in high school. Hi, this is on a slim oval with insignia. Um, and in my experience, working with the companies who are turning around uh, to profitability, there is a momentum for also for you as a CEO or um, also for the team where you get tired, you burn out. How do you personally deal with that? How do you keep yourself inspired for the company and what do you do for your team because you alluded to that a little bit? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. Do I look tired? I uh, um, so I, somebody told me once that a Ceo is not a chief executive officer is the chief emotional officer. And I think about that every day and it is very true. And I think what all of us have to remember and what I try and do is, you know the on the airplane when they say put the mask on yourself before you put on your kids or someone sitting next to you? I think about that a lot because, and it's not selfish. And as women, we have a tendency to take it. I have two little kids. I'm raising them by myself as a tendency. We have, we think about what we have to take care of everyone else first. I have to make sure everybody else gets fed and I'll eat dinner at 9 30 while I'm watching White Lotus or whatever it is, it is important that every day you take a second, five minutes. That's why I'm happy to be back in the office most days, some time on the train sometime in your car to think about something else to Tiktok for 10 minutes and watch people stuck in their pantry, whatever it is that gets your mind out of things for a second and give you the space to sort of re engage and then honestly, why don't we say this all the time? But sometimes you just have to say no. And particularly with the reemergence after Covid it has been, I feel like there's been so much going on and we have private equity partners who want us at things all the time. And I've had to learn sometimes even though that dinner sounds really cool or I do want to meet that person for breakfast or I promise that person that would help them with whatever it is. Sometimes you just have to say no. And I think it's important that your team sees that from you. I think it's important when I had Covid the first time, it was important that my team. So I took a couple of days off and that I was respecting sort of the sickness. The team takes really big cues from you and it's important that we understand that. Yeah, I think we have one more question. We have a lot Sure, right, right there in the back. Hi, I'm Jamie Rooney, I'm also minnesotan and target alone. Um, so, you know, Casper's had this very public challenge, but a lot of direct to consumer companies are probably headed toward the same challenges a little later. What advice do you have for other director? Consumer companies that maybe aren't struggling quite yet, but are starting to see those signals to think about the next 12 months. Yeah. Uh, great question one, we have to start being more realistic, it is very easy to put a bunch of numbers in a model and be like, oh, well we're up 30% we get 50% more customers and the CPM on instagram go down by 40%. Yeah, that is easy, but it never actually happened. So I think, I think One is a leader, you have to be realistic and you have to be prepared for the downturn. So we're in the middle of budget season right now and my direction to my team is great. Okay, now show me down 20 down 30 down 40. And in these times we have to be prepared for what that looks like. I think the other thing is, and this goes to the question asked earlier, this is a big change in what makes a good company right now right? Like it used to be, who cares about how much money you made. Let's just look at the top of the P and L. And that's just not what makes a great company anymore. I tell my team all the time, we're not a nonprofit, that is not what we are doing here. This is a business where we need to make money. And I think it's important that you are clear with your team about what that means and are clear about that. It's going to be hard work and that you have the right people and the right lieutenants on your team who want to dig in and find the solution and and we had a lot of turn on my team um for that very reason because it's not easy and it is like the most also. So I think it's important, you just have the right team and they know what they're signing up for Emily. Um a lot of the women in this room are at the VP level which is a role you held for a very long time. A lot of businesses as well. What advice do you have for these executives, especially at this economic moment? Yeah, I think the VP level is the hardest level was the hardest level until I got the ceo because it's the level where now you're sort of on the other side of the line, you're on the leadership team now whatever that means that your company still that title is very meaningful and it means maybe people don't want you to stay at happy hour all night anymore. Big realization for me like oh they want me to leave, it's in a different place than you were before and I think in VP is where you really start learning, how do I connect with my team in a different way. How do I delegate smartly, how do I learn to audit, how do I set up mechanisms so that I can audit without micromanaging. And I think at the VP level it's a very important time and in this economic environment in your team is going to need a lot of support. And I think particularly if you're working virtually, you've got to find a way to check in with people because people are nervous. I mean if you're in new york like people are getting, you know 10,000 layoffs, we're learning about a week. People are nervous, they're anxious and maybe not about covid anymore, but now about other things and so I think it's important to just have these check ins, find ways to connect with your team, find ways to make sure that the leaders underneath you are doing that and communication is getting cascaded because communication even though you get sick of saying it over and over. I mean I get so sick of hearing my own voice like it's nauseating, but your team wants to hear from you and they want to know everything's gonna be okay and I think it's important to take the time to do that work. Thank you so much Emily for an amazing conversation.

Latashá Alcindor, Head of Community, Zora; Independent Artist 
Jaime Schmidt, Founder, Schmidt’s Naturals; Co-founder, Color Capital, BFF
Moderator: Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Your Decentralized Future Is Here: Web3, NFTs, And The Future Of Crypto

Latashá Alcindor, Head of Community, Zora
Jaime Schmidt, Founder, Schmidt’s Naturals; Co-founder, Color Capital, BFF
Moderator: Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE

Most Powerful Women 2022 - Your Decentralized Future Is Here

Most Powerful Women 2022 - Your Decentralized Future Is Here: Web3, NFTs, And The Future Of Crypto

originally Web three technologies like N. F. T. S. Worth that, to support a new world of services. To disrupt the economics of the internet tokens with free recording artists from the dependency of their labels. But now, as crypto winter drops to an arctic level, freeze, how do founders of decentralized companies continue to execute on their value proposition? To discuss the challenges and emerging opportunities? Please welcome Latasha Alcindor or head of community at Zora and an independent artist herself. And Jamie Schmidt, the founder of Schmidt's Natural and co founder of Color Capital and BFF. So the objective of this panel is to talk about Web three and F. T. S. And decentralized finance. But as we've watched F. T. X. Crash and burn with potential legal implications. Um And Fortune 500 are laying off enormous number of employees. It seems like a call for stability um and restoring trust in institutions that are traditional rather than perhaps building new ones. Am I wrong? Can you guys talk about that? Yeah. Hey everyone, Jamie Schmidt founder BFF, anybody in here? BFF holder a chance. All right, a couple. Um We we started BFFs early this year um with the intention of educating around Web three. What does three mean? How is crypto play into that? How our community is important and all this. And what are the opportunities to connect with other people, enhance our career opportunities and potentially make money? Um We started um you know, with with youtube events, welcoming people into the space, just going over the basics lingo, um what what it all means. And so with that We gathered a brown, I don't want to get too deep into what we do, but look at that stage a bit. Um we gathered around 100,000 community members over the last several months. We're just excited to explore and to learn together um given the space now, you know, you mentioned there's some downfalls in crypto and a lot of drama in the last week or so. Um, but nothing has changed about our mission about what we think is the potential of this space. Um new career paths are opening up. We have the black chain, which is at the heart of everything. Cryptocurrency is part of that, but it's not everything. Um, I think right now what we need to focus on as founders of these projects is community building in relation building networking and just understanding the potential in all of this. We're still very, very early. Um and I think some of these, you know, these hiccups are are not in our favor, but they're also part of the process and I think it's really important for communities to understand that things will happen and there will be um, drama, there will be um, founders without the best intentions and there will be scams, right, That's all part of the learning process. And so together we're gonna get over it and we're gonna, you know, come up with opportunities that we think will be the benefit of all of us and, you know, the future of the internet. I completely agree with Jamie. Hi, I'm Latasha, I am founder of Zootopia, Head of Community and also an artist um with the F. T. X. Scam, I realized that one of the most important things to understand is that this is for the long term run. We're making a garden as we speak and with this garden will come some weeds and we're literally witnessing that right now. But the beauty of Web three is that it's much more than just crypto, right? We have an F. T. S. We have cows, we have communities growing throughout the whole space and within Zora, where I'm working right now, we're witnessing communities actually find sovereignty and autonomy and a home for themselves to really grow their economic fields. So I'm really hyped for that. Um so it's hearing guys talk about community and the work that you're doing. You know, we watched Sandbank and freed who is supposed to be the good guy in this world, turn out to be what's looking like a really bad guy as um a lot of companies and individuals will lose their life savings and fold as a result of his mismanagement of F. T. X. In your work. Um where can we look in crypto for a leader and for positivity was so much bad happening with FDX Falling. Yeah. The one thing I'm really excited about with Web three potential that creators are making a name for themselves. People who were under the radar before who never had opportunities are now in the spotlight, whether it's through their work as artists or their work as community builders or new entrepreneurs and there's so much inspiration and so much um goodwill out there amongst these groups and across the communities to and that's where I get really excited is not just within the Communities and files, but so much collaboration. And especially in the recent weeks where there is so much stress and turmoil like communities are coming together and saying like this is not going to define the space, this is not gonna, you know, paint the picture of what the potential web story really is. And so if you're asking, you know where to find these leaders, it's it's in the communities, it's going to the discourse, going to twitter um and find like the people that are leading these projects that are out to actually do good and community is great, but if you're someone with $100 and you're looking to grow what you're looking to invest it, um you know, and you're not an investor who has a lot to spare, why would you invest in a risky asset? Looking at the headlines and seeing this looks like, I might be, it might be a really fast way for my $100 to disappear. I think we're kind of skewing the picture too small, I think we got to look at the bigger picture of this. If someone is interested in investing in web three or N. F. T. S. Or anything of that sort F. T. X. Is not the only space and neither is any of these crypto space is there's so much more to grow. And so if I was an investor who only had $100 I would probably invest it into something that I truly believe in into. Something that really speaks to my heart. Work and stay there for the long term because I know it's going to grow. So I e if there is an artist within the web space that really is building something that's going to shift music or shift where we're going with industry, I'm probably going to invest my money on that because there's a bigger world out there that's going to grow from there. I think it's it's important to know also that in FPs can mean so many different things. There's art just just strictly art, you know, on the on the Blockchain. Um There's access to communities which the two of us are talking about. We both have these large communities of people and you have an N. F. T. Or a token that grants you access to these communities. They're also N. F. T. S. That can be used in the consumer space for example. Um You'll see a lot of brands and I can just announce something this week. Um Where they're N. F. T. S. Will unlock special access as a customer. And so I think it's important to understand that N. F. T. Means many many things. Um You know when you say $100 like that maybe for some if you buy $100 token to unlock access to your community for example. And the relationship that you that you make in their price is right. And so it's a very it's a very personal undertaking in purchase. Say I'd love to open it up to audience questions. Does anyone have anything for a Panelist? One third. Hi I'm Windsor and I work with brands um help them with their gente marketing strategies. Where are the biggest opportunities for consumer brands with N. F. T. S in particular. I'd love I'd love to take that. I actually grew a consumer brand um in my past life called smith Natural. And um I see big potential with Web three and N. F. T. S. For consumer brands um namely the opportunity for consumer research. So for example if a brand would offer a token that token grants access to research groups right? Consumer insights groups um Where you're offering feedback on the product before the general public has the opportunity to chime in or its access to maybe an exclusive event or limited edition products that only you as the holder can gain access to. Um I think loyalty programs are the obvious answer to think about Starbucks example. Um And the cool thing is like a lot of people say, okay well this already existing Web two right? I already have this loyalty program like how is this different? Um The key is that it's something that you can buy and sell and so if you have ownership of this token and you have these access to these brands when you grow tired of it or no longer fits your lifestyle then you go and sell it. So there's value in that in itself. And so the potential across consumer I think is really really huge and you know we've only just begun to scratch the surface there. I'd also say collaboration key. I think there's a beautiful opportunity for consumer brands and communities and like artists or developers to really collaborate in this take before we didn't really have those opportunities because they were usually gate kept. But now with this open space with decentralization and web three we're really witnessing collaboration between brands and artists really coming 1 to 1. I think also you know something that I think about N. F. T. S. They did seem there was this giant, you know people selling these paintings these N. F. T. S. For you know $70 million that did seem to really um coincide with a very frothy economy and now as we're an economic downturn, where do you see the role of N. F. T. S. Changing and evolving. I can take that over. Um I think what's going to happen now is that we're going to find more math, adoption um Now that the costs are lower to get into web three through music, N. F. T. S. Or R. N. F. T. S. Et cetera. And with options like Zora offering which is a buy now option which usually makes the costs lower for N. F. T. More people are going to be excited to get into it and involved. Um So I think what we're going to witness is different folks coming in. Um And not just the crypto bro average we're gonna witness more by pop communities, more marginalized communities, find the space, decide what they want to do with the space and build something that will benefit more people. And that's why both of our communities were started. Exactly you mentioned $70 million T or whatever. Um that's where a lot of the 50s first came into the picture was like this huge tickets, you know digital collectibles that was an ape or a board punk or whatever. It might be a clipboard punk like or four date. Um We saw the opportunity to change that, right? And just like it doesn't have to be a high ticket item that's like completely like you know not attainable for a lot of people. And so um yeah it was all about access I think for a lot of us um we wanted to make sure that our communities, communities that looked like me and women and everybody really have this opportunity to grow something of their own. It was all about ownership. It was all about control and I think that's still at the ethos of this. So do you think, um that what's happening now will affect equity and inclusion in these spaces? I think it's an opportunity to come together and say we don't tolerate this and it's, but you know, they're they're bad players in every industry, sadly. Um, and the fact that, you know, this is just coming to the surface now. It's just an indicator of like human behavior, you know, and it sucks, but it's more like incentive to show that there are, you know, good, good builders out there with with great intentions and um just more incentive to make a change. Yeah. What I'm hoping is going to highlight the better for people doing things. Um, and really show up for the communities like BFFs like Zootopia that are showing up for the people to really build something that's equitable and carry and have hard work. But understanding reality that there are risks, but as I mentioned earlier, like that's an important part of any new technology is that knowing like yes, there will be risks as leaders and looking at this risk knowing that this risk exists. Um how are you changing your approach to make sure that your communities are scam, free education, education is at the root of it, Making sure that the community understands the risk, making sure that the community understands how they could fall into scams. Um making sure that we're offering as much like education as possible. Um And really diverse education as well. Not just how to mention N. F. T. But what is marketing, what is pushing it, what is you know getting with the right communities etcetera etcetera and understanding the mental health implications of it all to and being realistic like hey like some people in our community might be struggling right now because they're overwhelmed. They're confused, they're personally impacted financially by this. And so just recognizing that like some people might be hurting and just more in front of you know connect with your communities and what do you think the role is of regulators as they continue to come and very fast into uh N. F. T. And D. Five spaces. I mean it's important I think that there's a lot of work to be done and like I feel bad people in that position because it's like you know it's a lot. But yeah I think obviously regulation is going to be key. I think I also think that it's really important that regulation that does come in really regulate on the proper calls. Um Often times when we have regulations, we witness it really limit communities that don't need to be limited and actually benefit communities that don't need to be benefit off of it. So I'm hoping that the regulation that comes in, we're witnessing like actual regulations being played and not like a trump situation and all those kind of things. So, you know, we want to see actual regulation happen and not just the same communities being harmed by it. Are there any other questions from the audience that we can address in the back? Hi Maureen Brown. Um I'm curious from your experience what you've witnessed um in the N. F. T. Space or particularly with consumer brands who have tried to play in this space. I'm very interested in this as well, you know, with our business, but I would love to hear some of the pitfalls maybe like where has it gone wrong as someone who's just kind of trying to understand the market. I don't fully understand like what are the pitfalls and what what do people mess up when entering that space? Yeah, I think one of the pitfalls is lack of collaboration with the community that is already in web three. Oftentimes consumer brands will come in because they're a big name and think that they're going to do well and it doesn't work like that you actually have to consider the community that is already standing there, really connect with the artist community, the developer community that investor community and show that you actually care about what's happening in web three a lot of times I've seen it over and over again where a company will come in there like I have this brilliant N. F. T. And really come in for the cash grab and they don't get it because they didn't connect with the community in the first place. And I think a lot of brands especially last year when there was so much hype and just jumped in too quickly without enough forethought because they wanted to be part of the scene, right? And they were worried about staying competitive. And so I think the bear market is a blessing in that sense is that it forces brands to slow down and really think about what they're offering and to make sure that what they're offering if you're offering an N. F. T. Like what is it providing that otherwise couldn't write without the Blockchain technology. So making sure that you know you're actually offering something special that you know otherwise wouldn't be possible. We're almost out of time. So in closing um I know we have a lot of crypto investors in this community and people who are looking to get involved in crypto with all that's going on. What is the one thing that people should keep in mind to be smart about their investments? I'd say I mean like the obvious like D. Y. O. R. Like do your own research obviously don't you know invest what you can't afford. Um making sure that you know when you're taking advice from people that are people that you trust and just you know, maybe pausing before you click the button and um, and you know, find maybe just a couple of it in terms of like 50 communities, for example, like find a couple that just really feel good and that complement your lifestyle and try not to invest in everything. Yeah, I would totally agree with the sentiment of finding community that is key. I really believe that if I didn't find the communities that I was in today, I wouldn't have been the artist that I am in Web three and now I'm one of the most profitable music artists in Web three, um, which is such an amazing feat just because of the communities that are there. And so find your community, find the people that you connect with and really want to build with and then go from there and start small. Okay, well don't start a crypto exchange. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it.

Andrea Albright, Executive Vice President, Walmart Sourcing
Interviewer: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Sourcing Sustainably

Danielle Cohen-Shohet, Founder and CEO, GlossGenius 
Leah Cohen-Shohet, Chief Business Officer, GlossGenius
Moderator: Alexandra Sternlicht, FORTUNE

MPW Next Gen 2022 - Beauty Business-In-A-Box

now on to another corner of the intersection of tech and retail. If you run a spa studio or Salon Gloss genius wants to be your business in a box, a vertical software stack to help you streamline and organize your operations. Small business owners are listening and the numbers are adding up. Gloss Genius has 40,000 customers and transactions worth $2 billion dollars each year. We'll ask the identical twin sisters who run the firm about their plans for expansion and how Gloss genius encourages economic mobility for women and underserved communities, please welcome glass geniuses. Founder and Ceo Daniel Cohen show it and and their chief business officer, Leah Cohen show it for a conversation with Fortune tech reporter, Alexandra Stern like thank you, Hello again. Well, so this is a first for me, um, to be on the stage with identical twin co founders. Um, and as fun as that is, you guys have a very serious business. So you've raised $44 million at 100 and $16 million valuation for glass genius making you some of the highest funded female founders alive. Can you talk about the implications of this? Defin. And the updated number is actually higher than 160 360. So I guess that I know it's exciting. Yeah. Um, you know, I think they say with, with a lot of responsibility, um, comes the opportunity to have a lot of impact and that's been one of the most rewarding parts of the journey so far and I'm excited to unpack a lot of that. I would agree. Um, we're on a big mission, I think we're off to a really exciting start, but we have plans for a lot more. So the beauty salon space is a really interesting one because it's one of just, it's just a finger in the handful of industries that have not been disrupted by a major player, like an amazon or like it's really run by small business for, by women and um, who are independent operators. Do you think that there's going to be a future where we're gonna see tech disruption and more, um, you know, franchises in the space? It's a good question. Uh, if you look at the data currently, it's actually moving the other way where there's so much more fragmentation happening in the space, the non employer um, area of the market is growing two times faster as the payroll focused area of the market. And so if you look to where, you know, kind of that data points to, I really believe there's going to be even more fragmentation. What I think we're also going to see is as there's more fragmentation, what opportunities do we have to give more power to any of these business owners um, collectively, together through software and, and that's what I'm really excited about being able to enable and continue to be a part of. Yeah, I think the other thing I would add that is franchises you go for for the brand and I think what's special about what we're building is we're enabling all of these non employers individuals, independent businesses to be the brand, clients have relationships directly with them. So part of the software stack is giving them back power so they build the brand and they attract and retain their own set of clients as opposed to relying on the franchises. So speaking of, you know, this is a space where there are a lot of immigrants, there are a lot of women, um and for them about investment can be deadly. It can force them to close their doors. So how do you convince them to implement gloss genius and maybe perhaps an overview of what exactly gloss genius does for the unfamiliar. Yeah, So let me start with the overview and then um we'll get into specifics about how we can help business owners implement it and how we make that as easy as possible for them. Um basically what we do, you know, when we were introduced is a vertical software payments company. If you're familiar with the company like toast service, titan pro core, we do that. But for salons and studios and we're focused on helping a very quickly fragmenting area of the market be independently owned and operated side of the market. Um, basically manage their whole entire back office through software and these business owners have critical pain points across scheduling, booking payments, client relationship management, inventory management expenses and the list goes on. Um because running a small business is really hard. They have very little help um and yet they have a dream and a passion and they very altruistic, you know, kind of inclination to just continue to focus on the client experience and that's where we come in. How do we help all of them succeed and abstract so much of their back office so they can keep focusing on what they love doing and ultimately succeeding. And I think if you, you know, look at how we're helping business owners implement, um that's part of that's part of what's very special. Um and it comes back to something we really believe in, which is how do we break down barriers and and enable more and more access to technology for small business owners that traditionally have been underserved by technology. Um they've had a lot of bad experiences with technology and the business side of things, The good news is on the consumer side, they're getting more and more experience and excited about technology, you know, whether it's with social media or um different types of chats and and things they can do. And so if you combine the experience we've had with the business, the experience they have as consumers, you're starting from a backdrop of their curiosity being there to adopt more technology and given that now what we have to do is make it as easy as possible um for them and we do a whole bunch of things with concierge and on boarding and helping them transfer data and getting set up and um ultimately helping them succeed with the software that is um the secret part of of getting them to love technology. Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is we have a lot of different paths to being a really entrepreneurial business owner, so some come, they graduate and they want to start their business glass geniuses there, we help them start run grow their business, some have been developing relationships with clients for five years and they're ready to go out on their own, some have been out on their own and they're ready to expand and glass genius has a variety of those business owners and services those use cases and I think point it's all about how do we help them succeed for where they are in their journey on achieving their entrepreneurial dreams? Okay, so I have to ask you guys how have twinning helped or hurt you, they say twinning is winning. Um so I think it's been a true gift and especially when I think about the company growing quickly and the extreme amount of trust you need and other executives that you work with, it's been great to work you know alongside leah and that helps us go to new heights and I think the fact that her and I both are able to challenge each other and complement each other in certain areas um has been something that I value significantly. Yeah. Finding complementarity with who you work with is really key. So in my case Daniel is a creative visionary. She's always thinking about what we should be doing 234 years out and I have a very different skill set. So that's something where we're able to bring those two together. Um so that's definitely a winning use cases. Uh we have disagreements as you'd expect with other of your colleagues, so just because we're twins doesn't mean we have, you know, exact same opinion. I think more than anything, we have different opinions, but there's definitely a long term alignment between us. Um and you know, perhaps it helps you win business over a lot of really big players. I mean you're in the enterprise space that is very crowded. It's very well funded. How do you think that you've beat out big players to win business? Yeah, So let me, let me jump in. I think first is focused on our customer. These are independent businesses. They have desires dreams to start run and grow their business and be incredibly successful in this space. And glass genius has uniquely focused on this class of entrepreneur. Um you know, I think diving in what's different about us and how we've grown so quickly grab market share. So a couple of things first is a lot of the approaches to software in this space have been about commoditize ng small businesses and that every small business has the same brand, Every small business gets, you know, to compete with each other against the vector that matters the least for them on these marketplaces. We've been really focused on, how do we provide them a suite of tools that help them be successful, help them scale their time run better operations so that ultimately they can do what they love. And I think that's been key to a lot of new customers coming on board as well as breeding more entrepreneurs in this space that are ready to start and grow their own business. I think I'll take that a little bit further when it comes to being really customer centric. I think it's just really about understanding them. And if you look at some of the solutions that we've gotten out there, we're the only company that's put out these really quirky, colorful, cool card readers. Um but why, because I say in the beauty industry, beauty matters and when you're dealing with highly creative professionals that are, you know, helping their own clients reach, you know, kind of their ideal identity, we as a software company need to show up and help our own customers reach their identity to for their business. Um, and so that's an example, but I think it just basically speaks to like understanding customers and what I'm always surprised about in this industry, there's so few female run businesses. And yet on the software side and yet most of the business owners, small business owners in the space are, you know, kind of females actually, and I think it's no surprise that there is a female run founded company like glass genius that's been able to understand customers so well here and get solutions out for them that they love to. Um you know, in kind of the backdrop we're in, you've had a lot of success so far. Are you worried about layoffs and the current economic economic condition fluctuating stock market, um demise of crypto? Has it affected lost genius? Are you putting us, you know, a moat to try and protect yourself? So I think you always have to think about the macro and as a ceo it's really important to be aware of the world around you because that's the context you're growing your business in. I have a few thoughts here. The first is um, our industry is really resilient historically. If you look across time, the beauty wellness sector has been resilient, there's um, you know, clients that have a lot of demand to spend on some of these smaller things such as beauty wellness experiences and services that do drive a lot of value in their everyday lives. Um you know, I think the second is if you think about the space we're in and the products we have there is it's very clear to see value that we drive to businesses. And so my view has always been let's focus on the fundamentals and drive a lot of value to businesses and in some way creating a software company that's easy to understand. You know, it's not hard to believe that there's business owners out there that want to focus on the creative side of things and yet have trouble running the business side and how software can help. And um I think that's a strong card now and you know, kind of this era were in. Um and then the third thing I would say is just capital efficiency. The company has mattered so much in the beginning of the company's journey. We were primarily bootstrapped and revenue finance. And I think having that experience from the beginning has made us ultra focused on efficiency and some of the fundamentals that really matter and that D. N. A. I think has helped us think very creatively about navigating different environments, whether it was covid 19 or even this macro backdrop we're in right now that I believe will help us create an even stronger, better business. And we always have to be focused on delivering value to customers and making sure every single person at the company is doing, um whatever it takes to be driving the most value, because it also goes back to our mission, we have a mission of empowering entrepreneurship and um if we're not taking and seizing the opportunity, then we're not fulfilling our mission as as much as we could be. Yeah, I would add, we get the benefit of looking at what's happening on the business side and also at the consumer side. So Danielle mentioned what happens typically in a recession. I'm sure we've probably heard about this, but it's a, the concept of the lipstick effect were more likely to spend on lower cost luxury goods, um, than something higher priced and it could be a little bit, you know, more discretionary. So beauty and wellness continues to be really resilient I think will continue to see probably a plethora of new services that get to be adapted for this economy. Um, we already see a bunch of add ons and you know, smaller kind of trims, things that are happening in our industry that are probably reflective, but overall we're really excited about how consumer side continues to invest in beauty and wellness routines. Self care is a big investment. Um, and we're expecting that to continue pace. Does anyone in the audience have a question that they'd like to ask these wonderful panelists? Yeah. Hi, I'm Caroline, I'm the president of Color Health. Um, I'm really curious what your go to market motion looks like when you're selling to tens of thousands of small businesses that already have some technology reservations. I'm curious how do you reach them? How are you financing that? Yeah, that's a great question. So first of all our industry Daniel mentioned all the fragmentation in our industry and that's probably a pretty unique challenge for us, You know, choosing the software that's going to run their business is no easy decision. So, um, you know, first and foremost Danielle has always been about investing in the product and I think it's really important that no matter what we do, we come to market with a really good prop, we get that out to a single customer, a group of customers, and that spreads a lot of word of mouth and goodwill. Um we've grown a lot in the early days, so word of mouth referrals that continues to be a key channel for us to acquire. Um, partners and affiliates are a really important part of the way we grow as well. And of course every company is invested in a traditional marketing stack. And we're also doing that as well. Social media has been really important for us. And if you look at the business owners in our space, a lot of them are in social media, they discover things on social media for their business. And that's been interesting for us to be a part of the conversation. And, and when you think about our business owners, what we've done uniquely is tailored our go to market to the way these business owners also are. And think, and so what do I mean by that one example is our go to market is very visual and that's why we do a lot of things on social media, If you think about the industry, we're in, we're working with, um, businesses and business owners that are highly visual people. And so the challenge is how do you align your go to market motion and some of the collateral in a way that also reflects the way business owners operate. And I think that's what we've been able to do really well. And it starts in social media. And then, as we mentioned, it carries in a lot of other places outside of the product. And you know, it's been great to see that there's business owners that talk about the company, but you also need to make sure about other things outside of go to market to are really working. And so like what is that customer service and success? Um, we've invested a lot in customer service and success because we know that the experience doesn't just stop with discovering our product. It also basically continues on through the customer journey with our product and um, different points in time that business owners have with our company have been a very important channel for us to continue word of mouth and continue referral growth with our existing base. We're almost out of time here. So, glass genius has had a lot of practice so far. You've got a lot of great momentum. What can we expect to see from glass genius in the next five years, 10 years there's this quote I really like and it's um, what you aim at determines what you see and when I think about glossy nous into the future, we're building something really big. We're tackling a very big industry um made up of a lot of small businesses were helping small businesses think really big Ron really big operations. And um, I think the change we've seen in the market structure in this industry is really just the beginning of um what software can start to enable and further even more. What I'm really excited to do more of with the company is, in some way, something similar to what our customers have been able to do is like, um, you know, they've worked very closely with the valued relationships they have, and that's the basis of monetization. And as a software company, I think you have the same opportunity with your own customers. Every customer is a relationship. And if you approach it that way, you, you know, kind of take a step back and you can think, well, what else can we do to further the relationship And the most successful relationships are symbiotic. Um and so what are we gonna do to help business owners more successful? And I think software, particularly the vertical software space is going to become even more powerful, even more nuanced. Um, and even more creative for business owners to do bigger and bigger and bigger things. And um, I think we'll play a very important role in that. Yeah, we've just scratched the surface of vertical software. So when I think about things we can do, you know, time is their limiting factor. How can we help them scale with the same amount of time? How can we help them build greater businesses? And again, as I mentioned, we use this expression helping small businesses run big operations. So in five years I'd love for each of these small businesses to feel like a big fortune 500 company, you know, I'll share one customer anecdote, which which always gets me going. But there was there was a customer that posted on social and she was remarking about the success she's had running her own business and she said, I now feel like I'm the ceo of a fortune 500 company. So I think when when we look at success in five years it would be that all of these entrepreneurs in this, in this sort of industry category of entrepreneurship, um really feels like they're the Ceo and empowered to run their own business no matter how small it is, awesome. Thank you so much, guys, thank you

MPW Next Gen 2023

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Creativity And New Tech: Lessons From The Writers’ Room

Latest video

Maytha Alhassen, Co-executive Producer and Writer, Ramy Moderator: Alex Sternlicht, Tech Reporter, FORTUNE

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MPW Next Gen 2023 - Creativity And New Tech: Lessons From The Writers’ Room

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MPW Next Gen 2022 - Beauty Business-In-A-Box