 Hello, everyone. My name is Rebecca Blumenstein. I'm with the New York Times and I'm speaking to you today for my home in Maplewood, New Jersey. I'm very pleased to be here today to introduce our panel, Mobilizing New Power for Change. These are such interesting times and I'm pleased that we have a panel that's just amazing. They are on the front lines of this change that we're seeing from around the world. And so we will have a very healthy, robust discussion and want to involve you in all aspects of it. We're going to start out by asking you a question first though. Using the Slido technology, we would like you to ask the question, what does new power mean to you? We're going to try to do a word cloud to help guide us in terms of what you're thinking about the shifts that are taking place around the world. And to use Slido, you follow the link in the chat or you go to Slido.com on your mobile phone and enter the event hashtag SDIS and then select this session. We would love to get a sense of what you're seeing out there in terms of activism, in terms of change, in terms of things that are happening in your community. We're going to have a discussion for about 25 minutes and I'd also like to encourage you to use Slido to submit any questions that strike you along the way and I will be spending a good 10, 15 minutes at the end to ask your questions of our panelists. And so these are some, here's some early answers here, new power, capacity to change, inclusiveness, co-creation, communities of color, need for transformation, Latinx, very interesting. That's cool. Well with this let me introduce our panel and I'm going to introduce them one by one and start off with Clark Murphy, who's CEO of Russell Reynolds Associates, a search and advisory firm here in the US. Clark, I wanted to start off, thank you for being here today. I wanted to start off and ask you, are you seeing new kinds of activism in the companies that you advise in the workplace and is it different than what you were seeing previously? No question. I think people think of with corporations activism as shareholder activists, but it's a different world from the question you have. The activists are the employees who say if they don't believe in what the company's doing, particularly around social justice and around the environment in the last year or so, they'll go. One of the great, leaders of one of the great financial services brands around the world told me that as they put in place some really progressive sustainability actions and I said, what was the spark? What was the strategy? He said, Clark, it's not a strategy, it's a retention. We can't be a great company without great people and our people demand that we're more active. I had to change what we were doing. So you mentioned a year ago, what happened a year ago because that was, COVID was just starting, that was before it was the Brazilian rainforest fires and then the Australian bush fires that I think pun intended sparked a greater awareness. All of us who are here today are very focused on sustainability, but the broader world said, oh my gosh, what's going on? I mean, look at San Francisco and the air quality right now. So I think over a year ago, people, employees started and then consumers said, if I won't buy the product, if the company isn't stepping out in front of what's right for the earth or right for as it later came to social justice, or in COVID healthcare and health and safety for their employees. So I think of the activists that I'm talking about as they've come to activism as opposed to disruptive shareholders or something like that. I would like to introduce next Michelle Miller, who is founder of co-worker.org. Michelle has done a lot of work with tech companies who have long talked about action, sometimes not followed through as much as their press releases. Michelle, are you seeing, I know you've been in the trenches working on this for a while, are you seeing acceleration or change from what we've seen even in the past year or two? Yeah, we have for sure. I mean, for employees in the tech sector, the shift toward more workplace activism really started, I would say around 2017, when in the US context, there was just so much work around building resistance movements and engaging in various forms of protest. And many tech workers started to think about the places where they had sort of the closest access to power and the closest access to power lovers. And we know that tech is a huge player in the world, that it shapes our economies and our cultures. And these employees at places like Google and Facebook and Amazon started really looking inward and saying, what am I doing with the power that I have as an employee in a place that I work all day every day? And how can I really have a say in what my labor goes to and what my labor doesn't go to? And I think that's so much of it, especially in the past years, not just about activism around one policy or another, but really a new vision of democracy where we have shared governance over all of the systems that impact our lives. And we're seeing that in the tech sector, and we're also seeing that in all parts of the economy, specifically after COVID and service sector jobs and restaurant jobs and places where people have had to continue to go to work. And you believe that if employees play a greater role in setting policy that the policies and the companies can simply be more successful? Absolutely. And again, I'll talk a little bit about COVID in the first few weeks after the shutdown really spread across the United States. It was employees, frontline employees in the service sector and the gig sector, the people who were still going and doing work outside, who were able to let their companies know, for example, at CVS, whether or not the distancing policies that were being implemented, whether or not the paid sick policies that were expanded were actually enabling people to take advantage of them in the ways that would protect communities. A lot of times what we see is that policies are implemented with the absolute best intentions, but it isn't until workers have the opportunity to put them into action and test them out and communicate back about whether or not they're working that you can sort of tweak them and make them stronger and better. And we're seeing that now in terms of the way that COVID tracing technology is being implemented also in frontline stores and temperature checks where workers can give feedback that says, you know, these thermal cameras aren't working, they're recording my temperature too low, etc. So I think this is going to be an ongoing advantage specifically in the COVID era where workers are able to collectively get together, assess policies and give feedback to their employers. I'd like to next go to Joel Palo Ferriera from Sao Paulo. He is CEO of Natura and company and in Latin America has responsibility for Natura, Avon, the body shop and ESOPE. So a huge responsibility and business there. JP, you have said that your company perhaps is taking this activism to a level that I'm not sure we're seeing anywhere else. Could you please explain? Sure, and thanks for the opportunity of being here with you. Many of you may have heard of parts of our businesses and we are a family of businesses which are purpose driven that believe in beauty and relationships and the power to transform individuals and the society and the world as a whole. And we are indeed as much a social network as we are a social movement that includes more than six million beauty consultants and representatives around the world that actually actively engage around belonging, prosperity and purpose. And that's always been the case. If we take Avon for more than 130 years and up to today, marching with millions to eliminate violence against women and girls around the world or the body shop founded by Anita Roddick, perhaps the synonym of corporate activism. And only two years ago, the body shop managed to collect more than eight million signatures to deliver a petition to the UN against animal testing or Natura who has perhaps the largest crowdfunding program to support public education in Brazil and the way it's developed social biodiversity into its value chain. Now what we see happening right now is the ability to amplify the power of this network which is composed of many social entrepreneurs through digital interconnection and that is amazing because as the COVID crisis unveiled all these unbalances, the lack of access to welfare and wealth around the world or even the climate crisis, public is demanding much more of companies to do that. And what we see is our network doing what they have always done, but it's a much larger scale. So I can comment, for instance, in the last three months or so, we reached a Twitter global trend topic with an inclusion effort. Or only two weeks ago, we set the largest park in Sao Paulo, the equivalent to Central Park in New York, we set it on fire. Actually it was projections and virtual fire, but to drive attention to the burnings and the fires in the Amazon and guess what? These networks simply amplify that tool scale that we couldn't think of before. And by the way, that is pushing our innovation barrier to a point that if it's not to create positive social environmental impact, then it's not worth innovating. And this in terms of the bottom line is paying off for you. There's lots of, you know, typically such activism among employees has been seen as anathema to the bottom line. Oh, sure. I mean, and there is a running cost behind this. But the key question is, what is the future value of that? I don't think that accountants yet have already learned how to discount the future value of those activities, because much of that is intangible. But if it was not for that, and we have been doing that for 130 years or 51 years in the case of Natura or 30 plus in the case of 40, in the case of the Body Shop and 30 in the ESOP, if it was not for that, such a family of business would not have become the fourth largest beauty company in the world. I'd like to next go to Juan Juhi from Jiroge. She's founder of the People Planet Africa, based in Kenya. And Juan Juhi, thank you so much for being here. Are you seeing activism and new power shifts on the ground there? And you were telling me about an example kind of led by workers that seemed really interesting earlier. Thank you, Rebecca. And what is exciting is seeing young people becoming active citizens in Kenya and across the globe when you think about Greta. And in 2018, I led one of the biggest campaigns in Kenya called Save Our Forest KE, which was agitating and pushing government to impose a ban on forest harvesting following the Watton destruction of forests in Kenya. And social media is what helped us make the campaign successful. We started sharing photos of destruction and created the hashtag, the Save Our Forest KE, which then became a platform for other people across the country to share the destruction of forest in their in their neighborhoods, in their local community. But what this campaign did, it gave birth to more young people who are now putting government on its toes. This is both the county and the national government. And that's a beautiful and powerful thing. When you come to Kenya, we have something we call the Kenyans on Twitter, and we are known to be lethal. We unite for a common good, and we also unite against a common enemy internally and externally. When government is misappropriating funds, we call them ours. And government, for instance, recently, they wanted to cut off part of the of a park in the capital city to build a road that nobody is that's not going to benefit anybody. And Kenyans united on Twitter. And we saw government with drawing and saying, you're not going to touch the park, you're going to leave it, the recreational park, you're going to leave it. But we're going to go back to the drawing board and redesign the road. And that is really, really powerful. So we are seeing young people taking on active citizenship. We are holding governments accountable. And when you think about Greta and the campaign, the Fridays for Future, it has inspired many young people to realize that this I too can be an active citizen. I too can put pressure on government, on corporates to start producing services and products and implementing policies that are really, really at the heart of people and planet. But I think the broader question that we have to ask ourselves, because even when you go to the Fridays for Future website, you will realize that they talk about the number of people who've been involved in the Fridays for Future. And that is that in million across 7500 cities around the globe. But then they do not talk about the achievements they've gained from the Fridays for Future. Are they able to influence policies? How many policies have been influenced? How many corporates have reduced their carbon emission? And that is extremely important. And I feel that the greater question that we have to ask ourselves is, how do we marry street activism and street here being symbolic with policy formulation and decision making? And that's a missing piece that I feel that we must not lose. So activism is extremely important. But at the end of the day, we must focus on the end goal, change of policy. And when we're talking about climate, we must also remember to talk about carbon emission. How do we reduce the carbon emission implementation of the Paris Agreement? These are extremely important things that we have to also consider when you're talking about activism. Juanju, that's an excellent point. And it sets us up nicely for my next question. The title of this session is New Power. And lots has been said and written about technology enabling employees to organize and people to really bind together in ways that didn't around the world that didn't exist before. But is this changing fundamentally institutions? We actually in the tech sector saw the big companies just get bigger and more powerful. So I'd love to hear from all of the panelists about whether you think something different is happening now, that this new power is demanding a shift in the power balance of what are some very powerful institutions in our society. Michelle, what are you seeing in Silicon Valley? Any, you know, the big companies out there still getting bigger? They are. I mean, you know, I do think that it's a long process. So this is activism that people have been engaging in for the past few years. And in terms of when you look at the size of the tech companies, it's one part employee activism. And it is one part policy and a policymaker interventions and regulatory infrastructure and like in things that come together and combine together and the employee activism can certainly provide a check on the power of the companies. And again, you know, as I said before, really lean toward more shared governance models. But it also works hand in hand with the other work that people are doing around building popular support for thinking more critically about the role that we want these companies to play, the impact on democracy, and then thinking about like what what we actually want out of changing those structures in the long term. So we often talk about this at co-worker about how it feels like, and this is partially brought on by technology as a tool that we're in this institutional transition moment, where we're leaving prior institutional forms, which were really rooted in kind of brick and mortar and geographical connection and moving into these different kinds of more network based, globally connected new institutions that are also having to grapple with new problems about the way power is reconstructing itself. Clark, are you seeing that as well in your in your work? You you really you were dealing with corporate America every day and and are these institutions changing? They are. And I think I think we look we do a great deal of work with boards and chief executives. And and as they hear, as Michelle said, as they're hearing what matters most to the world, you've seen the shift much talked about in the last year, for stakeholders from shareholders, it's not just about equity return, it's about corporations as communities. And there's this demand for more sustainable leaders. We've spent the last couple of years investing in defining what a sustainable leader is versus just a commercial leader. And the boards are saying, I need someone who understands and create change and creating change and creating profit don't have to be disaggregated, they can be together. And so we think companies are better governed, that are doing better for the world and their employee base and their communities. And the boards and governance have said we demand that of our management team. So you're you're seeing it happen. They're listening, they're hearing in this world where technology gives a voice to so many. JP, in Brazil, are you seeing the government, your company, other companies change the balance of power in any way? Well, I have never seen so many coalitions arising, which is positive. So as we're dealing with systemic change, it requires agents to be combined, private sector, governments, NGOs, society, organized society as a whole. So that is, that is going up. I mean, the number of those coalitions, which is an excellent indication of structural changes. Nevertheless, I do think that it will require changes in policies. As we heard how we move from street activism to changing policies, that also applies to the private sector. I think, if we think in a few years time, for instance, I think that no one will accept companies which are not carbon neutral. That is not civilized. It's like using child labor these days. So it's not civilized. Nevertheless, the regulation is not there to sort of enforce that everyone needs to do that. So you see some corporations developing social environmental good practices out of their higher consciousness, so to say. But I think that that will eventually change regulation, which will push the big mass of companies in that direction. But so far, the positive thing is that I've never seen so many coalitions of different sectors, governments, powers working together around some subjects, such as the environmental one in Brazil. Juan Juhi, you mentioned the example of the protest of the road project in Kenya. Are you seeing other examples of this that make you feel that what's happening now is different and is going to lead to more structural fundamental change? Rebecca, when I ran the Save Off Forestscape campaign, it was largely successful because the private sector in Kenya, my member of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, they were very, very, very supportive. And remember, these are some of the leading contributors to the country's revenue through taxes they pay. And they put pressure on government and that led to a total ban on the forest harvesting. So that gave me hope and reason to believe that when we keep it, I'm sure we will see results. But as JP said, soon and very soon, the buying power will be influenced by how sustainable organizations are. And I keep reminding my clients every day and I tell them, you may run away from it now, but it will soon catch up with you. We will soon be looking at how sustainable, how your companies are prioritizing people and planet before we purchase your products, before we purchase your services as well. And I keep saying to young people every time we have a convening and I say to them, I wish we'd realized that we have the numbers and how powerful those numbers can be. Imagine us today waking up one morning and saying, we're not going to buy product X, because that company has refused to prioritize people and planet. It's extremely important that young people, and I'm sure some of them are following this conversation, realize just how powerful we are in influencing change, the thing that we want to see in the world. So I believe that partly there is hope, but there is also laxity from the corporates and governments as well. And I feel there's a lack of intentionality, because when you're intentional, you will say, I want to get there, you'll be vulnerable enough to say, I want to get there, but I don't know how to get there. And I feel that when we have a willingness from the corporates, from the big corporations and also government, I believe we will see beautiful change as well. That opens up a question for the other panelists. Are you seeing big changes in consumer behavior? I mean, we've all known for a long time that consumers have power, but I think companies didn't necessarily respond to that. And why is it different now? JP, that's got to be yours. Well, it is growing. I mean, we are so demanded from consumers all around the world who are asking us what's going on. If you take the rainforest issue, for instance, we have our consumers in Australia, in the UK, everywhere asking our managers information. And because it's so much connected these days, right? And the other interesting thing is one cannot lie. I mean, it only stands a few minutes if you're lying, because the information will be accessible. So I think this is extremely positive and it's happening around the world for different subjects, some places more social burdens, some places some more environmental ones, but it's happening everywhere. Michelle, are you seeing that in the tech world in terms of users? Are people voting with their feet if Amazon or Microsoft doesn't take the stance they prefer on immigration, George Floyd, any number of issues? Yeah. I mean, the first thing I thought of actually when you mentioned consumers was what we saw with Instacart, which was when Instacart employee or workers started talking about the way that there was a change in the tipping algorithm and they were losing a portion of their tips that consumers stood up and said, hey, like we intended for all of that money to go to the shoppers and really stood with those shoppers together to encourage Instacart to change their tipping policy and make sure that the total amount of tips were going to shoppers. And that's a small example, but I think it's a powerful one to go back to what Giao just said about how you can't lie and that so much information is out there that when we have access to all that information, we're able to build different solidarity. And then I absolutely believe that the way that people stood behind the Google employees during the Google walkout in late 2018, the mass support for that action that happened on a global scale is another place that really helped underline that this is something that as either users or as employees at these companies, we are asking them to operate at a higher standard and follow a different set of ethics. But didn't all of those employees, if I'm not mistaken, ultimately leave Google or lose their jobs? So is that also an indication of the strength of the institutions and the companies? Some of the some of the employees that led the walkout did quit or leave their jobs. I think about 20,000 people participated, so not all of them. But to your point, yeah, I mean the this is why I mean this gets into like US labor policy, but this is why we also have to think about how we protect people who are taking actions and how we regard the act of whistleblowing or the act of speaking out as a critical piece of a functioning democracy and ensure that we're able to protect those things. But yeah, I mean the clearly at this moment, there is still an enormous power asymmetry between the people who work in these companies and the companies themselves. But I think the the engaging in the kind of collective action that makes it impossible to fire 20,000 people is is sort of the trajectory that we're on. I think the collective action, you've got it right there, we've all talked about that the end of the day on Julia, I think some of the governments won't respond or can't respond fast enough. And that the private sector, which has these pressures on it, either from investors or employees or consumers, aligning with the NGOs and those employees and consumers, we have to move faster. And therefore the collective action is called upon because governments either from polarity or inaction are not going to do enough. So I think it's happening, but we've got to keep the push in collective actions the way to do it. That's what leadership is all about. I wanted to go on and start JP. No, I was just saying that my perspective is that we need to use this ability to coordinate our effort to approach governments and establish good dialogues with them. If it's in opposition, it's unlikely we're going to get too far. And I think we do have the means, the information to try and influence, which of course is an additional burden on our work because a company cannot anymore not become a corporate citizen, really has to influence the agenda of a country, of a government by trying to establish dialogue with the main officers. I wanted to ask about inclusivity and the role that that plays and needs to play. You can see from our word cloud, a lot of people were interested and specifically raising those issues. And certainly it's been a very painful time here in the United States with George Floyd and the unrest over police killings and how that's translated into the workplace. Clark, you do a lot of board of director searches. And there were some figures out last week that showed that there really hadn't been much change, at least in terms of race. And maybe a little bit of change in terms of women, white women. What are you seeing in terms of changes? Is there a reckoning going on in the workplace in terms of race? There is. And I think the progress made with women over the past five years needs to be probably doubled as it relates to race. And it will the fellow board members saying, okay, I'm in this room and I own it. We've got to do something. Institutional investors saying, I'm not going to buy your stock unless you've got a diverse board. And even Goldman Sachs saying, I'm not going to take your company public. So we've pulled together groups of CEOs of the private equity industry who are focused on this. And the action of boards now, it's nearly overwhelming, which worries me slightly, but it's nearly overwhelming. You will see change. You will see change before proxies next April. Period. There's no question. It's happening. It's real. My concern is let's not confuse changing the face of a boardroom with accelerating the career of hundreds of thousands of black executives who are 25 to 45 to have better opportunities to run the boardroom. And so it's fine. We will make change in the face of boardrooms. And we are, we're at the forefront. We've organized our entire industry around commitments to this and we're acting on it. But as important as the acceleration of black executives in their careers. And that's where I think we really need to make change and people are hard at work. Other panelists, one, Julie, how does inclusion play out in Kenya and with your work? I think for me, when we, when, what comes to mind when I think about inclusion, it's stakeholders capitalism. I think that was a theme for this year's World Economic Forum, Dave was meeting. And the question that comes to mind, and I do a lot of work in restoration, forest restoration, is how do we get all stakeholders involved? Because there's nothing for us without us. How do we ensure that there's a trickle down, not just making decisions at the top, ignoring the people at the bottom, who are the real wearers of the shoes? So how do we bring all these people on board and have a conversation for them? When you're thinking about implementing projects, when you're thinking about policy formulation, which is just something that is really close to my heart, because we can never move forward as a people if we are not putting in place the right policies. So how do we ensure that we're not leaving anyone behind? How do we ensure that we're moving together? That for me is an inclusion that I would want to see. When it comes to my country, we struggle a lot with tribalism. We have a lot of tribalism, and we have history where we have gone at each other just based on tribal lines. But then how do we ensure that even the minority are represented? How do we ensure that the poor are not left behind, that they too are contributing to the national agenda or the building of the nation and continents as well? JP, you mentioned earlier that in the past few months, there's been a reckoning over race in Brazil as well. Could you please explain? Yeah, over race and gender and sexual preference. So we faced, in a Father's Day campaign, for instance, we were praising one of the, perhaps one of the few benefits of this pandemic is the fact that parents are spending better quality time with their children. And we were praising that and we had different fathers talking about that experience. One of them was a transgender. That raised so much confusion in social networks. But the beautiful thing is that after the 10 percent haters, really examples of intolerance, there were 70 percent lovers. So the society defending that action. And I think this is positive. It's not that we're going to eliminate the haters, but are those supporting those activities in a higher number? And that's what we saw. But that is happening. The fragmentation in the globe and the extremes and extremists are creating all this tension that we'll need a solution. And the pandemic is just rising the awareness of this fragmentation. And that will not come from a conflict. The solution will not come from conflict. It will come from building bridges. And I think that all of us have roles to play there. And before we go to questions, there's some really good questions coming in on Slido. Michelle, are you seeing change in your worlds and tech, which has been rather impervious to change? Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to point out that the most of the people who comprise the activist groups that we've worked with inside tech are people who really started out and advocating for better diversity and equity policies in their companies. One of the most prominent leaders of the early tech worker organizing at Google, Liz Fong-Jones, had spent 10 years at the company advocating for stronger protections for trans employees and really at the front lines. And I think that that commitment to equity and diversity really lays the groundwork for a deeper analysis around all forms of power. And then I also do want to add that for lower wage frontline workers with whom we also work in the service sectors, there are a lot of policies that end up functioning as proxies for discrimination like dress code policies, hair dye, tattoos, these things that seem like they're about one thing but actually end up being about using those things to discriminate against employees for hiring managers and that those are places too where companies can start thinking about how their policies either prevent or enable certain kinds of people to work inside their companies. And one of the things that we also saw from a dress code perspective was Starbucks baristas who are really active on our site after the uprising around the murder of George Floyd began, we're advocating for the right to wear Black Lives Matter, pens and shirts while they were working on the front lines. They wanted to embody that solidarity with people. And so I, you know, we're seeing that come up a lot in all sectors of the economy. And this sort of, it shows up differently depending on what kind of workplace you're in. Thank you. I have a number of questions coming in. We hope to get through two or three of them. The first, what advice do you have for young people to spark change in workplaces to transform systems and advance racial equity? What would you tell young people in terms of what their priority should be? How they should go about this? Does anyone want to jump in? I mean, I'll start quickly and say that the advice of many of the people that are running campaigns with us are on the young side are under 40. And, you know, the primary advice that we give them is to talk to someone else, to build up your collective, to not try to do it alone, because there's so much more power both in the group that you're able to build and in the coming together of the minds and ensuring that that group is diverse and represents the breadth of the employees. That is one of the most important things that you can do. Often people get burned out when they start out doing this kind of activism because they're trying to do it alone. And so when we really start to build up our power together, we start to actually be able to see some amount of change. Okay, I have to quickly go to another question. We're running out of time. How do we get more companies to take a participatory approach to activism like the Body Shop did? Clark, do you see more companies going as far as JPs? I do think so. I think you see Nike and L'Oreal and Ikea and Pepsi and Indigo and India, Sephora. Again, I think it's happening. I think we can't take the snapshot of only the last 100 days to judge years of time, but the 100 days is representative. Sustainable leaders are going to make sustainable decisions. And Juan Jui and JP, what are you optimistic about for 2021 and 22 in terms of social justice movements and corporate activism? What are you feeling better about these days in terms of what's attainable? I think for me, my happiness is I feel COVID-19 has been a blessing in disguise. We have seen the world literally coming to a standstill and that has awakened all of us. It's unfortunate that there is a lot of mistrust between government and the citizen, but that's also a good thing because we will hold governments accountable. We're now seeing more people speaking out, calling out their governments, and that's powerful. So I feel the COVID-19 has awakened us to see the reality of matters. And this being a climate change activist, I see that many people are paying attention to the changing, the erratic weather conditions. For instance, we had heavy flooding in East Africa. We had locusts, which turned to cost the biggest food crisis in the region. And so these are things that people are becoming slowly and slowly aware, and they're starting to become active citizens. And that gives me hope and reason to believe. JP, we will have to end it with you. What are you optimistic about, and how can you get other companies to do what yours has done? Yes, I'm optimistic about the fact that economic agents are now taking decisions based on social environmental responsibilities. So the money, the flow of money will be controlled towards those which have a better acting. That's number one. That number two is that elections are coming. And I think the world will swing a little bit to a more central position where parts will have better room to discuss and dialogue. Well, with that very apt reminder, I want to thank all of our panelists. This was a really incredible discussion. And I also want to thank all of you watching. It's the first time I have moderated remotely. It's pretty cool, all the different things you can do remotely. And we had great participation from all of the participants as well. So thank you. Stay healthy and good luck with all your endeavors. Thank you very much for joining us today.