 I'm delighted to say that this is a hugely important issue that we're covering for our first briefing here in the media centre of the Congress centre in Davos. Of course it's the issue of LGBT rights and how to more importantly overcome barriers to enabling and allowing LGBT talent to flourish. We're going to focus particularly on emerging markets in this session. It builds on a series of blogs we've been writing, publishing on the forum's agenda and a number of sessions in the public programme in past years here at the annual meeting. This session is no stranger to our programme but I'm delighted that we're giving it an even higher profile on the programme in 2016. Those of you are aware watching us live in the room here and online at weforum.org. The purpose of issue briefings is to delve quite deeply into subjects of import and we'll have some opening remarks by our speakers. There will be time for questions and we've also been receiving questions online over social media so we have a treasure trove of questions to put to my two guests here. We have a very short time to explore a very wide and important issue so I need to keep my remarks to a minimum. I'm very delighted to be joined by two people from the corporate world who show great leadership when it comes not only to highlighting the challenges of being out in countries in the advanced economy as well as in emerging markets but more importantly have driven away in highlighting solutions to overcoming them. First of all we have Beth Brooke Marchiniak who is the Global Vice-Chief Public Policy EY based in the USA. Shamima Singh, Executive Director, Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth, also a member of the forum's Global Agenda Council on India, very delighted to say. Beth, I'm going to start with you. If you could please just share some of your key learnings. You've been an senior executive for many years and you've got to the top and you must have overcome some barriers in the past. Please share your key findings and some of the most important milestones on your journey. You say I've been out for many years. I actually haven't been out for many years. I came out in 2011 so I was in the closet for a good long bit of my career and thought that my private life was my private life. I wasn't closeted for any sense of that EY is a very inclusive employer. I just didn't think it was anybody's business. Coming out in 2011 I would say some of my most significant learnings have been the journey of coming out as a very senior executive. The experience, much to my surprise, what I did not realize was that EY was not getting the best of me and I would have argued anything but five years ago. I would have thought I was just being totally authentic and as good. I didn't think it mattered. You are not authentic until you're totally authentic. That's what I learned. My personal journey is I am a far better executive leader person than I was. What I have learned though in the sense of is the importance of senior role models like Shamina and I being out and being visible around the world. It carries such credibility that you can succeed by being who you are. I was as different as on every dimension within a profession, at least in the United States. It was pretty male dominated, extroverts, Republican, just tended toward those tendencies. I was a Democrat, a woman and gay. You couldn't be more different on any dimension. You are 215,000 employees around the world. What they could see was somebody who succeeded and was valued for their difference, not excluded because they were different. So it's been a phenomenal journey. What I'm on is a mission as to give authentic voice to this issue and that it is so important for us and those like us, very senior out executives to be visible and out around the world, even in some of the most difficult cultures because we can control within our walls. You've got law, you have culture and you have workplace. We can control workplace and that is what we need to do to help advance this issue around the world. It's a very important point. Beth, I read your blog on the forum agenda in January. Have a hip. You travel widely and your EY is lucky to have a visible leader who is prepared to take their own journey into a mission, a wider mission. Give us some of your experiences in emerging markets. What are the challenges in helping implement a global policy when cultures are so diverse around the world? Well, it starts at the top. Mark Chairman and CEO Mark Weinberger is totally authentic. This is incredibly important to the success of the EY strategy to have a diverse workplace and to include all differences and opinions, whether it's for the benefit of talent, the benefit to creativity and innovation or the benefit of reaching a client base that might be unimaginable to a one point of view. So you have to have that tone at the top. It's critical. And that's the global support. But to your point then to calibrate that locally. You have to go into any given country and calibrate locally. What is that culture? What are the dynamics in that country? So what we like to do and what I do personally is go into a country, sometimes with another company like MasterCard and do it together, hold forums with our customer base, our client base, our employees and talk about these issues, talk about them openly in a round table setting with our local leaders there. And what we try to do is show that it's safe. All of this a lot of times you have to have dialogue in order for people to understand more. Allies have to understand what their roles are. Allies are as invisible as LGBT people are. If I'm gay and I don't know Oliver that you're an ally, how do I know it unless you take visible actions to demonstrate to me that you're supportive? So it's like this chess game of LGBT people don't know who are allies and allies don't know who closeted LGBT people are. So all of these issues you have to start to talk about to create a sense in a local culture of the issues. And the fact that if our workforce is closeted, if there's individuals that are closeted, you've got to be able to talk about how much potential we are leaving on the cutting room floor by not including those diverse viewpoints. And so global leaders with a local presence and then using our networks, we have employee resource network around the world at EY. We call it Unity. It's our LGBT network globally. Those are incredible resources on the ground. People who are passionate parts of those networks help locally advance the agenda while we can try to provide that it's safe, give visible role models success with allies and out executives. And it takes all of those things working together. Do you have any ways of measuring success? We need people to be out. Success is, you know, we actually can't ask around the world, you know, who is, you know, to have them self identify, self identify. So success is hard to measure, it is. But having an inclusive workplace that embraces difference, all kinds of difference, you can gauge it in the ultimate bottom line of results because companies do better when they are inclusive. The interesting thing about the LGBT agenda is if a company leads on LGBT inclusion, they tend to lead on all aspects of diversity and employees know that. In fact, there's a story that's in a report that's going to be put out by the senator for talent innovation and it's called out in the world as a report. But they tell a story in there about IBM where IBM tells a story about they were at a recruiting function and a group of Asian women were coming through their booth and picking up all their LGBT brochures and things. And the recruiter finally said, are you all lesbian women that are, you're picking up our brochures on LGBT and the Asian women said, oh no, no, no, no, we're straight. But we know if you support the LGBT agenda, Asian women are going to be included just fine. And I think that's, it's interesting, it's sort of a leading indicator of a corporate culture. Very interesting. And Shamina, you're, again, working for a very global company. What kind of best practices getting the network is critical, obviously. But what other best practices are working? What other best practices on the ground are having success? Well, thanks for having me here, Oliver, and thanks to the World Economic Forum for hosting this first media briefing on this very important topic. I think as Prime Minister Tudoh said, it's, well, he said 2015, but it's 2016. So I feel like we're here now at the World Economic Forum, and it's a great place to be. We've got a long way to go, but we've come a long way as people like Beth can attest. Just a minute on, I think bringing the personal and the professional together in terms of how I've approached this journey. I'm a daughter of immigrants, and so I come from my families from India. And so when you talk about emerging markets, you're sort of talking about my people where I'm from. And so I don't think about emerging markets. I think about where my family's from. And so the journey for an immigrant, I think, is also an interesting one, because you start from a place of being outside of something. And when we came to the United States, you have to have a sense of adventure, I think, and a sense of courage and things like that. And I would sort of say that when I came out fairly young, I did, like Beth, wasn't as comfortable bringing that aspect to the workplace, and I think I suffered for it professionally. I didn't know at the time, but I think that I couldn't bring my whole self, my authentic self to the workplace, and I was only delivering half of the talent that I could. But the thing for me that really pushed it over the edge was that kids were killing themselves. Kids are killing themselves, and they're killing themselves in India, and they're killing themselves in the United States, and ending their life for the sole purpose that they're afraid of who they are. And so, for me, that was about getting married, and that was about having a public ceremony with my wife where we said, we're going to have a full-on three-day Indian wedding. And my family was a little worried because they said, why do you have to be so public? And I said, because people are killing themselves, and if I can stand up as a former Clinton administration official and now a professional in the private sector and say, here's who I am, here's who we are, and we're okay, then hopefully we can be an example for a lot of other people. And I'll just say that in India it takes being personal. So when I got married, my family in India, who probably had never even thought about the issue, all of a sudden thought about the issue and said, yeah, of course, your family, we love you, no matter what. And now you have a whole group of people in India who are sort of, like in America, they're starting to know people who are gay, and I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. In terms of practices at MasterCard, we have a CEO who is also an immigrant. We have a CEO who wears a full turban and a beard, and so he's a Sikh. And so for him, diversity is all about self-awareness. He gets it pretty quickly that in terms of being able to innovate, disrupt in the financial services sector, in terms of trying to do anything to succeed in business, you have to have people who have different backgrounds, who think differently, who are looking at the same situation you are with a different set of eyes. And so that's the culture that he's created at MasterCard, which is actually diversity is your asset, and for those of you who are sort of much more mainstream, that's fantastic, but you have to learn how to diversify. And so being a lesbian employee at MasterCard, I think has been, is actually an asset, because it does allow me a perspective from the get-go that I don't share with other people. And I think the network that we've created at MasterCard is about disruption and about diversity. And so for us, one of the best practices is we bring our employees together from the different resource groups, because by virtue of the fact that they're in these resource groups, they bring the diversity, and they bring that different kind of thinking together to solve problems. So if we have company-wide problems or if we have issues in the company or opportunities, if we want to do a hackathon, we'll often bring together people from the different business resource groups to hack a problem together. And that kind of thing, and when we start winning these hackathons, starts the show actually, this is the club to be in if you actually want to succeed in the company and indeed in business. That's great. And it's great having you two as visible leaders. I know you're not alone or other leaders out there, but I'm still interested to know whether business itself, and I'm fascinated by your very neat way of summing it up, is culture, is business, and it's law, and you're trying to make an impact where you can in business. But does business in general do enough? And I'm thinking international business like you're too. But also, are you providing guidance and leadership for businesses based in emerging markets as well? Is there a trick or down effect or is there a network effect from having you at the top as a global leader in your field, affecting the cultures and policies of companies in particular countries? So I guess I'm interested in the business role. Is it good enough? Is it doing enough at the top of the international level? And are you having an impact, swaying opinion and changing culture, lower down at the country level? You know, I think we're on a journey out. I think we are making a difference. I think the companies, the multinational companies realize we have a voice and a platform, and we employ a lot of people and countries care about that. So we have a voice that can get listened to. Are we making a difference? I think we are doing more and more. In fact, it was that this World Economic Forum last year where a bunch of our companies decided we wanted to band together, and we want to work together around the world in some of these countries to do the kinds of things that Jamien and I have spoken about together. Because the backlash, if any one of us does it alone, it's harder than if we do it together in a country. So are we making a difference? I think so. I think Ireland, you know, the business has found their voice. Taiwan is moved. You know, the businesses are finding their voice. And it is having an impact. We employ a lot of people around the world, and those economies do matter. You take the example of the state of Indiana in the United States. And what happened there when a religious freedom bill was moving? That was the corporate voice, which basically said, Indiana, if you want your economy to be strong, then pay attention here because you passed that bill and we will leave your state. And that bill was defeated. And that was a very clear message sent by the business community. I think it's actually a pretty good template for what can work globally. Our economies are bigger, our corporate economies are bigger than the economies of some countries. And I think we understand both the obligation and the importance of speaking out. No, I think that she's right. The truth is, to your point about the Asian women and the brochures, I think you can get a pretty good sense of a company in terms of their success profitability based on how they treat their employees. And I think that globally, countries are starting to recognize that those companies who are profitable, who you want in your country, this is an indicator. And I think that we're going, it's a journey. I mean, we're not going into these countries and saying, you have to do this. That's not the role of a private sector company, quite frankly. But by our presence there, by investing in the company, by bringing our employees there, but then also by welcoming their country people into our companies, we are in effect changing the culture of the country. That's right. I'm so fascinated, I forgot to ask you any questions. Of course we have some from social media. Anybody in the room have a question to us? Okay, so we'll move on. Let's just explore that turning point. Indiana was a turning point, quite a famous one. And I'm intrigued to know how that's going to be built. And you said it could be a template, but at the same time you can't present governments with ultimatums. How do you talk to governments? How do you use the soft power and influence? Economic terms. We employ their citizens and that is important and consumers buy our goods. So it's a good case in point in Indiana of how that translated. What didn't happen in Indiana was the corporate community didn't take it one step further, which is that is a state where it is still quite legal to fire someone because they're gay. So it's fine to say you're gay, but then you go to work and you could still be fired. We could have had a corporate voice that took it one step further while you are not passing the religious freedom bills. Perhaps you should go forward and undo the workplace discrimination laws. And of course the economic power is a good argument. But can you talk to governments? Is there other communication channels open? Do you get a sense that there is a possibility to build dialogue in countries where LGBT culture is not enshrined or is free? Speaking for EY, it's more like what Shamina said. We can control what's within our workplace. Creating the kinds of environments that we want to have is the way we go about it. Working within governments and having governments talk to governments and it's a collaborative effort I think. I think I'd say is look, if MasterCards in a specific country, that government, we do have a conversation that says can you guarantee the basic safety and security of our company in your marketplace? And by virtue of that guarantee of safety and security, you have to guarantee the safety and security of our employees. And if there is an issue around their safety and their security, then we have an issue. That's what we have to work on. But I think the initial conversations always when we enter markets is can you guarantee that is this a place we can do business? That's a bottom line conversation for any company. If it's not a place you can do business, then you're not going to do business there. And so I would say, look, the only countries where MasterCard is not are countries that have sanctions against them right now. But to the extent that we have physical facilities in all of these countries, a lot of it depends on the environment of the country, baseline. Let's pivot away from major markets towards the end of the session. It's been around 18 months, I'm not mistaken, since Tim Cook, as CEO of Apple came out. What impact has that had, if any, on corporate America and the boardroom? Competitive. I mean look, I think there's a little bit of, you've got a successful company like Apple. Again, a disruptor. He's a guy who looks at things in a different way. MasterCard, you have a guy who has a turban in a beard from India. It's like that's the way the world is going. And so I think that the competitive advantage, quite frankly, of having leadership of people who are different, who are not the mainstream, is actually I think what it is engendring. I can say for Beth, when she sort of came out and was very public at the last year's World Economic Forum, I selfishly used it as a competitive advantage in my workplace to say, have you all seen E&Y in terms of, you know, they have Beth, Brooke Marciniak, is there, do you want her to be the most senior LGP team we held in America? And it's sort of like, honestly, these are capitalist companies. So I think it's been much more of a competitive advantage. And there's been another effect, I think, of Tim Cook coming out. You can't measure as you suggested earlier. But what you know is that there are thousands of individuals out there in companies or not in companies who see that and say, he is successful and he's gay. So I can be successful by being who I am. And make no mistake, in the United States, you have kids who are out and when they go into the corporate world, 62% of them go back in the closet. That's a tragedy. And it's because they don't feel safe. They're perfectly fine, they're out, they're in school, they go into a workplace, 62% of them go back in the closet. And it is because we can have all the policies in the world, we can say all the right things, but they will look at the person and the individual office that they're working in, the people they're surrounded by. And if they don't feel safe, they go back in the closet till they get the lay of the land. So it's why, even in the developed countries, we've got a long way to go. Workplace discrimination. There's going to be this Center for Talent Innovation report that's coming out is going to say that workplace discrimination, even in the most developed countries, is still, I think it's 42% in the United States. LGBT employees feel that they've been discriminated against. So it's still high, even in the most developed countries. So even all the great policies, there's still workplace discrimination that does take place. That's an interesting point because of course 2015 was a great year in many parts of the world for legalisation of gay marriages, etc. Are there new forms of discrimination or is it now just a matter of changing the focus into different areas such as the workplace? Where can the next largest amount of progress be made? I think in jobs, I think employment discrimination is incredibly dangerous. And I would just stay on Indiana. I don't know that Indiana was a turning point. I think it was a proof point. And so I think, I hope that we can build on the success of corporations taking leadership positions in issues like Indiana. But I'd like to see more. But you're right in the centre of the action for some time ahead. Shining a light on things is important. So reports like the Center for Talent Innovation, shining a light on the fact that there is still just incredible workplace discrimination that takes place all over the world, developing markets, developed markets. Out leadership, when you go into a country, they do something called CEO briefs where it's just a two-page and it is on the LGBT issue. It equips the CEO to go into a country and know exactly where things stand, what that CEO could say to a government official, what stance they could take, but exactly what the cultural norms are and what the laws are. And of course then they can put their own workplace culture against that and know what to say. So those are all very targeted things that I think are helping. And I think the CEOs are finding, just really finding the courage to find their voice. But I also think it's the same, it's equal pay, it's job discrimination. I mean, because you can't necessarily self-identify, we have no idea if LGBT employees are paid less or paid differently or job promotion, job discrimination. And I think those are sort of the, once you dig a little deeper, you'll start to uncover, I think, a little bit more of what's happening, even though we've made so much progress. I think we still have a long way to go. There's a lot more research to be done to unpack it because it is a hard subject to research. We found the same, from the forum's perspective, we found the surveys that we tried to conduct when we do are on your competitiveness survey, for example. There's a lot of bias in the survey results. It's actually very, very hard to measure. So we come across either the economic level where we take a very economic approach into looking at how retention of talent is good for long-term competitiveness, et cetera, et cetera, and attraction of talent, of course. And so we're aware of it, too. And I'm delighted that you're fighting that one as well. Well, what we can measure is we know that LGBT employees that are part of a supportive, inclusive company, like a Master Carter and EY, are 11% more engaged than employees that are in a non-supportive company. And that's a huge contribution to productivity. Engaged employees drops right to the bottom line. I think it's 84% of LGBT employees that are in non-supportive environment companies are looking to leave. So if you're an employer, you don't want to hear that statistic. I mean, that's just, that's horrific. 11% is double digit growth. That's not bad, is it, for any CEO. So you formed a group in Davos last year. It's my last question in 2015. In 2016, what's on the agenda? Is the group meeting? What are your priorities for the year ahead or for this meeting first and then looking forward? Well, we actually meet by telephone throughout the year. Sure. And part of our effort is to make sure that this kind of a discussion is happening, that it's important to our companies. And so we want to have discussions on the agenda about inclusiveness and inclusive leadership. And there's nothing more important in the world that we face today here at Davos with the world and the state that it is facing refugee crisis, mass migration, whether it's climate, water, food, all of the global challenges that we face, we need diverse perspectives addressing those challenges in an inclusive environment. So this is an important issue that we talk about. But what's on the agenda is continuing to use our voice collectively around the world to make a difference on this issue as companies. I think creating a community of influencers, that's what the World Economic Forum allows and catalyzes, is to create common communities. And I think the one that we've created here is only going to grow. And evidenced by the fact that we just met with Vice President Biden, who came to meet with a group of us and raised the level of visibility of the issue. So even though we've just got started, I think we're off to a good start. Well, it's certainly to be an issue that will be high on agenda in mentioning many meetings this weekend. I hope so. I have no doubt. And speaking of meetings, you all have busy schedules and agendas to catch up with. So I'd like to thank you very much indeed for joining us today. I'd like to thank the forum as well. Thank you, really. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you all for joining us too. And thank you for watching live online at weforum.org. This session is now over.