 The Cube presents Dell Technologies World, brought to you by Dell. Welcome back to Las Vegas. It's theCUBE live at Dell Technologies World 2022. This is day two of our coverage, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We've had a lot of great conversations all day today, half a day yesterday. We've got another great conversation coming up about ESG, environmental, social and governance. Please welcome JJ Davis, the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Dell Technologies. Welcome to the program. Hi, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. ESG is a very popular topic. It's one thing to talk about, another thing to actually have a plan, have a strategy, have those 2030 moonshot goals and implement. Talk to us about what ESG means for Dell Technologies and some of the great things that you have going on. Absolutely. So you said it, I mean, it can be acronym SUP when you think about social, is it social impact? Is it corporate social responsibility? Is it ESG? And the beauty of having an environmental, social, governance strategy is we now are bringing ESG much closer to the corporate strategy and how we meet the needs of all of our stakeholders. So I'd love to just back it up for a minute and think about the purpose of Dell Technologies is to create technologies that advance human potential. Our vision is to be the most essential technology company for the data era. The way we do that is we're growing and modernizing our core businesses like PCs, servers and storage while we're building the technology ecosystem of the future. Well, guess what? ESG is embedded in all of that because the future is more sustainable, built by people that represent our customer base with a workforce that is more diverse and a workplace that is more inclusive. We put human rights and the needs of people at the center of what we do as well as the needs of the planet. And when I get to put together purpose, planet and profit and bring that strategy together in partnership with so many leaders across the company and meeting the demands of our customers, ESG is just a part of the way we do business now. It's part of the DNA. Yeah. Talk to us about some of the key priorities from a climate perspective, for example. What are some of Dell's key focus areas where that's concerned? So when we think about our ESG priorities as a whole, there are four, climate, circular economy, diverse workplace and digital inclusion. And so within our sustainability pillar of our strategy or the E, we are committed to being net zero across scopes one, two and three emissions by 2050. We are revamping our product energy goal right now to relaunch that. When we think about our customers, 95% of our big customer RFPs ask about sustainability and our commitment and what we'll be doing to help them because they're going to be relying on technology to meet their own sustainability and climate goals, whether it's green IT or IT for green and they're going to really be looking to us to help them. You know, I love this purpose planet profit. You and I have talked about this a little bit. It's actually good business. Explain why ESG is good business. Well, I mean, used to social impact kind of sat off to the side. We might have been called do-gooders or people that are passionate about things that maybe don't align to the corporate strategy. And now when you think about business round table and Michael Dell is a member and they came out with their purpose of a company statement, it'll be three years in August to really redefine the purpose of a company to meet the needs of all stakeholders from employees to customers to shareholders as well. And so we know that new hires and new buyers demand more of their employer and of the companies they buy from. They want their own personal values to align with that of the company they work for or buy from. And so now we need to meet the needs of our business commitments, but also if companies don't take a leadership role, we're screwed. We're not going to be able to reverse the negative impacts of climate change and technology plays a big role. Yeah, the earth gets the last at bat, as they say. Yeah. From an accountability perspective though, you mentioned 95% of RFPs are coming in and customers are looking for Dell Technologies commitment to ESG. Talk about the accountability to your customers, to all customers where ESG is concerned. And how is it measured? Sure. So we've been spending a lot of time over the last year, year and a half on the G of ESG, the governance. And so we have been doing this for a couple of decades, really moving the needle on social impact. Michael talked about it in his keynote, that this is in our DNA, like you said. But now we have to be able to really measure. You can't manage what you can't measure. We have put a lot of governance around what do we disclose and why Michael Dell is an active participant in the World Economic Forum Common Metrics project. Because there's too many metrics and frameworks to know what companies need to be measuring and how we hold ourselves accountable and what we ultimately report to our shareholders. And so there's a lot of work to get more clarity there. You're seeing the SEC put out new rules around climate and human rights. And so when you start to get regulated, that changes the game in terms of how transparent you need to be. And then what are the third-party assurances that you need to have to validate the data that you're reporting on? We do have an annual ESG report that comes out every June, where we report across several moonshot goals across sustainability, inclusive culture, transforming lives and ethics and privacy. Then we have sub-goals. There's probably about 25 in total. And we're going to tell you our stakeholders every year how we're doing against our 2030 commitment. And I think it's that level of transparency and measurement that we have to hold ourselves accountable to and our customers do as well. Can you share a little bit about where you are on the 2030 moonshot that was announced about a couple years ago at the beginning of 2020 or towards the beginning of 2020? Where is still on the, what's your moonscape look like? Yeah, sure. So we are announcing our update from calendar year 21 in June. So I'm not going to get the numbers exactly right, but if you take sustainability, so one of our moonshot goals is around 100% of our packaging by 2030 will be made of recycled or renewable content. We're over 90% now. So we're going to probably restate that goal and evolve it or meet it early and set a new one. In terms of product contents, we have a goal that is 50% of our product contents will be from recycled over renewable materials. That's a little harder. Plastic is easy. Steel is hard. And so we're still working through how across the main components that go into our machines, how does that become more renewed and sustainable? If you think about 50% women in our workforce, 25% African American or Hispanic in our US workforce, we're making really good progress and we have scaled programs that are helping us deliver on those commitments. Yeah, I think I'm quoting JJ Davis when I, correct me if I'm wrong, but, Marys, ESG Marys who we are with what we do. What do you mean by that? So when you think about what we do, we build technology that delivers or advances human progress. We help our customers solve their biggest problems. But really who we are, we are a founder led company and Michael Dell was a purpose led driven CEO before that was even a term. And so he always wanted to have an ethical company that just did business above and beyond what the law required. And we've been recycling PCs for more than 20 years. And so we are an inclusive culture where we can bring our full selves to work and we are entrepreneurial and if we have an idea and you raise that idea or a problem you see then oftentimes the management will say, okay, you go fix that. And so I think just what we do, we build technology who we are is we're problem solvers for our customers and that is good for business and good for the environment and what it is society really expects of us and we're empowered to make a difference. Feels good. One of the, I'm curious to get your perspective on the events of the last two years. One of the things that's happened is the great resignation. We all know multiple people who have decided they're moving forward, lots of opportunity. But where is Dell's ESG strategy as a differentiator for people going, I get it, I support that, that's the kind of company I want to work for. Our chief human resources officer, Jen Sevadra calls it the great reshuffle. I think that's maybe a more positive way to look at it and we have, I've had people actually join my team because they are really positive on our mission and not just our proactive strategy around ESG but how we have handled our response to social issues. I mean who knew that company CEOs would be expected to speak out on voter access or LGBTQ rights and you know, so a lot of people are coming to work for us because we are very measured in where we weigh in and what we stand for, how we speak out but they're also really buying into our ESG strategy. I would also say our flexible work commitment, it's a big part of our DNI strategy as well and helps us attract and retain diverse talent. You can live and work wherever you want to. Proximity to headquarters is no longer criteria for advancement and that's going to be a really big differentiator. Companies that get this right will win the talent war and that means they'll better serve their customers. When you took over this role, I'm guessing you kind of did a scan to see who else was out there, what others were doing, not just in tech, not just in North America but globally. What did you find, where did you get your inspiration? Are there any organizations out there that are really models that you get inspiration from or is it so new, you are the model? Talk about that. I mean I think we're doing a really good job and we're pretty advanced but nobody has this figured out and frankly we need to do it together. This is a space where you don't actually want to compete. You want to partner and so we have our own sustainability advisory board and companies like Boeing are on that. I serve on a sustainability advisory board for McLaren and Unilever's Chief Sustainability Officers there. That is a company that is really inspirational to us and so partners like Intel, they're very involved in N50 so the next 50% that needs to get connected to the internet and participate in the digital economy, we're big partners, we're their largest customer and so there's a lot going on across our competition, our customers and our partners and we're all inspiring each other and figuring it out together because it's evolving so fast, nobody has all the answers. That's a great point. The evolution is happening so quickly and every day you turn on the news and there's something else that needs to be responded to. I think that from a strategic perspective, from that overall vision perspective, it sounds like what, and there's been some announcements this week that were with respect to ESG. What's been some of the feedback from the partner ecosystem, from customers, from investors on this laser focused vision that Dell has with respect to sustainability and ESG? So Cassandra Garber, our head of ESG just finished out of cycle road show with investors and had really good conversations. They're asking a lot of questions about our strategy. They're asking questions about executive compensation tied to ESG as an example. Our customers are very positive and responding. They're looking for technology solutions, as I mentioned, to meet their own climate commitments and from our channel partners, they really want to partner on our initiatives and really go do good and make an impact together and we're getting really good feedback. So carrot or stick, it's probably not 100% that the channel partners or even suppliers, some just don't have the resource possibly or maybe they don't share your values. So how do you approach that? Is it through inspiration? Is it through a little tap in the head or a little headlock? How do you deal with that? Both, I mean, our suppliers have to adhere to the contract and the RSA code of conduct that they have to sign on to uphold and so we very much hold them accountable just like we do ourselves. And so that is more compliance driven, but we do have partners like Wistron Green and our supply chain who were really involved with us in some early work around recycled gold and partners that are involved with us in setting up the ocean plastic supply chain. And so we have great partnership, but there are things they have to do from a human rights perspective or commitment to the environment that are required. From a channel partner perspective, we want to incent them. We want to make money together. We are for-profit businesses after all and ESG can be a part of that. And if you don't have the resources to drive your own take back initiative, then we can do that in partnership through our asset recovery services, which partners can sell and then use our infrastructure to take back and recycle old equipment. I mean, I feel like a lot of my questions are two way, but you feel as though you're influencing public policy or a public policy is influencing you? Both. I mean, early on when the SEC was looking at the climate rules that they just put out, there was a, I think we submitted a six page response to their ask for inquiry and response. And so that's good. We're able to talk to each other and have conversations and shape things, but ultimately we'll be regulated in these areas and that's fine. We just got to make sure that we're ready. Mm-hmm, great. It's always good to have that push and pull. Like, it's like with the pandemic, all the silver linings that have come out of the acceleration. And we talk about that all the time on this show, the acceleration of digital transfer. We were talking about the acceleration of retail on the intelligence store and as consumers we expect that. But that push and pull, sometimes those forcing functions are necessary to be able to drive forward. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. My last question for you is, Dell just came off in its most successful year. Yes. First time hitting north of 100 billion in the company's history. What are some of the things that we think of the moonshot goals? Or we're only in 2022. I know. But as time is going by so quickly, what are some of the things that you're personally looking forward to from a corporate affairs ESG perspective for the rest, say the next like three to five years? Well, I'm really excited about some of the groundwork we've laid in digital inclusion. We just made some new hires there. We're connecting the dots, you know, and we have a lot of initiatives that can really, if we can scale them, make a big impact. So we have student tech crew. It's where high school students serve as the technical support in their local high school and get certified. So they are job ready the minute they graduate. If they don't want to go to community college or university, they can go right into the workforce. How do we marry that up with other skill building initiatives that we have? And if you add one plus one, it equals three. And I think this year will be a really big accelerator for us in the area of digital inclusion and how we bring connectivity, community services and support and digital skills together because that's what, you know, those that aren't participating in the digital economy, we need to partner and really deliver on the promise of what it means to be in technology and at least be, have the skills to compete. Right, start eliminating that digital divide. JJ, thank you for joining Dave and me today talking about ESG Corporate Affairs. Such an interesting focused efforts that Dell is really wrapped around. And it sounds like there's that push ball from the customers, from policy, but ultimately going in a great direction that can be measured. Thank you for your insights and your time. Thank you. For JJ and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching theCUBE live from Las Vegas. This is the end of day two of our coverage of Dell Technologies World. We thank you for watching. You can find all of our content on replayonthecube.net. And of course, we will be here tomorrow with John Furrier and Dave Nicholson as well. Have a great night. We'll see you tomorrow.