 I'm going to start with a little story. Four years ago, Jasmine Chen, an MIT student, witnessed the harrowing effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. She was compelled to get involved. And as she did, she saw firsthand how difficult it was to supply relief to the communities trying to rebuild their future. And what she noticed most was a glaring gap of information. NGOs and community leaders didn't have the information they needed to support their communities. They didn't know who needed help or what they needed. And what could result is millions of bottles of water showing up, but no baby food or diapers. So Jasmine, relying on her skills in building environmental data tools, set out to build a solution. She recruited her classmate Azuri, a product designer. And what emerged was RePlus Connect and the opportunity for impact and financial return. But when they set out to raise funding to build a pilot, they were met with barriers and closed doors at every turn. Their experience is the experience of most underrepresented founders. But imagine if we can tap into that potential and accelerate the problems that we're facing, the world's most pressing problems, build wealth for communities, and value for all of us. We can. We need to invest more, do it differently, and do it smartly. So let's talk about all three of those. Invest more. Last year, CrunchBase reported 1% of VC funding went to black-owned businesses. 1.9% to women-owned startups. 2%. How can that be if you're generous and add them together? 3%. How can that be? Especially when you compare it to graduation rates across all areas of STEM. Black students represent 7.5% of graduates, women 35%. Even with those woeful statistics, what if we could get closer to those demographics for VC funding? Imagine the potential. Without funding, founders can't access capital to launch pilots, expand to new markets, lease office space, or attend conferences to market their solutions. And in an environment where 9 out of 10 startups fail, underrepresented founders are often having to roll the dice with the money that they need to pay their bills and support their family. So can we agree we need to invest more? Yes, we can agree. We have to invest more. But it's not that simple. You see, let's go back to Jasmine and Azuri example. On the paper, there is sure bet to very qualified founders going after a huge market size. What's the hiccup? To exemplify, let's talk another example. My friend, let's call him John, finished a prestige service in an intelligence unit and wanted to start a cyber company. He then talked to his roommate from the same unit who partnered him up with a VC you guessed it, from the same unit. John is the VC set down for coffee, and the VC said, you know, I like it. I like you. Let me just help you refine the problem, and I'll put the first check. A few weeks later, John closed his $4.5 million round pre-seed and pre-product. Now, this is not a bad story. It's actually a really good story. The investor did what he should do. He invested in a founder. He really believe in an opportunity he understand in a very streamlined process. If the same investor would have tried to invest in a Zori and Jasmine, it would have cost him more time and effort. It did not make economic sense. You see, and that's the problem with many VCs. They truly don't have the economic incentives to invest in underrepresented founders, especially when they're solving what we called underrepresented problems. So that's a systemic issue. And if we want to change the systemic outcomes, we need to change the input. So we need to invest differently, not just more, but different. We need to use different form of capital, different partnership to incentivize different types of behavior. But, and this is a big but, different must still be smart. Our system is not perfect, but there are elements that we don't want to lose. VC investment is not just cash. It's feedback. It's validation. It's signal to bigger investor that founders will need. So we need to make sure that whatever form of investment mechanism fulfill these roles. This is where partnership comes together. This is where we as an ecosystem need to think how to pull different source of capital with different types of objectives and different types of risk appetite. And this is where we as Deloitte have ambitions to help. Deloitte's made a $1.5 billion commitment to equity to those facing the greatest barriers. And a strategy around financial inclusion, we believe is a key way to do that. We believe supporting underrepresented founders has a multiplier effect. It builds family-sustaining wages, supports communities in need, and helps us make progress on our most pressing issues. But as Barr said, we also know we can't do it alone. So we're committed to partnership, building and supporting ecosystems of lots of different players to make this change happen. We at Polylab, we have the mission to accelerate the speed and quality of solution to global challenges. We do this by leveraging existing technology. We also recognize that we wanna unleash the power of technology to fight the fight of our time. We must partner with founders that have lived experience in the problem areas where we wanna tackle. This is why we're so happy and excited to partner with organizations like Deloitte to think creatively and collectively about this problem. Now let's close the loop on Jasmine and Azori. I'm happy to announce that earlier this summer, they finally were able to secure the funding they needed to run their pilot. It took them four years. Now this is a good story and it's gonna have great ending I can promise you, but let's just run the scenario. Let's just imagine a world where four years ago they met an investor who said like, oh, I like you. Let me just refine the problem with you and I'll put the first check. My bat that today we had much better tools to handle the devastating disasters that are increasing in severity and in frequency. Let me be more clear. I can personally say that their product could have saved lives and reduced economic losses, particularly this month. Investing in underrepresented founders will pay dividends, financial, economics, environmental, societal. They will, we urge all ecosystem players, whatever form of capital you're owning, invest more, invest smartly, invest differently. And if you want a partner on this journey, please reach out. Let's circle back here next year and view better stats. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.