 We stand here today with a plant that's closing, but I'm extremely proud of the people that work in this plant here. For a year and a half, I didn't have anything. We lost our home. We lost a vehicle. I have struggled to get back to middle class again. This is a historic project that is going to help grow this community, give people jobs and give a future to your kids and my kids. Where you sit today used to be a General Motors plant and now there are over 1,000 employees working here. Is this a union job? It is our desire to not be. We hope someday to get this good. There have been 11 complaints filed. Some workers claim unsafe working conditions and unfair treatment. Doing the same thing over and over again that wears on your body and your soul. They told me that they had to be here two years away from their family, no extra pay. I made it their house. They made it my home. We've just bombed it. Now the whole world is watching. What changed in America was rich people deciding they wanted to rewrite the rules to take advantage of people. You never give up on American dreams. To me that would be un-American. Good morning. You are in the right place for the social impact entertainment revolution. If that is not what you were expecting to attend, now would be the time. Just kidding. I'm Rachel Myrow. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to have a fabulous discussion as you can see focused around the recent documentary American factory available on Netflix. We have with us today, going across the stage, Steve, Julia and Monique. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to check out all of the information in the app, the SoCAP 19 app because there's no need to recap that. Just dive right in. But first, before we start talking, I do want to ask for a show of hands. How many people here have actually seen American factory? All right. Well, I guess that tells us where we need to start the conversation. Julia, do you want to give us a sense of what this documentary is actually about? Wow. That's a big question. The elevator pitch. Yeah, the elevator. I never actually had to do that. So we live in Dayton, Ohio, Steve and I, who made the film. And the plant that this takes place in, which makes automotive glass, is about 20-minute drive from our house. That plant closed as a General Motors plant, General Motors left, and left this empty shell of a huge plant during the economic crash of 08. This forward about seven or eight years, and we heard, wow, the plant's going to reopen. Somebody bought it. Turns out it's a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, Chairman Chao. And we had a chance to go in and actually follow what happened once the plant opened over a three-year period. And that's what the film is. We had access to, like, everything. Well, Steve, do you want to pick that up and tell us a little bit about how you guys got to the Obamas, how you got to Netflix, how you got the money to get going? Well, we believe that story is an agent for change. And that's the one reason why I think we're all here. You know, a lot of decisions in this world are made on data, with buy and on and about data. And we want to try to upend that paradigm a little bit and talk about the individual stories or the community stories. We believe stories are and sparks for empathy, and empathy leads to action. Empathy, you know, if we think back to the social causes that have moved people over the recent years, it's like something touches us, and we take action. And we feel like that's the power of documentary. We were making this film on our own in Ohio, and we reached a point about halfway through the filming. We started filming in 2015, and in mid-2016, we really needed to start to find a partner to raise money, but also to help bring the film into the world. And we got very lucky that we lined up and teamed up with Participant Media. We're Harris-Elda. You got lucky, too. And Participant is a company we've known about for years. We've all seen their films, whether it's Spotlight, the Best Picture Winner, or Roma from last year, or their great documentaries like Inconvenient Truth or RBG from last year. Participant's mission is to make movies that matter, that are entertaining, but have social impact. And when they said, we love your idea, we love what you're doing, we just felt a lot of alignment in terms of mission. And let me just say, Participant, they really mean that, the word participant. They want audiences to take the films, whatever it is, and make social change in the world. And they're serious about it, and they know how to do it. Another great name, Hire Ground, is the Obama's production company that they started as their legacy, being young people in their 50s still. They had to think, well, gee, what are we gonna do? And they decided to focus on storytelling. And they have started a production company, and we, meaning Steve and I's film, a participant's film, is their first release, which is amazing. And they have lots of other things coming out. So look them up, Hire Ground Productions. I think we're gonna expect a lot from the Obama's. The President and First Lady came on board with Netflix this past January when the film debuted at Sundance. And since then, participant media, Hire Ground Productions and Netflix have all been working together with us to bring the film out into the world. Now, you can see on Netflix there is a short conversation that's filmed between you guys and Barack and Michelle Obama. But I'm curious, what was your interaction with them like? Were they giving you the creative freedom to make the film you felt you needed to make? They came on board when the film was all done. Okay, yeah. They saw it at Sundance Film Festival when it was all done. And they told us sort of why they bonded with the film. But I think it really is encapsled in the name Hire Ground. One of the things, for those of you who saw the film, we take the Hire Ground, right? I mean, we try to be fair to everyone, whether it's the owner, the billionaire owner, the management, the HR people, the blue collar Americans, the blue collar Chinese. We try to listen to everybody. Because we felt like that was the best way for this film to make a difference in the world. And we live in a world where people are very divided right now. We all know that. So we felt like if we can create empathy for the owner, as well as the managers, as well as the workers, that would be a real step in the right direction and create conversations around that. When we started making the film, because we live in that town, our hearts were really with the blue collar Americans. But pretty quickly we realized that the 200 or 300 Chinese engineers and managers who had left their hometown in Fujian province in China, flown to Ohio in a small kind of modest gray little town, Dayton, Ohio, post-industrial scrappy little town. They were starting a whole new life there. And we realized that it would be very important to tell their story as well. Now we are not Chinese and we don't speak Mandarin Chinese. We're not culturally competent in terms of China. But we turn to Chinese filmmakers who we teamed up with, about six of them, but especially Yichen Zhang and Mijie Li who are both documentary filmmakers from China. They started coming to Ohio every week and that's how we could try to tell the Chinese perspective as well as the American perspective. I find it interesting that both of you have used some form of the word empathy in your comments and I highly encourage those of you who haven't seen the film to go home and watch it tonight. It really is a very empathetic look at the challenges of trying to run a profitable manufacturing enterprise in America today. Haricela, can you tell us a little bit about your role in promoting the film once they finished? Yeah, absolutely. And if anyone is around tonight, we are also hosting a screening at 7 PM at the in the Southwest building. So you'll have a chance to watch. Better than seeing it on Netflix. Right. See it with a group. Yeah. Don't tell Netflix. No, no, it's okay. So participant was originally set up to be a double bottom line company. We exist to tell the best stories, but we also understand that oftentimes those stories speak to massive issues out in the world. And these are, if we look at future of work, it's complicated. You hear all of the statistics, but what does it mean? So when we have a piece of content that puts a human lens on something so important yet frightening, we find that that type of content helps bring different people to the table, helps elevate the work that organizations and individuals all across the country are doing. So the way that we look at how can we take the content and create change is from a place of humility of trying to listen to what is it that this issue space needs. And we found that the labor space was very fractured. So a lot of the work that we started to do was, okay, how can we, if content can build a bridge, how do we do that? It starts from a place of creating the shared experience of watching the film together, of experiencing that empathy. Those human stories, the 350 million jobs that will be automated suddenly become the workers that you'd see on the factory floor, and that microcosm is actually speaking to the nuances of globalization and cultural differences and automation. And then how do we get people who are not talking to each other to at least see each other and understand the other perspective? And we started by having separate conversations with different sectors, understand where they were individually coming from. And then we designed a national tour and a digital experience where we're creating events that are screenings but also dinner conversations where we're nominating people from the community, deliberately chosen from different sectors and saying, come to this event tomorrow. We're actually doing one in Indianapolis tomorrow night. Watch the film and then just share a meal and a conversation with someone else. And at that table is going to be someone who you might not have thought to talk to before about this issue, but it's building a bridge. And then we're finding that through the digital site that we set up at AmericanFactoryFilm.com, we've had interest from 32 states already hosting their own screening in other countries. Because these are conversations people want to have, and film can be an entry point into doing that. So you're actually getting, which I think is so cool, owners and employees to talk to each other. Like even people from the labor movement and owners to sit down and talk, which doesn't really happen very much. And not just that, is if you look at these issues of inequality and future work from a community lens, our thinking is we also want academics in there, we want policymakers, we want people from the faith community, and we also want students. That's one of the most interesting things that we found. There is so much excitement. We've heard a number of schools are already using the film in their classrooms. So we're just trying to get it out because the appetite is there. Monique, do you want to tell us how this film resonated for you from the perspective of the work you do for J.P. Morgan? Yes. So the work that we do within global philanthropy is really focused on the global context of jobs and skills. And the future of work frame is ubiquitous in every market that we're invested in. That's really the loudest theme that comes out. And given the scale of it, it's very easy to lose the face of the challenge. It's very easy to get caught up in the scale and the quant of it. It's very easy to get caught up in just the automation end of the future of work narrative and really lose sight of the human element. We invest very heavily in our philanthropic strategy in building training and education models that really prepare labor markets and prepare workers for the next phase of work in their communities. And it's very easy to do that without the worker voice present. It's very just based on the scale and the speed of the problem. And so what I think struck us about this particular film, because we've actually used this as a team, what struck us about it is that it shows all the different nuances within this conversation. It's not just about kind of the monolithic idea of the American factory worker. It's about all of the different elements, all of the different human elements that are kind of in this work that we have to be very mindful of the conditions that people have to kind of traverse through to get ready for whatever's happening on the horizon. And so I think that this is a perfect example of how the power of storytelling, the putting a face on the issue brings to light a different way of thinking about it. Because every major company that's really grappling with re-skilling and future of work issues, there's an element of it. Like what does this mean for diversity and inclusion? What does this mean for, you know, creating opportunities for individuals who have historically been kind of kept out of these industries? And this actually really paints a really crisp picture of that piece. And Monique, if I could just add we're talking about the future of work. One of the key, you know, from the worker point of view, one of the big beefs is we're not respected. It's not necessarily about money, although they'd like more money. It's more about do I have a voice? Does anyone pay any attention? Is there any teeth? If I make a complaint, you've seen the film, some of you, will it matter? Or will I get fired because I made the complaint? So one thing I feel strongly about, and I've come to feel this, is if you're going to talk about the future of work, you have to have the worker voice at the table. It can't just be the companies or the government. It has to be the worker voice. And if you think about it, from what I've heard, see if you agree, the largest trainer of people to upskill people is the army. After that, it's unions. Let's not forget that, as far as actually doing training to give people more of a path to the middle class. So I just wanted to make that point, because sometimes unions are seen as opposed to people who own things. But I think this is a place where they could come together. Well, I'm going to challenge you on that, because after watching this documentary, I had the disheartening feeling that no matter how dignified and professional those American workers were, that you still face this problem where capital chases cheap. And the very problem these American workers face beyond being more expensive is that they have expectations about limits on their work hours, expectations about safety in the workplace, expectations about environmental stewardship, things that the American labor movement helped to cultivate in them, but which very much seemed to be on the downswing these days. Well, I was very proud, I don't know what you think, of the American workers in the film who speak up about that, about EPA things, about safety things, but sometimes they get, there's retribution against them for speaking up. And this is not fair. So I don't know if you have anything. Well, capitalism is like a shark that will always go, go, go, and it needs a saddle, it needs a harness. Otherwise we'd all still be working, we'd have children working 12 hours a day in factories here. So I mean, obviously you need a balance. The labor movement was a corrective to 80 hour weeks and deeply unsafe conditions. There's a way to make it work. Right now in China, there's a nascent labor movement. There are wildcat strikes happening. People are fed up with working 12 hours a day, six days a week, or not getting paid. And they go on strike. We don't hear about it a lot, but if you go to China Labor Bulletin, they track insurgent labor unrest there. But then you see factory owners moving the work to countries where those labor movements are even weaker. Even weaker. Yeah, China is outsourcing factories to Vietnam. Yeah, it's true. So something we came to realize, because the film takes you to China and we go into the equivalent factories in China, the workers' salaries are rising in China and they're stagnant here, at least in this part of this sector. I can't speak about all the sectors, tactile and everything else, but in auto. Salaries are rising in China. Everything is very stagnant here. And America is becoming a low wage country. And how do we feel about that? How do we feel about, are we gonna have a middle class? Are we gonna have a blue collar middle class? I grew up as a working class person, but I was able to go to college. We had vacations. My dad knew he worked a 40-hour a week and he wouldn't have to work more just because his supervisor said, no, you gotta come back tomorrow on Saturday. There wasn't that kind of thing. He was a union guy. Do we wanna have a middle class? Do we wanna be a low wage country? So that's where you might think about, well again, what kind of country do we wanna live in? What kind of world do we wanna live in? The billionaire class way up here and the average worker way down here is stagnating. That's what's happening. We all know it. You can read that in USA Today or whatever. Yeah. Monique? Yeah, I just wanted to chime in here. I think one of the kind of undercurrents that's in the movie is kind of this idea of kind of passion and purpose. And I feel like, yes, we obviously see and have heard and read about this hollowing of the middle in the American labor market. That there is kind of a growth in high wage jobs and a growth in low wage jobs, but it's a relatively stagnation or a much slower growth of middle income jobs. It's still growing, but it's slower. And so I think here's the opportunity for kind of creative capital to play a role because the challenge that America faces, I mean, it's interesting how you hear like this conflicting narrative, right? Where you have seven million jobs that have gone unfilled that are kind of middle-skilled gap jobs and manufacturers, advanced manufacturers, industries across the country that are saying, we have this skilled demand that we can't fill. Simultaneously, you have workers who are saying, we can't find jobs that will cover our cost of living. And so there's a gap here. And the reason why that gap exists is that we've got really antiquated infrastructure when it comes to education and training. We've got very antiquated policies, systems that are really tailored for an economy that really doesn't exist in major metropolises across the country. And so given the speed of automation, given the speed of our economy, we've got to figure out creative solutions to get that infrastructure to catch up, to evolve and really do more innovative work to prepare people in these spaces and for these roles. I mean, the reality is that that missing middle is actually not a missing middle. That middle is where man meets machine. And so how are we preparing workers? How are we preparing students? How are we preparing labor to meet machine in really creative ways? I mean, the reality is is that America is still a creative economy. And so how are we preparing folks to adapt to what's on the horizon? Haricela, what kind of responses or answers along the lines of what Monique is talking about have you heard in these various screenings? Yeah, so it really, there are a range of responses. What the film does beautifully is it asks a lot of questions, but it's not prescriptive in what the solution should be. And what we've tried to be adamant in bringing the film all across the country is we're not trying to vilify anyone. We're recognizing that these are tough issues to grapple with, but how can we get creative about solutions? What we also recently found out, which a partner mentioned is 2018, saw the greatest number of worker-led strikes since the 1980s. So there's this question bubbling up about what does power look like in different spaces, including at work? And what we are hearing partners grapple with as they watch the film is who am I when it comes to these issues and what is my role? So there are some people who are thinking about labor from an organizing perspective. There are some people who are thinking about it from a training and workforce development perspective. The narrative that we wanna try to paint is given where you are now in your respective role, what does that incremental next step look like? Is, does it start with just having a conversation with your own workforce and acknowledging where you are or where you're not? Or do you have more resources that you can mobilize against trainings or technology? If so, how do you get to that next step? And how can we help forge connections to do that so that there's not these eco-chambers of everyone's talking about the future of work, but they're talking about it in very separate spaces. So part of our role with storytelling and with trying to build these bridges is to connect all of the various opportunities that people are trying to explore and link resources to those who might need them, putting workers back into that conversation too, so that we think about products from a user-generated design perspective, but we don't think about systems and practices from a worker perspective. So how can we get a little bit better at doing that? Well, we were lucky to walk around that factory floor for three years, pretty much almost three years. And we got to know so many people who show up and punch a clock and go to their station and do their job all day long. And we were also very lucky that we had access to the management, to the offices, the office suites and to meetings, management meetings, where they talked about policy and they made changes to all kinds of things. And we were, frankly, regularly shocked and disappointed how rarely management would get on the factory floor and go talk to the employees and listen or go out for a beer or do something social with someone so that they could really hear the experience of this job and the challenges of this job directly from a worker. And that's the kind of siloing that you're talking about, I think. And it's not hard to do, to walk out there and say, how's it going? What are you doing after work? Can I take you out for a burger? Or even, there were so often a huge gap between how management saw issues and saw solving them and how the workers on the floor in great numbers would say like, no, that's not working. That policy has no teeth. Okay, there's a safety committee made up of workers, but who do they report to? They report to HR and HR has no power or very little power. Sometimes on these various, there's a scene in our film where they have worker round tables. Workers are, you can tell there's unrest on the floor, so the company decides, let's have some worker round tables. And we filmed one. And it's all American workers and they talk about all the American supervisors have been demoted. We only have Chinese supervisors now. And they order us around and they don't listen to us because it's a cultural difference in how work life is seen. They talk about folks pouring paint into the water supply. So the worker round table like tries to raise things and I was proud of that. But in the end, this one worker says, I don't wanna waste your time. I don't wanna waste my time. Will any of this matter what we say here today? And that's what you kept hearing. There were like these kind of, I would have to say kind of phony attempts to create structures that would hear the worker voice. But they had no teeth, they had no power, they just were swept right under the rug. They were kind of fig leaves. And the workers became very cynical about that then. So I just wanted to, I think if there's any transformation, again I say it in terms of the future of work or listening to workers, it has to include real voice of working people and their representatives. We see in Silicon Valley today, middle class engineers who seem to be in a similar vein challenging their company saying, what is the social, political, economic impact of the products we're creating, of the contracts we're signing? And we also see that management responds to that with, well your choice is either to not work on that project or to leave the company. Right, exactly. I also wanted to just say something. We live in Dayton, Ohio and we all know you guys are mostly from the West Coast, I think, I don't know. But we all know that there's a struggle going on for the heart and soul of America. You know what I'm talking about. And I believe, and the 2020 election is just one aspect of that, I believe that struggle is gonna be fought out in the Midwest, in places like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin. So we can't sit here on the West Coast and think like we'll deal with things in Silicon Valley. Okay, it's important. But look, our community, like Dayton, Ohio, I'm just gonna give you one example. Because all the various companies left, GM left, NCR left, DHL left, everybody left, our school system is falling apart. 98% of the kids, my grandkids go to the school system. They don't go to a private school outside of town. They go to the city schools. 98% of the kids are on under the poverty level. All the schools are failing. The housing stock is falling apart. What hope is there in some ways? If the best you can do is a 12 or 14 hour job, hard factory work or a distribution center where you have one of those guns or a call center, $10 an hour, 12, what hope is there? And that's why people turn to somebody who they think will give them hope. Which, believe it or not, we knew that Donald Trump was gonna win the election in Dayton, Ohio. We could see that. So I just have to say, it's something we need to think about if we think about the future of our country. We have to think about the Midwest because that is where the battleground is. Monique, not to pressure you or anything. But how do we give hope to that Midwestern blue collar worker? I mean, it's one of the things, for those who have seen the film, one of the things that I think is striking about the film is kind of the different types of narratives that show up, right? I mean, it's obviously, you see the overwhelming narrative of kind of the typical kind of Midwestern factory worker. But then watching it again, you see other voices that are in there, right? And so one of the kind of paradigms in there is, yes, you have the older factory worker who's been in the industry for the last 30 years, but then when there's the issue around the union vote, you have an amplification of the younger factory worker who is like, okay, I'm here. I'm not gonna vote for this union because I can't afford to lose this job, right? I need this job. And it's striking. It was striking to me because I think what that then says is, okay, why is this young person, why does this young person feel like they don't have any other options, right? We're seeing kind of industry evolving in every major city across the country. And the way cities are tackling it is different, right? I mean, you've got the date in Ohio's, and you also have the Pittsburgh's, right? Which are finding new ways to kind of carve out a niche for industry and economy to provide more options and more opportunities. Obviously, education, training, that pipeline of preparation needs to go in tandem with that. And so it's disheartening to hear that you see a public school system that's falling apart. That's a critical piece of this puzzle. And so the work that we've been doing has really been investing on the full scale, right? So yes, we have our heavy investment in kind of re-skilling and preparing workers for kind of the evolving labor market, but we also actually have a considerable investment in career readiness as well, right? How are we looking at youth? How are we preparing systems to provide a broader set of opportunities and purpose for young people as they're trying to figure out where they're gonna go? So it's not an easy answer, right? Like how do you infuse and inject hope into these communities that feel very hopeless? But there are, I think nodes, there are bright spots across the country to draw from to see what are all the stakeholders that were involved in kind of turning this around, right? And this is what's great about the tour that that participant media is doing. It's bringing all of those critical stakeholders to the conversation to say, okay, we all have to solve this, we all have a stake in this, and we have to think about this very differently in order to solve this. That gives the plants the seed for the solutions that will kind of allow that hope to regenerate. And it's the movie that brings people together. Exactly. It's the idea of watching the movie together, not alone in your apartment or whatever, but together with other people and saying, okay, this raises a lot of questions, what are we gonna do in our community? And each community is different on the tour. Each community is different. So we started off at Louisville. We're going to Indianapolis. Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky, yeah, they have a big governor's race where labor issues are figuring quite prominently. Then we're going to Detroit and Pittsburgh, all are intended somehow to speak to the issuer highlight bright spots. And one thing that we've been hearing is there needs to be a realignment of priorities. So the shareholder based approach leads you down one particular road. Shareholder, honey. Like feeling like you're accountable to shareholders and being driven primarily by profits instead of what the needs of the workers are. By companies, yeah. So if we start to think from a more holistic perspective, our partners point out the fact that, you know, there are so many intersecting issues from education to healthcare to various other things that if you think about that in the context of, well, how does this relate to work and the ability that wages or a certain lifestyle gives to an individual, to a family, to a community, there are costs and repercussions associated with that. So if we can bring different actors to the table for that more holistic conversation, then hopefully it can lead to a path of realigning what the way that companies are thinking about their practices as well. Now I do want the audience to have an opportunity to ask questions, but first I'm going to ask what is perhaps the scariest question of the morning, which is how do you see things like robotics and artificial intelligence impacting this conversation going forward? Hey, look, robotics, it's great. You don't have to break your back doing your job, right? You don't have to have stress injuries on your arms. When we made a film about the General Motors plant that closed and we talked to lots of workers, I don't believe there was a worker who'd been there like say 10, 15, 20 years, who didn't have serious injuries because of that job. Even with the better ergonomics that they over the years brought in, that's a real, you know, we're like ground zero for the heroin epidemic, date in Ohio, right? Well, I can understand it. People were in pain and then they lost their job and then they lost their hope. And you know, these things happen. I'm not really answering your question, but we should view automation from a worker point of view as a good thing if there were other jobs, right? If people could be trained to operate the computers or other, I'm sure you're the expert on this though. I'm just telling you from my little point of view in this one factory. No, I mean, it's true. I mean, the reality is that this is not a new phenomenon for us, right? I mean, it's technology that changed the, you know, agricultural sector significantly and did it affect obviously agricultural jobs, farming jobs, absolutely. Did it create other types of jobs? Absolutely. And so this is really just the next wave of that evolution. And so automation, robotics, all of that plays a really critical role. The reality is that just like there's not an office job that doesn't touch a computer, right? More occupations are going to be computer-enabled, digitally-enabled, technology-enabled jobs. And so we just have to prepare folks better for what those roles entail. And I just wanted to just make one really quick comment about kind of the middle income Silicon Valley engineer, right? So the worker voice is broadening really significantly. And as hard as it is to kind of see, given kind of the polarization of our labor market and kind of the income and wealth disparities that are existing in our economy, it is impacting how American companies do business, right? So one of the big recent kind of announcements was with the business round table, a number of major Fortune 500 companies who signed off on this pledge that it's not just gonna be shareholder earnings that's gonna drive practice, right? That's not gonna be where value is gonna be rested. Now what that means for each of these companies we still have to see. But the reality is that people signed that pledge, yeah, great, it's great to say that that was just altruistic and we just wanna be great people. But the reality is that we've now got a tone and tenor in our labor market, particularly when we're thinking about the younger end of the spectrum. Well people wanna work for good people. People wanna work for companies that are doing more, that are contributing more, that's not just about earnings and profits and shareholder returns, that they're actually making social impact in communities and that includes with workers, that includes with the communities in which they sit and are invested in and that includes shareholders. So it's changing and it was really the worker voice that brought that pledge into fruition. Yeah, the worker voice and you know people wanna be proud of where they work. That is actually something that might surprise you. People on the floor, they might only have a high school education, but they would be proud that they made those GM trucks and cars. They would be proud of the advances they made in terms of ergonomics. They would be proud of the Worker Safety Committee. You know, they would be proud. They don't feel proud of the company, unfortunately, that they work for now. You'd have to see the film to see why. Some people do, but there's a lot of frustration that people are still dealing with. I'm getting the high sign. Do we have room for one or two questions? Oh yeah. Oh 15 minutes, all right, awesome. All right, why don't we start with you in the pink. Yeah. There we go, yeah, wait for the mic to come around so that folks who are watching online can hear your question. Hi there, I'm Naja Lockwood, and I saw the film with Sundance. I was really touched, and especially because my in-laws are from Dayton. My father-in-law ran NCR, and my aunt founded the opera, Dayton Opera. Wow, thank you, thank her. My question is, what were some significant insights that you didn't have when you started making the film? And you did have after finishing the film. And what are you both doing next? We did not know much about the trajectory of China before we started making the film. We had a typical Midwestern myopic view, and really making this film opened us up to this sort of amazing achievement that's happened over the last 30, 40 years since Deng Xiaoping opened up. And we realized there's a lot of looking at that with a sense from a US point of view, there can be an anxiety about looking at China's growth. But when we were hanging out with Wang or Leon or these engineers who came over from China who are like 29, 33 years old, their parents lived in poverty, their parents lived an agrarian life, and now they have a home, or Wang is saving up enough money to build a home for his family. We looked, it really changed our perspective on looking at the miracle of what's happened in China, which is hundreds of millions of people are no longer in poverty. Now that has come at great environmental costs, great labor-like issues, all kinds of problems. That's all true, we can talk about those, but it's also something to be looked at as a real human achievement in the history of the world, this transformation. That was very eye-opening. But then in crafting the film, we really wanted to not watch it with a lens of Midwestern anxiety about that. And just a real quick answer, the other part of that. We didn't know about the US-based, basically consultancy industry, that is union avoidance industry. We didn't know about that. I don't think most people know about that unless they're sort of in it. And the power of the union avoidance folks that they hired at over a million dollars, over a million dollars they spent on avoiding, like I would say workers to have a fair election, because I don't think it was a fair election and you saw the film, you can decide for yourself. That was kind of shocking to us, because we're big believers in democracy, the democratic voice, and when you start firing people because they're pro-union or you start bombarding people with mandatory meetings again and again and again, that give out borderline illegal messages. And that was a big surprise for us. But that's not just the Chinese company, right? Not at all. You're just doing it, yeah? No, no, no, this is an American thing. In fact, it's not even a year- And American regulators need to be asleep at the wheel. I know, exactly. When we showed this film in Europe, they were shocked, they don't have that kind of thing over there, like we showed it in England and in France. And they don't have union avoidance, at least that's what people told us. And it's definitely not, the Chinese learned it from the American consultants, learned how to avoid the union. Oh, we're making another film about women workers, White Collar, you know the movie, Nine to Five, Jane Fonda? We're making a movie about the movement that gave rise to that movie. Hi, thank you very much. Congratulations, first of all. The reviews have been tremendous over the last few months. My name is Josh Kearns. I'm a reformed journalist, now consulting with Goal 17, a new startup out of Seattle. Media, a creation company, as well as accelerator for impact startups is the goal of the founders. I got into journalism 25 years ago to change the world, but was always taught to sort of keep my hands off, tell the stories and have become much more activist and am overtly activist now. Question, I guess, from the participant media side, how do we leverage great content? What is your thinking? Obviously activating local meetings are one thing, but at the end of the day, as you said, we need to change policy. I covered Boeing for 20 years. All of the fight, all of the issues you're describing are happening at Boeing right now. And as a result, there is no reeducation funding. In terms of those things that would actually provide other opportunities for future workers. Get to the middle class. And as a result, we have tremendous income inequality in Seattle. You need to earn over $150,000 to have a living wage now and afford a home within the city of Seattle. And it's not gonna change anytime soon. How do we leverage great content in order to affect actual policy? Is it specific call? Voter registration drives out the meetings. Is it going to Congress? There's a hearing today in Congress on worker issues. Not a single worker's rights I was just seeing on Twitter. Not a single worker rights or worker involved in any of the panels. Oh, that's terrible. So if you think about what is it that storytelling can do that few other mediums can do? Ultimately, the way that we think about it as a participant is it can help create the cultural conditions for change. Our storytellers at participant were not the issue experts. So we need to very humbly approach the perspectives that we're bringing to the table. It shouldn't be us saying what the solutions are. It should be how can we help individuals and organizations leading this change? The ones who have been fighting for these issues for decades who are gonna keep fighting after our release is done. And what we saw with a film like Roma last year is if you get people to talk about it, the right people, enough people shining the spotlight that you have with the content on others in a deliberate way helps to empower movements that are already happening before we even make the film. So acknowledging that we're coming into spaces that are existing, the labor movement has been around and grappling with these issues for decades, but when you have the Obama's tweeting about a film, people are suddenly paying attention. So can we help bring the worker voice? Who is it that we're putting this film in the hands of? How do we get to scale? It's, on some films, it's easy to say, okay, there's a very clear call to action, and let's just give that to audiences and hope that we get to a turning point. With something like this, it's much harder. This is a harder issue because it's very intersectional. It's much more complex. So for us, the goal is how do we put the film and the materials that we can create around it in the hands of as many people who are having these conversations? So it becomes an emotional entry point into the issue to bring new people in, to highlight the bright spots, and to accelerate movements that are happening so that it's not just about us, we're just, can we add a little bit of fuel? And I think that's what storytelling can do beautifully. And we're going to Seattle, so we gotta get your card. Oh yeah. We'd love to host a screening. Oh great, and everyone can sign up at the end. We'll have a sign up table if you want to host a screening. Yeah, Seattle, can't wait. My name's Greg Mollner with Goal 17. We have such alignment. We're storytellers for the new economy and we're going to launch in about three months. Amazing. I want to say thank you. I ran a film, independent film company 20 years ago that won Sundance, and one of my responsibilities was financing our films. If anyone wants to talk about creative financing, talk about financing the film. So two questions. What was the budget for your film? It was over a million dollars. It was under two million dollars somewhere in there. Way under two million dollars. We're not supposed to give exact numbers, but that's okay. North of a million. North of a million, south of two million. Yeah, for people who haven't made a film, for you to make that film for under a million and a half dollars is extraordinary. What you're doing a participant is you're the good guys in Hollywood. Yeah, they're the good guys, right, they are. Which, if you're involved, there aren't a lot of those guys. How do you guys keep funding? How do we keep funding content? Yeah, it wasn't on our film that they earned money. No, it wasn't. I mean, how does participant stay finance? Because a lot of great studios have started and fallen apart. How do you guys stay finance so you can continue to support these kinds of films? Yeah, we at participant have been very fortunate to work with some of the filmmakers and the content creators that we've worked with. You know, you have a film like Wonder a couple of years ago, which doesn't feel like it's a big social change film, but it grows something like $300 million at the box office and empowers us to be able to make other types of film too. Something like Roma, right? Not a natural investment, but we are looking at the potential of stories from a different lens. And when you have Netflix coming on board with Roma or with American Factory, who also believe in see that potential and they're willing to bring additional financing to the table, it's because there's a response from the audience for these types of stories. And that is bringing in more financing and it's helping craft better deals. As we craft deals too with distributors, we're trying to put impact into those deals. So there's an audience response and there's a shift within the industry towards what is the worth of these types of stories? And it's growing, which helps our business and from our perspective, yes, we were first to the table when Jeff Skull started this company with the belief that stories can change the world. Everyone thought that was a crazy idea, now everyone's doing it, but we need to continue to innovate. How do we do that better? How do we bring others into the fold? And the fact that you're launching something that's in that vein, it's inspirational because there's power and the fact that we're in a growing ecosystem is meaningful. Well, if I may, one specific thing that happens is participant tries to sell their movies and at least recoup. And so with the American Factory participant and we took the film to Sundance and sold it to Netflix and higher ground and participant made a little bit of money, not a lot, but enough to recoup all what they had put in. And that's true for Roma and that's true for a lot of their other films. That's right. Hi, thank you for speaking. I think taking it broadly, like some of you have asked some questions, we see represented on the stage here obviously, production, filmmaking and philanthropy. And I'm curious if any of you have thoughts as the social impact entertainment space grows and we're seeing this sort of revolution, what some of the opportunities you're seeing around growth and also possibly gaps in this space and sort of where you might suggest energy is most needed to continue accelerating the growth we're seeing. You mean in terms of philanthropy? In terms of philanthropy, in terms of production, we're hearing here other companies that are being started in this space, just taking it a step bigger where you're seeing just sort of the industry move. Well, I think that's really oriented around like the production side, right? Yeah, well, okay, I can start a little bit with that. I think the way that we're thinking about how does impact happen? Impact does long term. So the life cycle of a piece of content, if you think about the release, can be finite. Even though having the film on Netflix will make sure that it exists in perpetuity and the scale is very large, the way that we approach the work, it oftentimes has a limited timeframe, but how is it that we can empower communities and movements over a longer period? And sometimes that requires additional investment. It requires additional collaboration with organizations that intersects with different issues. So we're thinking about that. How is it that we can collaborate beyond just one piece of content or support communities more holistically empowering them with content generally as a mechanism and as inspiration for change? And I guess from the J.P. Morgan perspective, it might be helpful to hear about how the content has been helpful in the conversations you're having. I mean, I think philanthropy shows up on both ends of this potentially. Obviously from where I sit, philanthropy we're positioned to do something about it. We're positioned to tag on to these community conversations and figure out what's the solutions oriented investment. I think where there's probably less understanding is how particularly when I think about arts and cultural philanthropy, how they leverage that grant-making capacity as equity to invest into these type of ventures, right? I think we know how to do that with like kind of traditional real estate for instance, right? We know how to, and small business development, we know how to throw equity into that deal to kind of get you over the hump till you get into the black and move forward. We don't necessarily know how to do that in the kind of arts culture and film space. And so I think there's probably some kind of emerging knowledge development that needs to happen in that space to help arts and cultural philanthropic organizations to think differently about how they invest in this space. I would just, you know, I'm not a philanthropist. I've never had that ability, let's say. But I feel like if someone's thinking about investing in the future of work, let's say, which let's say, face it, if we want to have a middle class in America, people who can actually spend money and keep the economy going, you have to have workers at the table. You have to have community people at the table in a real way, making them feel respected and listened to and make sure they have a base that they're speaking from. I just feel like I also would always emphasize, I think the Midwest is highly neglected, at least in my view, economically and shouldn't be because it's, again, it's that struggle for the heart and soul of America is going on there. I mean, we feel it around us every day. So those are two things, I don't know if that's helpful but are important to me. Well, one of our partners is an organization called Jobs to Build America and they have done some really ground-breaking work. You know that group? They're very much worth a little research. They've done some really ground-breaking work on working with companies and corporations to create jobs that have living wages and what we call good jobs. And lots of other things, like hiring workers who would normally not be seen as part of the labor force, gender, making sure that people of color and people who are women get hired, retraining, Jobs to Move America, you're shaking your head, is like a kind of a brilliant thing and it's expanding, actually. Jobs to Move America based in Los Angeles and what's the name of the woman who's? Madeleine Janssen? Yeah, Janice. Janice, yeah. I think we have time for one more question. Two, let's do two. Let's see. Yeah, this gentleman and then right behind you. Great, thank you Julia and Steven for the movie. I've seen it twice. Oh, that's so good. That's an amazing movie and one of my big takeaways was really the stark contrasting culture and approach to work between the Chinese and the American workers, that kind of collective approach versus the individualistic approach and that was one of my biggest takeaways and I think the film does a great job with that. My question is, do you think either in the making of the film or the impact the film has had since then has changed Fuyao at all or the chairman himself? He seems like a real introspective guy, like did he absorb any of this or process any of this? Did the company change? What do you guys think? The chairman has supported the film. We were nervous to show it to him of course because there's scenes that we knew he wouldn't like but he's, oh, Jacqueline with the mic right up here. Yeah, with the black jacket. Yeah, but he's been very supportive of it and wants to help get it out in China. The film, yeah, we don't know if it's impacted the culture yet so far. We do know that it sparked a lot of conversations in the factory but it's still kind of early days since the film moves. Yeah, we talk to workers a lot and there doesn't seem to be a lot of change. I will tell you one thing that'll be funny to people who've seen the film. We heard that people went around after the film came out on Netflix with duct tape over their mouth. As a sort of a protest because there's a scene in the film where- But wait, don't tell, don't tell. Sorry, no spoilers. Seven o'clock tonight. You have to watch the movie. Or Netflix. Okay, so, thank you. Hi, my name is Tracy and I want to kind of piggyback on something that Monique said as far as where energy could still be placed in learning and teaching and I want to expand that particularly with social impact stories and that may have a long term impact where you can't see it in the short term. My question is particularly on the philanthropic and investment opportunities, recognizing that these stories will change perception and that perception can influence where money flows and where it doesn't flow. So, is there an openness in the investment community and in the philanthropic community for that long term objective where you're seeking to change perception, recognizing that that's prerequisite to creating the type of major and sustainable change on the economic level as well, domestically and internationally? Yeah, so I think it is a gradual sea change that's happening in philanthropy. It is definitely a culture shift and we see some foundations that are moving on that kind of more center mass than others, right? And in a lot of ways it's also regionalized, right? Like, so you have perfect example like here in the San Francisco area, the San Francisco Foundation is looking at the social impact and worker voice very differently and very progressively in a way that you don't see necessarily across the country. So, but it's a slow and gradual sea change because oftentimes philanthropy in a lot of ways, the way we think about our grant making is how do we reach scale faster and how do we kind of follow the longevity of these investments over time? We know grants kind of there in cycles, right? And so how do you continue that progression over a longer sense of time? And you definitely see that where there's kind of really deep strategic market investment. You see a lot of that in Detroit right now. You see a lot of that in Chicago and other major cities that really have long-term philanthropic investment and that kind of gives more space for the narrative, more investment in the narrative shift to occur. But there's I think still a ton of work that has to be done. I mean, I think about for instance, Ford Foundation is an example where they have an approach to the future of work but their approach is really, in fact, they name it that it's the future of workers. Like their investment is in the future of workers and that the narrative becomes a really critical piece of that effort both to kind of just highlight the experience of the worker but then also to get the worker voice to have some cohesion because there are so many different kind of disparate angles to this issue. And so it's hard to make it sound more like a symphony to actually understand what is the perspective coming from that side of this discourse. And so it's very early days. I think it'll probably kind of accelerate and amplify as the economy continues to move at the pace that it's moving but we still have a lot of work to do in that space. And you know, the future of workers is also the, I see it from Dayton, Ohio, is the future of communities. You know, yeah, like where did our tax base go? People have $12 an hour jobs. They don't have, their taxes are not supporting the schools, are not supporting the renovation of communities. So it's not just about the individual person getting a better deal. It's also about what they then, through their taxes and their ability to give back, what they give to our communities and what that means to, again, America. You know, a lot of the Midwest we're suffering, not everywhere, but anyway, I won't go on anymore about the Midwest. Well, that's a great point to end on. I want you to join me in thanking our panelists today. Thank you.