 Welcome to everyone who's joined us today. Thank you for joining us. And I'm Catherine Bell, the editor-in-chief of Quartz. And I'm delighted to welcome a fantastic panel. We are going to be here to talk about how to do what that video suggested, which is to take on this challenge of the recovery from these twin crises, the health crisis and the economic crisis that the whole world is facing in order to make a global economy and a future of work that's fair and more inclusive. So in this session today, it's a quick session. So we'll be just scratching the surface. But our main goal is to really focus about on which priorities we should be focusing on and setting some of those priorities. So I'll start by introducing our speakers. Today we have Joanne Jenkins, who is the CEO of AARP. We have Alex Liu, Chairman and Managing Partner of Kearney. Caroline Casey, who you saw in that video, Founder and Director of Valuable 500 in Ireland. Anne Brigitte Albertson, CEO of Plan International. Maya Roy, CEO of YWC Canada. And finally, Edward Nodobu, the UN Secretary General's Sustainable Development Goals Advocate. So I'd like to start with a bit of a speed round and ask each of our panelists the same question. What do you see as the top priority to address in order to pave the way for a more equitable and inclusive economy? So please keep your answer to just a sentence and Joanne will start with you. Well, good morning. I think that one of the most important things is for us to really focus on, as you said, that health equality as well as financial equality. And I think that's going to make sure that all of us, regardless of where we live and our income levels, that we have an equal opportunity to not only find work and make a living, but also have access to quality health care. Absolutely. That's something we've been talking a lot about in our news room that health equality is required for financial equality. Alex, let's go to you next. Thanks a lot, Catherine. My perspective is that leadership needs to actively intervene to create an environment where the workforce feels safe, seen, supported, and actually inspired by what they see unfolding from leadership. Caroline, the best background of the day. Yes, well, of course. So for me, is I really believe we need to dismantle the very siloed approach to inclusion that is very destructive and coercive. We need to implicitly build an understanding of our interconnectedness as human beings right across the planet, across society, across industry. And I passionately believe, as we move into this transformation stage, we equally use our heads and our hearts, our humanity, and our data. They need to be an equal measure. Anne Bergeet, what's your top priority? So I deeply believe that every girl child from birth into young adulthood needs to feel equally heard, seen, and valued as a precondition for taking active part in the labor force. And that at the other end of the spectrum, every person in a position of power in her life, whether as a baby or as a young adult or employee, needs to deeply understand their own power, privilege, and unconscious bias to rid the world of the type of inequality that we see today. Thank you. Maya? Morning. Morning, Catherine. For I think as leaders right now, we're all being tested. And certainly, the decisions we're making today are going to be studied for generations to come. For us at YWCA Canada, it's about centering those who are experiencing the most oppression, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized community members, i.e., low-income women, people of color, looking at the impacts of the crisis on them, and really using the disaggregated data to drive evidence-based policymaking. So for us, that's our priority. Edward, let's wrap up this speed around with you. Sure. So I think it's absolutely important that we reimagine the public policy process and ensure that we reach those furthest behind the line of opportunity and really center their lived experience in the way that we think about public policy. It's really interesting how so many of you have looked at ways to include everybody, in some cases, starting with one community and moving towards everybody, and often that being the people who are most vulnerable right now. There's a lot to say about that. So moving on, I'd like to start again with Joanne. So this year, especially in the US, but around the world, many companies have publicly committed or recommitted to diversifying their workforces and talent pipelines and improving inclusion. And AARP established a program to support companies in making their workplaces more inclusive of older workers. Can you talk about what has been most effective about that program to help companies actually live up to those promises that they made? Sure. So I think one of the things that we've been pushing obviously is age inclusion into the work that we're doing around disparities. And so we have what's called the AARP Employer Pledge, where companies in the US and actually multinational countries around the world will sign the AARP pledge that says they're not going to discriminate against people because of their age. We have over 1,000 companies who signed that pledge. And as part of that, they commit to a recruitment process that includes age diversity. And I think what COVID has brought to the forefront is particularly the people working at home, that it's a lot easier for older people to do the work when it doesn't include that commuting and sort of going back and forth. And I'm just so excited that all of these, over 1,000 companies, has signed up to be a part of this campaign that shows the value of older worker and what they bring to the workforce. And particularly at a time when we're going to need so many more people to do the work, particularly in the health care areas and in education, where we see so many school systems around the country struggling to do virtual learning and not having enough teachers. And so this AARP employer pledge has really been at the forefront of what we're trying to do at AARP to bring attention to the fact that age diversity also ought to be included in some of the pledges that companies are taking to address equity inclusion and the social justice issues in the US. That's great. Thank you. So I'd like to turn to Alex and stick on that same question about how work has transformed so suddenly in many cases where work can be remote. In many cases, it has suddenly become remote, at least temporarily. And so I'd like to talk about the challenges and opportunities for diversity and inclusion that that presents. What can you tell us about what you've learned about how organizations can not only help their employees adapt to that new way of working, but take advantage of the moment of extreme change to improve diversity and inclusion? Right. No, thanks. And I think there's a huge mental aspect to the sense of belonging and engagement and true inclusion. I think we can all agree that even before COVID, there was an absence of things that were going right. Not enough justice, not enough equity, not enough fairness, not enough joy. And I think what the current environment has accentuated, of course, is inequities and people that don't have computers and can't virtually work, but the fundamentals are the same, which is people now, especially since things are so visibly raw, how do you get people to stay connected? Most diversity is actually hidden, right? 90% of it is in your brain. It's how you're coping with mental stress, anxiety. There was an epidemic of that in isolation even before COVID. What I've seen work is using technology to help connect people. For example, in the racial justice movement in the United States, which is long overdue, we had our colleagues in South Africa communicate and be allies to our folks in the United States to be able to say, how do you go from reconciliation and reckoning from a very bad place? We've opened up, and I've seen many companies make it more possible to have courageous conversations. We have a program called This Is Me. This is about mental health, but it doesn't apply to any underrepresented or outsider group to talk about the stories that got to where they are. What is their belief system? What have they experienced? And it opens up the emotional allyship that people need to have in order to feel solidarity and feel included. The other thing is you have to actually, and you can use technology for this too, Gaffin, which is ask people, do they feel like there is change and progress? Do they feel included? And you can actually talk about it in your smaller groups within the company or whatever community you're talking about. So honest conversations, allyship, leadership commitment behind all the programs that people need and the pledges that support that in coming from the top. And of course, leaders need to speak too. Tell their story. Thank you. Yeah, there are two points you made there that I think are so important and often not made. One is that so much of diversity is invisible, and people forget that, obviously. And also, I'm so glad you mentioned joy, because so often these conversations end with a sort of basic level of fairness, which is not enough, and joy is a right, and it should be ultimately part of what we're working toward. So Caroline, many of the companies we're talking about who've committed to improving diversity and inclusion this year have not made a lot of progress since those commitments were made in living up to what they said they would do. And obviously, it's difficult to do that. How can stakeholders both inside the organization and outside the organization work together to give companies incentives to change and support in those changes? Well, firstly, can I just say joy? Yes, Alex, hence the wallpaper, but I'd say that because it's really important about the openness and the humanity that you as a leader have just expressed. So I want to start with leaders make choices and those choices create culture. And we are being more human. This is more human. We are more vulnerable than we have ever been. The valuable 500 just to explain where we have this great community to which we engage with is the first and only global CEO community, which is transforming disability inclusion through business leadership and opportunity. We now have 330 companies in this community and that was in 19 months. And what is really different and how we can change this it's because it's leaders like Alex who gave his personal commitment to support the integration and the journey for inclusion throughout that business and combining the power of the leadership support and accountability at board level to ensure that the activities or the energy or the ideas or the curiosity or the innovation throughout business is being supported is what has been missing for so long. Leadership exists right throughout the organizations and what we've seen with the valuable 500 companies that we have is they have been so worried about not doing enough that it has been the barrier for them to try. They have been so concerned that they would never get it right particularly on disability inclusion. And that's why disability is often been on the sidelines and they have been so worried that some of the the ideas or innovations that they would have used for other areas would not be viable. And so for me, I think as we move forward in this transformation, I really urge us to be vulnerable in saying I don't know but being accountable in how I can and we need the leadership to do that. Accountability, collaboration and that vulnerability piece are essential for all of us and in community. And I believe as we move forward to do that together we will innovate, learn from our mistakes but do not cancel each other out because innovation will lead to failure. And if we handle failure well, we can learn and move on but do not annihilate people, be allies for each other. Absolutely. So one thing we haven't talked much about is technology. And so I'd like to turn to Anne Brigitte with a question about that. So as we introduce new technologies into education which is happening in my apartment and in many other places and into the workplace how can we ensure that the technology increases equality and inclusion rather than reinforcing existing inequities which it's doing a lot of right now? Yeah, thanks for that question. I mean, there is no doubt, of course, that technology and particularly access to the internet is absolutely crucial in this particular moment but also in the future and for the future of work. But let me just give a few pieces of data in terms of the digital gender gap. So globally, only about half of the world's population are actually on the internet. Coupled with that globally the internet's gender gap is 11, almost 12%. And in least developed countries it's 31%. So you've got a whopping big part of the global population that don't even have access to the internet still and we talk about it as such a reality for all of us. And on top of that, if you then look at figures like girls are five times less likely to consider a career in tech than boys, then we're seeing that a technology sector largely male dominated driving solutions that are male dominated and may have imbued unconscious biases in them. And we know for a fact that that is the case. And you've got young women who are then relegated to low growth sectors in agriculture and garment industry, other places that are likely to be a seed job replacement by automation. So there's a huge gender gap all across the work environment. Why is that? Just briefly, I talked a little bit about it before. I mean, our societies have inbaked structural injustice baked into it. You have all talked about it. Gender norms, harmful practices, et cetera make girls incredibly vulnerable in so many parts of the world. Leadership is depicted as male, science is depicted as male, technology is depicted as something that only men should be interested in. We have to rid the world of that kind of imagery to make sure that we move forward. And then just finally, I wanted to just say that we have seen here in this COVID-19 era a lot more girls and young women get onto the internet, which is phenomenal. But what we've also seen and my organization, Plan International has just done the first global study of this 14,000 young girls were asked across 31 countries. We've also asked them about online harassment. And it turns out that over 60% of girls and young women that are online, 60% have experienced online sexual harassment and harassment, cyber stalking, pornographic photos being put to them, but also very distressing forms of abuse, of threats, of violence and rape and other things. We have to make the space where girls and young women will have their first interaction with technology. We have to make that safe as a first port of call for technology, even to reach the technology to be an attractive space for girls to be in. Thanks. That is truly horrifying. So speaking of different communities, we've had some different specific communities brought up in this call so far. And they have very different experiences of inequality and justice in the workplace and different needs. But the scale of change that's necessary requires many of the organizations working with those communities to work together in all different kinds of coalitions. So Maya, I'd like to ask what you've learned through your work at YWCA in Canada about the role that community networks can play in enabling that collaboration. Thank you, Catherine. That's a really good question. When it comes to community networks, it's a very interesting way to prototype innovative solutions. YWCA Canada, we have 34 shelters for women across Canada, leaving abusive relationships and 2,000 units of affordable housing. And during when lockdown first started, at a time when cash flow was very tight for businesses when charities were laying workers off, we were able to partner with companies like Uber. And Uber, for example, donated free in-kind rides and meals so that women could leave their homes and escape an abusive relationship. So there's some interesting ways to partner. I think it's also very important as leaders to acknowledge what we don't know. For example, we're a charity, we're not a supply chain company. So we actually partnered with a humanitarian organization, Federal Express, and a local craft brewery, a beer brewery who had actually switched production to hospital grade hand sanitizer. And with Federal Express and Global Medic actually shipped in-kind hundreds of gallons of hand sanitizer to the Arctic in Canada and right to every shelter across Canada. So this was during PPE shortages across Canada before we started domestic production. So it's really interesting when NGOs, companies, and vulnerable community members who with that lived experience identify solutions, we can actually put our heads together and come up with some really interesting change. So I would certainly invite everybody on this call to get in touch with myself or Narissa and I do. There's a number of young global leaders who are actually prototyping and field testing these solutions. So absolutely, it's very challenging. Sometimes we don't know what to do. It can feel very overwhelming, especially in a global crisis, but there are opportunities out there to actually build back better. And especially in the case when the United Nations is actually referring to the shadow pandemic right now. So in lockdown, being in lockdown with your abuser can be a death sentence for a woman and global rates of gender violence and domestic violence have actually increased anywhere between 20 to 40% across the world. Also horrifying. So I wanna take a big step back in just the last few minutes we have and talk to you, Edward, about the sustainable development goals. So all of the goals that we're talking about in individual organizations and for very specific communities all add up to those huge goals that we have as a world community. So how can everybody on this call, everybody listening in take part in ensuring that the current crisis we're in or set of crises accelerates progress towards those goals instead of slowing it down? Sure, thanks, Catherine. I hope my internet survives because I've had it before. But what I really wanna say is I think we need to start with the recognition that crisis after crisis, the same communities bear the worst manifestations. So when we speak about the climate crisis, when we speak about this global health crisis, when we speak about racial inequality, we're speaking about black and brown people in both the global north and the global south. We're speaking about indigenous people. We're speaking about disabled people. We're speaking about women. And of course, all of these communities embody a multiplicity of experiences simultaneously. So we need to be able to start operating in a decompartmentalized fashion. How do we think about public policy as something that actually is able to respond to intersectionality? We cannot separate gender from climate. We cannot separate climate from poverty. All of these global goals are interconnected. And of course, what sits above the SDGs is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It's a comprehensive vision for people and for planet. So I think a profound recognition of the intersectionality, not just of people, but of issues will go a long way in helping us meet the SDGs. And I think a big point as well, I think is we need to start measuring differently. Just before COVID, people that converge from $1 a day to $3 a day, we counted that as progress. We said the world has made a dent on poverty. And now we see that these people are unable to withstand the shocks of global crises, both the economic fallout of COVID, but also of COVID itself. How can we be more ambitious in what we measure? And how can we count what is often... Oh, Edward, I think... Oh, we lost you for a second, but you're back. Okay, I think we've lost you again, but I think we got the main point that we have to be truly ambitious. And I think we've seen that throughout this conversation. We need to be ambitious in the goals that we're reaching and the ways that we're trying to reach them and aiming for something higher for everybody in the world, including Joy. I'm just checking. I think we have one minute. If somebody can answer, we have a question from a listener and I'm gonna squeeze it in if somebody can answer this really fast. So the question is, how do you prepare leaders to value the lived experiences and perspectives of those furthest from opportunity and work to shift power and decision-making? Anyone wanna take that in the last minute we have? I think quite basically that's a very good question. I think really it's about empathy. Being empathetic and the Harvard Business Review has published some very good research talking about when women and people of color and people with disabilities name inequities in their workplace, there's actually a career penalty. So I think empathy is key and clear policies and procedures. We know unfortunately anti-racism training doesn't work without very clear systems within your organization and clear measurable KPIs or key performance indicators for equity. That's a good answer, thank you. So we are out of time and I'd like to thank all of our panelists. That was a great discussion and a frustrating one in that I would like to have another hour right now. But there are many other great conversations to come in the day of the summit, a final day. So I urge everyone on this call to get ready for the next one and thank you for your time.