 It is my distinct pleasure to introduce two gentlemen who need no introduction. Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, and Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the Global Stand Group and author of the recently published book, Impact. These two old friends are joining us for what I'm sure will be a fascinating conversation, and I'll be back at the end to help facilitate the final moments. But now to kick them off, I think we'd all be interested to know from your point of view, what is the priority challenge the world is facing and how do we meet that challenge, and what is the path to meeting that challenge. So thanks, gentlemen, for joining us, and I'll see you in a few moments. Great. Darren, why don't you go first, if you like. Ronnie, I think you're the most more distinguished one. I'm eager to hear from you first. What are the world's challenges that concern you, Ronnie? OK, well, Darren, I'm very concerned by social inequality, social and economic inequality, and I am equally concerned by the environmental threat our world faces. And it seems to me that we are trying to deal with these issues by throwing money at old ways of doing things that just don't work. We have a system, Darren, as you and I have discussed many times before, that actually exacerbates the inequality and the environmental damage. Why? Because our economic system, which is based on the pursuit of profit alone, leads to environmental and social damage in achieving profit, which isn't taken into account because it's invisible. And then governments try to tax us all in order to remedy the damage caused by some. It's self-defeating, and it's proving to be self-defeating, because we've been talking about environmental damage and social inequality for decades, and we see little or no improvement country by country. And so the path to achieving better, fairer distribution of outcomes through our system, socially and environmentally, is to change our system. And as you well know, I advocate in my book, Impact Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change, that it is a reshaping of capitalism that can come from bringing measurable impact to the center of our economies to keep profit in check. And the implications today of technology enabling us to have full transparency on the impacts that companies create through their employment, through their operations and through their products on both people and planets. Those implications are massive. The Harvard Business School effort I've been involved with, the Impact Weighted Accounts Initiative, brings us to doing that by taking the metrics which have been assembled on these social and environmental issues for decades now and actually monetizing them so that we can express them through the financial accounts of companies, because we already have 30 trillion dollars going to achieve impact, Darren. Again, as you well know, and you've led in taking your foundation, part of its endowment, a billion dollars to achieve impact as well as financial returns. Where we have 30 trillion dollars in the world going to achieve impact as well as financial returns. And the only transparency we have are marketing statements by companies about all the great things they're doing for the environment and society with no measurement of anything, basically. And so I actually think we're on the threshold now of a new frontier for society and capitalism, which will come from this new impact transparency. Well, I think you are right that we have a crisis, capitalism, an economic model for global capitalism that does not work. And I think the corollary, lying challenge is the crisis of leadership that we have. We have a crisis of leadership and quite frankly, a lack of moral leadership. I don't mean moralizing leaders. I mean, leaders who are principled, who are consistent in their leadership, who operate on a principles basis, and who continue to inspire us and lift us up to make us better. And I think we do not have those kinds of leaders, as many of them as we need now. And I think this is contributing to the crisis of capitalism. And I think we have to be also very honest about the capitalism that you and I have participated in has many entrenched stakeholders who are not interested in the efforts that you are leading because they are simply interested in profit. And I think we have to think about what are the policies, the incentives that can actually change that reality. Well, I think the good news, Darren, since you and I last spoke, is that it's inevitable now that governments are going to have to bring this transparency. And the reason isn't an obvious one. But for me, the reason is that as this transparency on the impact of companies, as you look at the Harvard data set, and you see 1,800 companies and 250 of these, Darren, create more environmental damage in dollar terms than they make in profit in the year. A third of them create environmental damage equivalent to 25 percent of their profit, 600 companies do that. And so what's beginning to emerge in the Harvard data is this flow of 30 trillion dollars to achieve impact through ESG and impact investment itself, where you measure the impact as well as having the intention like ESG is already having an effect. You can already see companies that are creating more environmental damage within the sector being worthless in the stock market. Investors are shunning them, talent is shunning them and consumers are shunning them. So there's a reason why this ESG money is going to companies that are delivering improvement. Now, what has become obvious to me now is as big investment groups begin to use this Harvard data and the data would just keep expanding. We've just published a paper on employment impact, including the measurement of lack of diversity in a company, looking at the demographics around a company's facilities, comparing them with the demographics within the company at every echelon of the organization and putting their immigration levels against these numbers. And the numbers are mind boggling, the lack of diversity, lack of equality of benefits and so on, lack of advancement, equality of advancement, reduce the positive impact that Intel, which is a leader in pushing for the well-being of its workforce and pushing for diversity, reduces its employment impact from a seven billion dollar wage bill by half to three and a half billion. And when you begin to analyze it with other companies, you begin to realize the cost of this diversity and you see it clearly and you can make comparisons. And we're going to be adding to that the product impact that companies create on people and the environment. So we will have for the first time a complete picture of the impact performance of companies. And if, as I believe, values have changed and consumers, employees and investors want to invest in companies that optimize risk return impact better, and if I believe, as I believe as a seasoned investor, we discover that optimizing risk return and impact delivers better financial returns than just optimizing risk return, then we really are on the threshold of a new frontier, as I said. Well, we are potentially, but the challenge will be how to have companies and asset managers and owners adopt what needs to be a single analysis of the issue of impact, because the real worry I have is that there are literally now a dozen different. There is what you're talking about at Harvard. There are so many others, SASB, Just Capital. I mean, there are a number of other organizations doing measure measurement of impact. And I just think we're going to have to come together to build some consensus because otherwise, the companies will just forum shop to get the consultant or the framework that gives them the best grade. So I do think we really are at a point where we're going to have to talk about concretizing the kinds of data that you are working on at Harvard. I think, sorry, please proceed, Ronnie. I was going to say, I also believe that we have to talk about how we rid our system of the ideology of Milton Friedman, the ideology that the sole purpose of the firm, the corporation is profit. That is imbued in generations of CEOs because business schools taught this, including your esteemed Harvard Business School, I mean, the damage that was done by Friedman. And again, this isn't a personal assault on Friedman. He created the ideological framework, the architecture, the infrastructure that all sorts of bad ideas were hung on that have been harmful. Yeah, but he created it 50 years ago at the time when he could not have anticipated transparency on impact. I think when you see a company creating more environmental damage, and perhaps some more employment and environmental damage more negative impact on the net basis than it makes in profit. This, even if you believe that these things shouldn't be important, this is going to affect the behavior of talent working for these companies, consumers buying their products, and investors investing in them. So I think we are already seeing with more than a third of all managed assets in the world, 30 trillion going to achieve impact, with impact investment proper, which you've been so helpful in helping us to build the Darren hitting a trillion dollars today. When we wrote the G8 impact investment task force report six years ago, we had a chapter headed the first trillion, it would have been fanciful to think we'd achieve that in six years. And it's equal to the whole of the venture capital pool in the world. So these are real changes. And I agree with you, we have to displace the Milton Friedman thinking. But I think investors are helping us to do this. And so so Ronnie, when you when you look back on this, I mean, we're grateful to Mission Investors Exchange and SOCAP, because they have been front and center in leading this effort that we're all a part of around impact. What have we learned to inform the movement? I mean, you have been building a movement. What have we learned? What could we have done differently? And going forward, how will this inform your leadership, the leadership of the GSD, which is critical to this global movement? So one thing we've learned is as a younger generation represented wonderfully by SOCAP, which does not believe in just making money, which believes that it should purchase the products of companies that do good. And which wants to put its entrepreneurial energy into companies which achieve social environmental improvement as well as profit. The unicorns of the future aren't just going to be ventures that are worth a billion dollars, Darren. They're going to be ventures that also improve the lives of a billion people. So there's a major change in values. The second thing we've learned is it can actually be even more profitable than just looking at risk-free. Take Tesla for all its idiosyncrasies. Here is the company which went into the automobile industry, not because it thought that was a great industry to enter, but because it thought it could change it. It could actually wean it, disrupt it away from the combustion engine. And I think we've learned that risk return impact really is the formula of the profitable company of the future. And I'm not just the one saying this. I'm seeing it in presentations by very conservative investment groups like Bridgewater and BlackRock. So I think there is a major change. Your point about leadership is crucially important. If in 1933 the US led the world in bringing transparency on profit through gap accounting and auditors, who is going to do that today in the world? It depends on the result of the election in the United States. In Europe, Europe may do it. The EU may do it. Could be some individual governments will do it, like the Dutch government or the Danish or the British or New Zealand or Canada or France. We're going to have to get some leaders now to understand that they need this in order to emerge from this crisis. If they don't bring business and investors alongside them to bring improvement in society and the planet, at the time when they're going to have less money and they're going to have bigger social issues and environmental issues facing them, this is going to be a very protracted recovery. So I know there's an optimistic tone and I know that it's tough to see great leadership across the world today, but it seems to me there are enough places where there are great leaders that we can hope that they will take us in this direction and then the rest of the world will follow. Well, I think that you are right when you say the leadership may come from other parts of the world. I think we need to have leaders who we incent and we discourage from bad behavior, but it is hard for a lot of leaders to have courage when they are discouraged from courage. I think a lot of leaders of public companies who want to do the right thing, particularly of legacy companies, fear that some activist is going to come along and say, why are you focused on these social objectives? You are letting the valuation of your company drift and I've got a better idea to break it up and sell off its parts and return a much higher payout to shareholders. There are a lot of leaders who want to do the right thing, but who worry that quarterly earnings are going to throw them off of their strategy or at least in the eyes of the analysts throw them off their strategy and so they're not looking long-term. We as the public, as shareholders, as citizens have to incent long-term behavior and long-term objectives. Now, interestingly, at the Procter and Gamble shareholder meeting just a few days ago, two-thirds of shareholders voted against management's decisions with regard to the company's deforestation consequences. Two-thirds of shareholders that would have been unbelievable previously. So I hope this is an example of rebellion coming from shareholder ranks because these asset management companies understand that it's what their clients want. I am putting all my faith in a change in values driven initially by young people, again like those in this webinar, who believe that our duty is to make money while improving the world and our planet. That is the change from Milton Friedman. We don't believe we shouldn't make money but we should be doing good and doing well at the same time. And so I don't think this change in values is a flash in the pan because there's no other way I can think of of being able to deal with the challenges we face. Thank you so much both of you for joining us today, Darren and Ronnie. It's been a fascinating conversation and we're truly grateful to have your wisdom and your leadership in this movement and at this moment in time. Do either of you have a call to action for the folks tuning in today that you'd like to share in these final moments? My call to action is that you be relentless in your advocacy for the idea of impact and impact investing and that you use your own resources, your own power and influence to advance this movement. It's a movement that actually will make the markets work for justice. It is possible to have ethical enterprises that are also profitable and prosperous. Wonderful, Darren. I would add to that each of you buys products every day. You're going to have an increasing amount of information soon. You'll have apps that enable you to point to the good on the supermarket shelf that you want to buy and see what the environmental and human damage that it causes is or that its manufacturer causes. Buy only the products of companies that you respect. Work only for companies that you respect. If you're within a company, as Darren was saying, spread the impact of thinking that we've been talking about. And if you don't invest yourself and your parents have a retirement plan of some kind, get them to write to their manager and ask what is being invested? What's a retirement plan being invested in? How much of it is environmentally, socially and governance wise going to improve the world or minimize harm to it? And how much is going to impact investment where that impact is measured? This is a revolution like the tech revolution. The tech revolution was brought by you guys. Guys not being a gender definitive. You have the opportunity now to bring the impact revolution. Thank you both once again. These are wise words and we'll take them with us. And many thanks to you all for tuning in today and enjoy the rest of your SoCAP.