 At this point, we are focused on innovation, and in order to be innovative, you've got to have diverse thinkers all around you all the time. Hi, I'm Stephanie Paderec, executive editor of Ad Week, and I'm here at the Google headquarters in New York for our CMO Move Summit. I'm being joined by Singleton Biato. She is the Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer for McCann World Group, also based in New York. So Singleton, thank you so much for being with us today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So what is the thing in your role that you're most excited about these days? Well, I am totally excited about the conversations that are happening around diversity and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion is top of mind for CEOs, for CMOs. It's just because at this point we are focused on innovation, and in order to be innovative, you've got to have diverse thinkers all around you all the time. My next question for you is what is the thing that keeps you up at night, and what's that problem that the industry still needs to solve? So, you know, it just keeps me up at night that there is this thought process that we should be seeing change at a more rapid pace, but really our perspective and the way that we think about and approach diversity and inclusion is just based on a legacy model of the way business works. And so until we are able to complete our evolution in the way that we think about diversity, there's going to be this constant tension of, well, let's just do something, anything in order to attack the challenge of diversity. So that's what keeps me up at night. We continue to have this conversation. Everybody wants to move very quickly to change something that took, you know, thousands of years to become a challenge for us as people in this world. So you mentioned, you know, that a lot of us are frustrated that diversity and inclusion is not moving forward at a pace that we want. For those watching who might have some influence in their companies, what's something that we can all do today in our organizations that can help push us forward? Every single day, take 15 minutes to go and speak to or meet someone who is different than you, people that you may not otherwise engage with. It helps those people to feel that they are valued because having a person of influence talking to you makes you feel like you're important and it will stretch the individual with influence so that they have now a more diverse perspective and they're familiar with someone who is diverse. And by doing something like that every single day and just kind of stepping out of our own comfort zone, we start to help other people feel that it is their individual responsibility to pay it forward if you will. And it starts to shift the culture because if you're an influential person, people are watching you, people want to emulate your behavior. If you are demonstrating inclusive behavior yourself, the change will happen. I want to know what innovation you see coming down the pike that you think could actually solve this problem. AI. Yeah, tell me more. Oh my goodness. When we begin to have to consider that higher level of intelligence, we ourselves are going to have to evolve in our own thinking, requiring us in every business to think about, okay, how would we use AI? How would we empower the AI to begin to expand its own thinking in order to reach different consumers, different populations? Because the world is not getting any less diverse. I think AI is going to do a lot for that space. What is a piece of advice that you have given or received that you think could really make the difference in someone's career? So the best piece of advice I ever received was from my mother. And I was actually up for my first C-suite job. And I said to her, I don't know if I can do this job. This is a big job. Like this is a big job. She goes, are you afraid? I said yes. She's like really terrified. I said yes. She said what? I said that I could fail. She said then guess what? Feel that way? You have to do it. And I thought that was crazy. But then I said, you know, I said well why? She said because number one, you will challenge yourself in a way that you would not otherwise, which means you will grow. But also when not if you come out the other side successful, having learned all these new skills and conquering this fear, you as an individual and as a person will have more value for yourself. Your self-esteem will expand that much more. Singleton Beato, thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely. Thank you for asking me. All right. And thank you all for joining us for Top of Mind.