 Do we have our eyes on Ellen? Here I come. There you are. How are you? I am feeling safe and welcome here today. And I needed that, so thank you all. Absolutely. So I'm going to introduce my colleague. I think Carrie Hansen is going to join us and then you're going to take it away. Is that all right? I think that's okay. All right. Make sure your folks show up. Maybe it's just me for a minute. Hello. My conversation partners are joining. I'm going to just set the stage here a little bit and begin by thanking the virtual village that got us all here today. The entire SOCAP spectrum team. This is extraordinary. And I've already felt enlightened and engaged and refreshed. Each and every one of you. We're meeting, of course, after nearly two weeks of global protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd while in police custody, but of course what we're talking about is so much more. And in this particular instance and this global pandemic, the people who are most affected by the pandemic, black, brown, indigenous, under employed, under banked, under educated, under invested in, denied access to the elements of the dignified life and living in the community. And the people who are most affected by the pandemic are already targeted. Now may never economically recover. And who is most likely to have their lives further derailed by participating in public events. Put in the heart in the way of the police are taking the streets for justice. Not alone. There's been some tremendous ally work, but still the core of what we want to talk to today, but what we want to talk about already is about the racial wealth gap. How it came to be, how it's being widened and the roles we can all play in addressing it now. Now, just before we begin, I'll just let you know that I write about race for corporate audience. And I've been having a series of very intense conversations with for profit executives who are thinking more deeply about who their stakeholders actually are, what equity would look like and where it has so clearly fallen down specifically on the realm of racial and other inequities. So into that intensity, I plan to bring all the good work that happens here today, and particularly in this conversation right back home. So let's get to what shall we, we've got two extraordinary guests. Oops, I just lost my. Lata, I'm going to start with you since you're here with me. Sure. You, you sit at an extraordinarily interesting place in the Prudential Foundation. Your work seems to operate on the intersection of so many things, actual financial expertise, diversity and inclusion expertise, and community need expertise. I thought we could just throw the mic to you and give you a few minutes to talk a little bit about not just what you do, but how you got there and what you're, and why. Sure. Good afternoon, everybody. It's great to be here. My connection to the work is personal as it is, I'm sure for so many of us. And, you know, I'm the 12th Indian immigrants, both of my parents were born and raised in India, and they grew up in a rural part of the country and pretty poor. And my father was the youngest of seven, and none of his siblings made it past the fourth grade. My father somehow knew there was a big wide world out there. And knew that education was the ticket out. And so he went beyond the village school, which only went to the fourth grade, and then went on to the next town, the next city, and eventually came to the United States to pursue his higher education. I brought my mother eventually as well. And they made a decision to stay in the country because they knew there would be more choices for myself and my sister. And I knew that because of their hard work and their sacrifice, right, I was going to have a much easier life. But I also knew it was because of opportunity, right, that was given to them and their people who showed up in their life at key moments, who opened doors, and that made all the difference. And so for me, it was always a thin blue line between me and so many others, including members of my own family. And so being very conscious of that, right, I wanted to make sure that I made a difference because I saw in my own family what within one, how we could break the cycle of generational poverty, right, in one generation. So I went on to law school, pursue a career in social justice, had the great fortune of working with the gentleman by the name of Brian Stevenson. We all know Brian now is the first social justice advocate that he is. And I learned in an ordinate amount from Brian and from the individuals that we represented who were incarcerated in people on death row. And so the stories I heard, right, were those reflecting the fact that systemic racism was alive and well, built into our criminal justice system, our legal system. And so I took those lessons, right, with me and they influence everything I've done since and brought them to Prudential where I'm very fortunate to carry out the work that I do. I think it says something very special about Prudential that they recognized your work as an actual credential moving forward. Can you tell us a little bit about what the foundation does and how you cross-pollinate good ideas and best practices? Sure. And just on the Prudential piece, I would say Prudential was actually founded on the principle of equity. And, you know, we're a legacy company 145 years ago founded to provide insurance to working families with the time we're shut out of the insurance market and financial services more broadly. So it's an interesting origin story rooted in purpose. And so in some ways it made perfect sense that the lens that I was bringing was something the company was interested in. But so the group that I lead within Prudential is actually called Inclusive Solutions. And it speaks to what we try to do within the firm and externally in the world as well. So it's our philanthropy, but it's also our impact investing group, our employee engagement, inclusion and diversity. And we do work on culture within the firm as well. So all of that ladders up to Prudential's approach to leverage all of the resources it has at its disposal to create inclusive solutions for broader group of stakeholders. And so we partner across our businesses to do that. So not to... I don't want to gloss over the impact fund because that's a billion dollars under management, right? Do I have that right? That's a lot of money and that's a lot of potential. Can you walk us through the origins of that? And what I'm particularly curious about is how your investment strategies have changed. Is this something that is now a more welcome idea in the marketplace? Or did you really have to push through some resistance to get this started? You know, it's interesting. It's almost back to the future in some ways. Prudential's been doing this work for a long time, right? We were doing impact investing in philanthropy for over four decades. We formalized our programs right after the civil unrest in Newark in 67. And so... I did not know that. Yeah. The company was founded in Newark and remains proudly headquartered in Newark. And we are fiercely committed to our headquarters city. And we had been making investments, but that was a wake-up call for everybody just as this moment is now that, right, what was happening could not hold. And that we as a company had to make a decision as to whether to stay in the city or leave. And we chose to stay. And we've chose to be an affirmative part of the solution, right, of the rebuilding, literally and figuratively of that city. And so that's what we've been doing, right, ever since. And that's when we created our foundation and also our impact investing group. What are some of the investments in your portfolio and how do you measure success? I think that's one of the more intriguing parts of impact investing. Yeah. So we have, in our portfolio, we've got real assets and we've got operating assets. So on the real asset side, I can give you an example of transformative development in Newark. About the last time, maybe five years ago, we led the redevelopment of an asset that lay dormant in the city, right in the heart of town. And it was an iconic building. It was a former department store, the Haynes department store, which was a regional draw, sort of a white glove shopping experience. And it was summered for over 25, 30 years. And it's a very large building. So it took up psychic space as well as physical space. But we led a development team and others to come into the capital stack to redevelop that building in a mixed-use facility. And we insisted that it be 40% affordable housing. And so that was just, right, that's one way in which we use our capital to promote inclusion and inclusive growth. So we have a lot of other assets like affordable housing, charter school, facilities financing, you know, other working capital types of things. And then we invest in funds that are investing in things such as fintech in emerging markets. And we also do a lot of financial inclusion work, a lot of education reform work. And so coming up, we're investing in innovative models that can address these systemic issues. Before we get into the origins of the racial wealth gap, I'm now super interested in what's happening in Newark because I feel like from a public point of view that we don't get these kinds of nuts and bolts reports of the work that's being done there. And the last time we really, as a nation, focused our attention on it was when the Chan Zuckerberg infusion of cash into the school system there, which seemed to go sideways early and often. Yet it had such promise in the very beginning. If you don't have any direct insight into that, that's fine. But what should we be drawing our attention to in Newark? That is a success story. So I think, well, and I think in that regard, right, there were some successes that came out of that. There were some literal things that were done and transformation that was had. But I think the attention that they brought to write the issue and to parental engagement and civic engagement and education overall into the need for all the different sectors of education to come together and to work on that were some successes that came out of that. But I think the work that we're doing is an anchor institution in the city is one example. The level of collaboration and public-private partnership that exists now at a high level is a real success, I think. And there are a group of anchor institutions that came together a few years ago to work with the mayor of Newark, across Baraka, on a by-live, higher local strategy. And so, you know, we're all thinking about how we can go within our own institutions and, again, leverage all the capabilities we have to address those issues. And Timor, about public-private partnerships later, I do want to acknowledge your superstar firefighting senator because Senator Booker has really raised all these issues, too. I wanted to ask now the regional wealth gap and to dig in there and to find out a little bit about what you have learned, what you've institutionalized, and what you've been able to share about its origins. And then we can look at what's happening now and in the future. Because I think I know it. I know lots of people on this call know that, but for some reason, it doesn't, as a narrative, as an explanation, access to credit markets, access to all of the financial levers that give people access to a dignified life. Being systemically denied to people of color seems to be a particularly difficult point for majority culture to understand. It's something we're thinking a lot about with the current context we're in. You know, I think there are a lot of people in financial institutions, right, including credentials who don't, to your point, they don't have that history and don't understand how recent that history is. And also, I think, have a true appreciation for the systemic nature of it, right, how it got built into our laws and our policies, and that's why it persists. And so, you know, obviously it's roots in slavery, and then through sharecropping and Jim Crow, and things like redlining and restrictor covenants and all the different things we know that prevented black people in particular from accumulating wealth. And so that gap persists because of that right history and the challenges that that brings forward and the compounding nature of that, right, when you don't have wealth to begin and others have wealth and they'll continue to accumulate and that grows, that gap widens. And so that's what we're seeing now. And I think, you know, a big part of what we do need to do is educate people, right, people who are working in this space because they have to have a true appreciation for why this occurred, why it's still occurring, and then only then can we get to the solutions to mitigate that and to really get to the underlying issues. And so that is work that we're trying to do internally right now. About that. I do want to just let everyone know that we are holding space for your beloved colleague, Celine Hitchcock here, who's had a hard time logging in and you are just saying, that's a good fort. I'm so curious about absolutely everything that you're saying, and I would keep you here for two hours just to take your brain. So thank you so much, Letha. So one of the things that I've observed in my work when I talk about things like the origins of the wealth gap and redlining is that it requires people who believe that they understand something about history to give up some sacred ideas about people like FDR, right? Who literally built in restrictive covenants for veterans coming back from World War II, which included my father, who served in the World War II in the segregated army, came back to the South, not only couldn't vote, couldn't buy a home. And so I grew up in an apartment in Harlem in New York City and do not have the generational wealth that my wife husband does, whose father was able to take advantage of a wide array of credit products that gave them tremendous stability and growth and to have a bigger family and educate all of them. So how do you tackle the emotional part of having these kinds of conversations? Because I bet you're really good at it. Well, thank you. We'll see. And that is exactly what I try to do, right, is tap into the emotional piece. So I remember a colleague making opening remarks at an event. And the remarks were incredibly moving. And he ended it, and he happened to be a white male, a white man. He ended it by talking about how the GI Bill gave his father the chance to get an education and then educate his family of six. My colleague mean one of them. So afterwards, I said, that was great. The room was on their feet. It was a terrific announcement. And I said, as you think about doing that same thing for our colleagues internally, I said, if you could just extend that and say, but I recognize that not everybody had that opportunity. Right. And so you take those moments connected to something that resonates personally with somebody and make it both a history lesson, but also, right, give them a literal path forward in terms of how they can bridge that gap and at least begin to think about it and hopefully do it. And even if they go through the motions, eventually hopefully they'll they'll get a greater understanding of what it means. Please us to the next and bolt. So how, how, how, well, before we get to the nuts and bolts of what to do, I think we need to acknowledge this terrible moment in time. I, all the research I've been looking at from a wide variety of sources indicates that not only is the gap paused to widen to a dramatic degree that we are creating literally through just the layoffs and the non furloughs and the failure to support working people through reasonable unemployment products at this time or schemes at this time, a permanent group of workers who are not going to be able to get back into the economy. Does that, do you track these kinds of things and how should we address that in policy going forward? We do track it and we are, you know, just as we're thinking about how we reskill and upscale our own employees, we are thinking about what are the mechanisms to reskill and upscale individuals even pre COVID and the more recent events, but certainly now, right, what does it mean when dramatic numbers of people, people of color, right, black and brown people are losing their jobs and the likelihood that those jobs, right, won't come back online. So, you know, we have a cadre of partners that we work with who do this work anyway. And so I think there's an opportunity, right, to think about philanthropy now as a scaling mechanism. So if you think about a program, right, like a year up, which takes young adults and puts them through a year long program, you're probably familiar with it, right, six months of training and then in a classroom and six months on site in a corporation where they do an internship. And with the hope that they'll get hired at the back end, but if not, they have this great credential of having interned in a Fortune 100 company or what have you and hopefully can be more successful because of that. So problems like that that are proven where, right, we've got Europe interns that's credential right now and some full-time buyers, many that we've made are the kinds of things we need to be looking at where there's proven leaders or proven models that are scalable, right, and giving them growth capital that's unrestricted and letting them go. So do you think that's going to be enough? And I felt, I just want to acknowledge last time that I am always, because I've been on the racebeat for so long, I used to write a daily column on race until the pandemic made me a bi-weekly that I'm keenly aware that I'm often asking questions like, I don't think we're going to make it. Like this is all falling apart. And you're right, it's not enough. Sorry, so I've got a second part of your question which was around policy. No, it's not enough. philanthropy will never be right at the end of the day. It's never going to even impact investing and as much capital as that can move, right? It's absolutely going to be about public-private partnerships and how the government steps up and ultimately how we think about benefits, portable benefits or emergency savings plans or any number of social safety net things that need to be in place. And so that's what needs to happen. Incorporations need to do their part, the private sector as well and philanthropies, but it's going to take everybody. It is. And speaking of everybody, it sounds like Celine is able to join by audio. Excellent. That is so fun. You have been such a good sport, Martha. Thank you. Celine Hitchcock Gear, are you able to join? Yep. Okay, try again. Celine, welcome. How are you? Well, I love it. I love it. That was a very dramatic entrance in just in time. We've been having a wonderful conversation. Martha has just been taking us to philanthropic public-private partnership universities. So we're all smarter and better for it. But I'd love to bring you in now if you are able to talk about where all of this fits from your point of view from the pure business side. Yes, you know, your conversation has been very good. Despite my challenges, I have tried to keep one ear of what you all have been saying. And, you know, I think it's just a critical time for us to have a multifaceted approach to solutions. So, you know, this is one of those environments where there's no silver bullet, right? There's not just one thing that we're going to need to do. We have to really work from multiple levels. So from the business standpoint, one of the things that we are keenly focused on is how to help people right now with kind of current financial needs. There are just numerous policy-level things we need to talk about. So much work that needs to get done from a systemic standpoint. But in the here and now, people do need help trying to understand ways that can navigate with their financial lives. And it is critically important that we provide those resources and outlets. So I think the first thing is for all of our businesses that we critically engage communities, right? This is not a time when one side dissolves. So do these three things and you're going to be fine. This is really a time for us to engage with people and make sure that individual circumstances are taken into account. And so, you know, at all levels, there are many places people can go for resources and information. But the knowledge point about what to do and when to do it is really where advice gets to be critical. So whether you have somebody you can speak to as a financial advisor or you get in blogs and chat rooms, there are plenty of places to go. I think all of us in the business community have to find ways to extend those voices so that people know right now today what they can do. So for example, an appointment is going to put government and state-level support services that are available, whether it's, you know, for small businesses or unemployment, whatever it is, so that you can stretch and extend your resources. It's critically important. So again, from a business standpoint, I think we have to make sure we are in our communities locally, working with people and helping to make sure that folks know where the actual and particular domain, extending that reach and make sure people know how to get the services that's needed today. That is fascinating. And it's good to know that you're thinking this way. The question is the historic lack of trust that black and brown communities, I'm going to speak for the black community in this particular instance, have for all institutions, but particularly financial ones. And there's a variety of reasons for that. We touched on it when we had our history lesson earlier. How do you think about that as an organization? And how do you train your advisors? You've got a big, big herd of advisors to understand the unique sensibilities and the unique barriers that black families have experienced in the past, because I think that's a big challenge that anybody who works for a big organization has, is making sure that you can build in that knowledge and empathy before you begin these really tender conversations. You know, that is the thing these days. I actually work in my home library. I have so many books around me. What I think about lately is it's taken me years to come to understanding on some of these things. And I think the hard work that has to get done is people have to really step up their education, right? There are real issues that have occurred from our financial services institutions. Banks, you talked about redlining. Within the insurance community, there was a movement around race-based underwriting for many, many years. There are so many issues in our federal government around lending practices, and you can go on and on and on. And then we had some bright spots where some banks did emerge. I worked, for example, in New York at a time when Carver Federal Savings Bank was there. So we've had some bright spots and some green shoots, but the experience overall is not good. And there is real reason that in our communities we put money in our mattresses, right, instead of walking them down to the local bank. The level of information that we need to provide to our advisors around that sensitivity, I think, goes back to who are you working with and where are the institutions today that provide the right kind of access and credibility to have those conversations. So, you know, whether it's in local churches, whether it's in schools, we've got to go to the places where that credibility and trust footprint exists because there are very deep-seated and real reasons why people don't trust these institutions. So for all of us in the business community, again, it really goes back to what level of credibility are you building from? Are you in the communities? Do you have advisors who look like those people that you're serving? If you're in banks and other services, do you have branches and locations in those communities where, you know, you seek to serve, et cetera? And I think it's a really important time to reassess that and then get to the issue that you're raising, which is, what is it that you really need to know to understand how people will actually engage with you and what are some of those practices? And again, for Prudential, we lend ourselves to some relationships where we can learn, right? And we can really understand how to do that well. The next phase of what we're doing is to go into some key cities and locations that Les and I are working through some strategic alignment around Detroit, Atlanta, and Newark as a start to really do that, right? Start that continuum of the community footprint that you have to be there and be real about it all the way through to the end where we can, you know, earn the right to provide some products and solutions and help people today. So, you know, I think it is fundamentally critical that advisors are trained around the important issues that what we're talking about, effort that is sustained and not in and out, right? A lot of times in financial services there are quote-unquote programs. We don't want to be part of a program. We want to be part of the solution. And that takes time and energy and effort. So, completely appreciate your comments. There is a real history here. People need to get educated around that history. Some very dramatic history, in fact. If you think about what happened in Palsa and Black Wall Street, so many stories that get told around from where we come with money. But critically important to build from that and not neglect while we're doing all of this other work, not neglect the real things that we can help people do and achieve today. When you think about this pandemic and COVID-19, if we aren't all thinking about legacy and how to make sure that no matter what happens, our families and our communities around us are in a better place, then we've missed the message, right? We know COVID-19 is really hitting our Black community so hard. You know, we have to grieve. We have to mourn. We have to address all these health issues. And then the next thing we have to do is make sure people have the energy and the information to actually care for those gaps. Have some programs coming up where we're even going to remind people, you may think you know where everything is, but maybe your family doesn't, that we're going to get to be able to do in this time of more consciousness. And then, you know, I believe very strongly that, you know, Prudential is on that right path to help provide some of those services and solutions for people just from the basics, you know, all the way to some higher level of planning and ability. We've gotten a little extra time added to our clock today to make sure we all get a chance to say what we want to say. But before I throw to you both for some final words of advice, I was wondering if I could ask you both to put your philosopher queen hat on. Because everybody knows that everybody has more work to do. We feel this so keenly. And I'm also feeling so keenly a sense of urgency, which is mixed with fear and anxiety and all of those things from majority culture executives who want to do better and who want to quickly move to solutions to just not just take the heat off them, but I feel like legitimately at least make things less worse until things start to get better. So I was wondering if from your perspective and from your journey you could talk a little bit about the kinds of emotional characteristics that it's going to take for a majority culture person to face some of the facts around systemic racism that people of color have been living with for their entire lives. What is it going to take to drive courageous conversations and courageous change? Latha, can I throw it to you because I feel like you may have some interesting ideas from your history on that. Yeah, and we're in the middle of this right now. I think it's going to take vulnerability. It's going to take resilience. It's going to take people putting themselves out there in a way that they're not used to, especially people who think they have all the answers and have been quite successful in life, believing what they believe, setting aside their mental models if you alluded to this earlier that the information gap, the knowledge gaps that people have and recognizing that they exist. People can have to dig deep to come out this in a way that starts with their shared humanity first. And that is not something that people think about in a place of work, or at least in a corporate environment, a traditional kind of buttoned up corporate environment. And for leaders, again, to make themselves vulnerable in that way as they approach these conversations is very comfortable for people. And so I guess I'll put that, obviously, I mentioned several times top of the list in terms of how people are going to have to approach this. And they're going to have to do the work. I'll just add that. I mean, that's not obvious to me, but to stop relying on others, particularly in this case, black people, to tell them what the reality is and for them to go and to actually understand. As you were talking, the word or the phrase that came to my mind was moral imagination. What I was hearing you say is you were effortlessly talking about Black Wall Street, you were effortlessly talking about the history and how you were able to strategize addressing that history emotionally by showing up in communities and building trust and training advisors. It must have taken quite a while to get to where you are. And I appreciate that will all take time. But the idea of moral imagination, understanding and seeing other people who are different from you with full agency, fully human, not just asset to be utilized and assessing your own actions in the world to see if you will do more harm than good. Which is sort of what the savior orientation has always done more harm than good. But how do you think about making sure that majority culture executives or anybody who's in the position of power can begin to understand what you seem to understand? What you both seem to understand is the very nature of imagining other people as people. Please. Yeah, go ahead. Great question. And I think one of the things that struck me the last couple of weeks in particular with all that's been going on is how quickly our country has wanted to move away from racial issues. And you think about, you know, especially in the 90s and the 2000s, you know, the quote-unquote were past it, right? That racial issues were kind of in the past. And I think the first thing that business executives have to do is actually believe their Black associates when they tell their stories and talk about the experiences that they're having that people are not being quote-unquote sensitive. People are not quote-unquote overreacting, but the reality around which we live every day is real. It is not in our minds. It is not some place that is foreign. It is not because we think everything that happens to us happens because we're Black. It actually is that things happen to us because we're Black. That, you know, there are outcomes to achieve. There are business projects you have to get to. There are so many things that take up your day, this idea that we still have very ingrained people issues in our environment. You believe the people in your environment when they're telling you what is exactly going on that you have, you know, I think it always starts at home. You have got to take care of your employees and your associates and people in your direct surrounding, or the things that you're trying to achieve will actually not happen. And we've talked for many, many years now about the change in American demographics to a majority-white culture if all of the information that we have is accurate about the trends in our country. So if you're going to... what we look like 5, 10, 15 years is continuing to change. So you've got to address the very first thing to start with your employees. I think in my 50s, though, when I was in school, and you'd have some conversation and people would inevitably say in every environment today, I love your phrase, they're real, and that the deep-seatedness of today is really rooted and how those two things need to come together so that as Lester was talking about humanity, you can actually make that bridge. And maybe just be there with those two truths and understand then that the people that you are dealing with have actually come from a place, people directly around you first, that that is a great first step. That is such a wonderful, wonderful comment. Before I check in with both of you for any call to action that you have for your peers, Selina, I just wanted to double-check with you that you got a chance to say everything you wanted to say. Since you had trouble logging in, I wouldn't want to cut you off before you were ready. Okay. What is your best advice for your peers? What's your call to action for them? What they have to lead. Your question earlier about is, you know, what's going to be enough? The private sector has to mobilize in a way it hasn't before. And it's got to engage with government in a way it hasn't before, not just on its own issues, but on societal issues. This is an age of courage, new courage. And when I speak to both of you and I listen to everyone who has spoken here today, I feel hopeful that we're all up to it. I want to thank you all for this wonderful conversation. I want to thank Spectrum for creating a platform for it and for inviting me and for doing such great work in the world. And with that, I'm going to say goodbye and ask someone to come on and tell us what's coming next.