Good morning, Broadsheet readers. Condoleezza Rice is apparently “unqualified” to be involved with college football, and DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman is thinking differently about innovation. Read on to learn how one Estee Lauder exec wants to revolutionize corporate giving programs. Oh, and if you’re dying to know why Kerry Washington is constantly drinking red wine on Scandal, we have the answer. Have a great Wednesday!
EVERYONE'S TALKING
• Condoleezza Rice, unqualified? Former Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden said the former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor doesn't have the right background to be one of 12 members of the College Football Playoff committee. Rice, the committee's only woman, recently told ESPN that she did not feel scrutinized on the panel because of her gender. “I didn’t play football because I’m a female, but there are some who just didn’t play football," she said. Rice has said that her "dream job" is to be NFL commissioner. ESPN
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
• Samantha Power 'blown away.' The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday that she was “blown away” by the new American-built clinic in Liberia for Ebola-infected healthcare workers. To demonstrate U.S. support for West Africa, Power is traveling across the Ebola-infected countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Time
• Rousseff's uphill battle. Brazil's recently-reelected President Dilma Rousseff faces a big challenge in trying to get the country's business-minded population back on her side. While the leader's party has pulled some 40 million Brazilians out of poverty over the last decade, the country's financial markets have suffered considerably. Fortune
• A venture capitalist... with values. Nancy Pfund, the founder of the venture capital firm DBL Investors, has made a name for herself in Silicon Valley by investing in startups with a strong social mission. “I liked her emphasis on the double bottom line, which is how I invest,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk. “Also, she wasn’t pushing for a quick return like some VC's.” NYTimes
• DuPont CEO talks innovation. “I truly believe that execution and innovation are not two separate levers – one affects the other," Ellen Kullman said on Tuesday night, after accepting the Deming Cup for operational excellence from Columbia Business School. "Innovation is how we use science to create change. Execution enables us to bring that innovation to the marketplace. We must be excellent at both.” Kullman spoke shortly after she defended her strategy to not break up DuPont amid pressure from activist investor Nelson Peltz.
• Rent The Runway's secret dry-cleaning empire. The company that rents designer dresses online has no problem recruiting qualified engineers or web designers. But it does struggle to find qualified "spotters," the industry term for a stain removal experts. The company soon will become the nation's single largest dry cleaner, as measured by pounds per hour. Fast Company
• From Martha to Sheryl. AOL's Makers last night premiered a film showcasing the great strides women business leaders have made. While the definition of success has changed for women over the years, "traditional business still doesn’t—and I think won’t ever—satisfy some of the smartest and most ambitious women," writes Fortune's Pattie Sellers. Fortune
• MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Tracy Britt Cool, financial assistant to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, is now CEO of Berkshire's wholly-owned Pampered Chef unit... Claire Hughes Johnson, former vice president of self-driving cars for Google [X], is now head of business operations for the online payments software startup Stripe... Caryl Stern, the president and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, is now a member of The Container Store's board of directors.
BROADVIEW
Estée Lauder exec wants to revolutionize corporate giving
Nancy Mahon is convinced that businesses perform better when they care about more than the bottom line. Now she wants to collect data to prove her thesis.
As the newly-appointed senior vice president of global philanthropy and corporate citizenship for The Estée Lauder Companies, Mahon is working to implement a global corporate citizenship strategy across all brands. By donating all proceeds from certain products to causes like AIDS research and breast cancer research, the company already has given away hundreds of millions of dollars. In the process, Mahon says Estée Lauder also has boosted its bottom line – but she can’t really say with certainty by how much.
“Corporate giving has been late to the game to be recognized as a business driver,” Mahon told me in an interview. “No matter which data set you look at, people care that companies care about the world. But across the industry we need to better develop data. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and I believe that data needs to be across industries.”
Countless studies show that customers feel better about what they buy when they know a company treats its employees well and is active in the community. As the income gap between the haves and the have-nots grows globally, Mahon says there is a need to share the wealth. Offering socially responsible shopping is one for businesses to do so. Yet beyond mostly ambiguous research, companies know very little about the most effective strategies to get shoppers to donate more to global causes.
Click over to Fortune.com to read my full story.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• Why do powerful women on TV drink red wine? Both Kerry Washington on Scandal and Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife self-medicate after a long day of work (or in the middle of it) with a big glass of red wine. Why? "Red wine is assertive and action-oriented compared with white wine, which offers a prissy, indecisive connotation," writes wine and food critic Eric Asimov. NYTimes
• Leaning In: The science chapter. If more women are going to break into the male-dominated field of science, they have to plunge head first into the field, says award-winning biochemical engineer Frances Arnold. No one likes a whiner, she added, and "bemoaning your fate is not going to solve the problem." NPR
• 'Til careers do us part. It's a familiar story: Men say they are attracted to career-focused women, but then complain about the burden that career inevitably has on their relationship. "We're in the middle of this sea change in terms of gender roles. It's messy and complicated, and it's going to take a long time to sort it all out," says Anne Weisberg, senior vice president for strategy at the Families and Work Institute. Marie Claire
ON MY RADAR
3 ways to get more women in the boardroom Fortune
The most common reason American women start their own businesses HuffPost
More women on top, but the script has stayed the same WSJ
Australian exchange to hire more women Bloomberg
8 "women's issues" that aren't just issues for women Policy Mic
QUOTE
It did suck 20 or 30 years ago, but I am going to be optimistic and positive and people are going to see that women can do it.
Jennifer Hyman, the CEO and Co-Founder of Rent The Runway, in MAKER'S Women in Business documentary.