Assurance

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work to analyze survey feedback representing nearly 50,000 U.S. employees.

GPTW Chicago 2023-Assurance Agency, Ltd.

Employees say: 
 
"The culture here is second to none. I have never worked at an organization that values teamwork and encourages all employees to be their authentic selves the way that we do. The work we do makes an impact on individuals in our community, and our employees recognize this and work hard to deliver the best work possible while having fun at the same time."

Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Chicago

See which workplaces made this year's list.

GPTW Financial Services & Insurance Small Medium 2023-Assurance Agency, Ltd

Employees say: 
 
"It is authentically a great place to work. The leadership truly cares about all employees and making it a happy place to work where colleagues feel valued for their contributions to its success."

Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Financial Services and Insurance

These are the best workplaces in the U.S. that employ between 100 and 999 people.

GPTW Medium 2023-Assurance Agency

"The culture here is second to none. I have never worked at an organization that values teamwork and encourages all employees to be their authentic selves the way that we do. The work we do makes an impact on individuals in our community, and our employees recognize this and work hard to deliver the best work possible while having fun at the same time."

Best Medium Workplaces

Winning workplaces in Chicagoland earned high marks from employees when it comes to leadership.

GPTW Chicago Small Medium 2022-Assurance Agency

Employees say: 
 
“I have never been at a company where the highest-level executives take such an interest in the work we do, communicate changes with us, and involve themselves in situations in order to better our work environment. This excellent culture is not just words—you can really feel it when you work here!” 
 
Read the Great Place to Work review .

GPTW Financial Services Industry Small Medium 2022-Assurance Agency, Ltd._1000498-3 copy

Employees say: 
 
“I have never been at a company where the highest level executives take such an interest in the work we do, communicate changes with us, and involve themselves in situations in order to better our work environment. This excellent culture is not just words, you can really feel it when you work here!”

The best workplaces in financial services and insurance acted as generous corporate citizens amid a year of multiple crises.

Best-Workplaces-Financial-Services-Small-Medium-2021-Assurance-Agency

Employees say:  
“We are always encouraged to grow professionally and personally. I never feel as if I am being talked down to by managers or superiors. It feels as if everyone is on equal footings and everyone wants everybody to do their best.”

We surveyed tens of thousands of employees to create this list of millennials’ favorite workplaces.

Best Workplaces Millennials Small Medium 2021-Assurance-Agency

Employees say: 
 
“We are treated as people not just employees. Colleagues help each other so everyone can succeed. The work/life balance is very important here and they care about people's physical and mental health.”

100 Best Small and Medium Workplaces for Millennials

GPTW-MED-35-Assurance-Agency,-Ltd.

Employees say: 
 
"The culture that they provide is simply great! We are always encouraged to grow professional and personally. It feels as if everyone is on equal footings and everyone wants everybody to do their best."

The best workplaces in financial services and insurance balance technological growth with the wellbeing of their talent.

Best Small Medium Workplaces in Financial Services- 2020-Assurance

Employees say: 
“Assurance has done an excellent job of building a culture that is hardworking, engaging, and fun. I love coming to work everyday and the culture compels me to give my best effort. I am proud of where I work and love to tell people about it!” 
Read Great Place to Work review .

Best Workplaces Medium Companies-2020-Assurance Agency

Employees say: 
 
"There is a positive atmosphere that trickles down from the executive team all the way down. People are not worried about job security or lay offs and can focus on doing their job even during these difficult times."

Assurance-Best Medium Workplaces 2019

Employees say: 
“Assurance values its employees as much as they value their clients. They are constantly thinking of innovative ways that they can enhance our culture and provide unique benefits to us as employees.”

Best Medium Companies 2018-Assurance

Employees say: 
 
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"The culture here is unique because it encourages everyone to work hard but be rewarded for the work they do. Everyone is willing to lend a hand and work together to complete projects." 
 
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Read the Great Place to Work review .

Best Workplaces in Chicago 2017 Assurance chicago

Employees say: 
 
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"The culture is unlike anything that I have seen in the past. Everyone brings their passion to work everyday and is encouraged to collaborate with one another." 
 
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"The focus on work/life balance really makes it an enjoyable place to work because it doesn't force you to choose one or the other. It recognizes that we have families and that they are important too. By them recognizing this, it makes me ready to come to work and give it my best, knowing they have my back." 
 
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Read the Great Place to Work review .

best small and medium 2016- Assurance

Read the Great Place to Work review .

Fortune’s second annual list of the 100 Best Workplaces for Women highlights companies with generous benefits, flexible schedules, and an emphasis on balancing work and life. 

100 best workplaces for women 2016- assurance

Employees say: 
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"There's an ability to advance through multiple roles, flexibility in career path and circumstances, a solid benefit program, and a good hiring process to get quality people." 
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"Assurance really shows their appreciation for the employees for the work they provide to the organization. While there are many ways this is done, the one that sticks out in my mind that occurred recently was that each employee was given a free Redbox Rental and bag of popcorn. While it was a small gesture, it really made me feel appreciated." 
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Read the Great Place to Work Review .

100 Best Large Workplaces for Women

Announcing this year's list of the best small business employers from Great Place to Work.

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Employees at this insurance brokerage earn "chips" by completing activities such as submitting ideas to their suggestion box, referring a new client or employee, or participating in wellness activities. Each chip counts as a chance to spin the Assurance "Wang Chung Wheel" at quarterly Assurance Casinos for a chance to win up to $300 cash. 

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The AI race is no longer just about scale—it’s about standards, trust, and strategic agility. As major powers build ever-larger models, Singapore is charting a different course: investing in global assurance frameworks, cross border digital integration, and a radically expanded pipeline of AI-skilled talent. Its approach is systems-first and credibility-focused—offering a model for how small states can lead by shaping norms rather than dominating infrastructure. But in an increasingly fractured landscape shaped by open-source disruption and deepening U.S.–China tensions, can neutrality still deliver influence? We'll discuss what makes Singapore’s AI strategy distinctive—and consider what other countries might learn from the Singapore model in crafting their own AI strategies. 

Beyond Scale: How Small Nations Can Lead In The Age Of AI

Conferences

Now, to kick this off, I'm thrilled to introduce our opening conversation led by Fortune's executive editor for Asia and Brainstorm AI co-chair, Clay Chandler in conversation with our first guest, Singapore's Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo. When we talk about global leadership in AI, it's easy to focus on the big players, but Singapore continues to prove that small nations can lead in big ways. This isn't just a story about scale. It's about strategy, standards, and Singapore's bet that credibility can compete with compute. Please now join me in welcoming Clay Chandler and Minister Teo. Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy, and welcome everyone and especially welcome Mr. Chou. It is such a delight to have you back. Uh, you were our kickoff speaker last year when we first launched this franchise in Singapore. We had a great discussion. Uh, that explored the ways in which Singapore was really pioneering how small and medium sized economies could punch above their weight when it came to artificial intelligence, and I'm really quite eager to have a kind of catch up conversation with you about that because so much has changed just in the last year since you were last here. Um, I wonder if we could start maybe by just a reference to the um. The AI action summit in Paris this year, which is a big event that got a lot of people's attention. Singapore there launched a global AI assurance pilot. And more recently, it's established a thing called the AI Verify Foundation. Can you tell us about these initiatives and and what they are and how they evolved? Well, it's great to be back and I'm also very happy that you've returned to Singapore for AI event. Um, you. Referenced what we were doing at the AI action summit. Uh, perhaps for context for the audience in the room today, uh, the AI action summit that took place in Paris is a 3rd edition of what started out in Bletchley as the AI safety summit. And then in between, there was a summit that was held in Korea. And by the time it got to Paris, our French colleagues decided that They didn't want to focus so much on safety, they wanted to focus on action. But if we ask what we really want to see in AI development, the way Singapore thinks about it is that this being general purpose technologies, you do want um it to be very widely adopted across many industry settings as well as across a whole range of organizations. So when we updated our national AI strategy, we thought that we needed to ensure that um uh people understood what this was going to be for. So we said that the vision for Singapore was AI for the public good, for Singapore and the world. And why we decided to focus on public good was that The incentives would naturally create many commercial applications of AI, but for the whole of society to benefit, for people to appreciate its value, and this being general purpose technology, you also want AI to be applied towards public healthcare, public transportation, uh, public safety in policing, for example. So that's one dimension of AI development that we wanted to see in Singapore. The other dimension is equally important. In many of these commercial settings, you would want AI to be implemented, deployed in a responsible way. So the question, however, is what does responsible AI look like? Well, it really depends on the application and at which layer of AI development you're talking about. Are you talking about the infrastructure, you're talking about the models, or you're talking about the applications? And Apart from being able to articulate what responsible AI looks like, you also need to answer the question of, well, how do you get that? And if you say that you are implementing responsible AI, how do you test for it? How do you assure people that in fact this is happening? So, As we were also promoting AI adoption, we decided at the same time that these questions deserved investigation. You need to put aside resources to research, but at the same time, it's useful for us to start developing practical tools. To answer the question of what responsible AI looks like. That's how the global AI assurance pilot came about. It was to create uh a number of methods by which AI developers as well as deployers were able to assure their stakeholders that they were implementing in a responsible way. And the idea was also to learn from it, accepting the fact that at this early stage, there are no interoperable standards that apply across the globe. We don't know when we will get there. And so Singapore's modest hope is to contribute to this conversation and to bring about international collaboration so that we can all develop best practices in AI development. There is a lot to think about there. Um, I want to come back and maybe talk a little bit more about how Uh, assurances, the strategy aligns with the kind of commercial competitiveness objectives of Singapore, but I want to, before we get to that, uh, ask you about one of the other big developments that's happened in the last year, which happened just about the time. Uh, a lot of people were in Davos, uh, and, uh, I remember being in Davos and hearing people at the beginning of Davos sort of pooh poohing China's ability to catch up to the United States. Oh, Silicon Valley is so far out in front in these foundational AI models that China can't play the same game. And then, uh, right in the middle of Davos there was this kind of announcement that emerged that there was this thing called Deep Seek. There was a Chinese hedge fund that had, uh. Sort of issued this new platform in AI that was produced with a fraction of the resources of OpenAI or Gemini, but seemed to be pretty close on all the significant benchmarks of performance. Last year we talked about, you know, the age of. Uh, you know, big data and, and AI superpowers and whether that created daunting obstacles for smaller states like Singapore. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the implications for countries like Singapore. For the deep sea breakthrough, we've had a couple of these other really kind of fast follower platforms come through in China recently. Um, is this something that even Singapore can now compete, you know, by following those kinds of examples? How does it open up and democratize the the the AI game for a country like Singapore? Well, the thing that we ask ourselves is what are the impediments of using any sort of technology for innovative purposes. And inevitably cost becomes an issue because for a company that is uh deploying technology already in a certain way to use AI as an alternative or as an addition, the question of cost must come up and it has to be weighed against the benefits. So when the cost comes down, then whatever benefits you were able to get from it may look more attractive. So from the perspective of bringing down costs. Innovation such as Deepeek are very much welcome. But I would also say that um this whole dynamic is not necessarily only a competitive one. It is also mutually reinforcing. Let me give you an example. We don't use deep per se to develop our own large language model, but within the context of Southeast Asia, we know that large language models that are trained primarily on the Western corpus, primarily on perhaps English as the language, um, they will have difficulties being applied in the Southeast Asian context. Um In our case, there are already probably more than 1000 local languages and if you build AI tools on top of these large language models that didn't incorporate the kind of data that could be found in our part of the world, then naturally the quality, the way it performs, the way it responds to prompts will perhaps not meet. The requirements of Singapore, as well as our neighboring countries. What we did was to therefore develop our own large language model, not necessarily the biggest, but certainly trained on languages that we find commonly in our part of the world. You know, um, Malay language, Tamil, Indonesia. This is sea lion, you are very familiar with it. So I think there is room for both, uh, and indeed, many companies, when they are thinking about how they can develop, for example, chat assistance that could be useful in our context, they would use a combination of both. And so that's how I think about it. I think that in an innovation ecosystem. Um, ways in which we can bring down the cost, ways in which we can complement one another in terms of the models that are available. I think they just open up the space for innovation to a larger extent. And in the Singapore context, um, when we think about AI governance and in AI innovation, The two are not necessarily at odds with each other, being able to assure ourselves of the safety and proper governance actually, I think can enable innovations to go further, because then the developers and deployers know where are the markets that they should work with. It's very interesting because it's a very, it's a much more kind of neutral approach to evaluating technology and And AI platforms in the US right now, a lot of this stuff is very politicized, so we thought that TikTok was a terrible national security risk until we realized that it was so popular that we couldn't really stop it and you know certain political leaders realized it was to their advantage to embrace it, but deep. See there's still a lot of ambivalence about deep seek in the US. The US government is prohibiting, uh, government agencies from, from using it, uh, uh, and trying to discourage companies from using it, whereas I gather in Singapore there's none of that. There's, well, let's look at it and is it useful or not? Or perhaps I would put it another way. I think when Companies, developers, deployers, they think about what model they want to use. There is always an assessment of a couple of things. One of the things would be, of course, performance. The other thing that they, they would take into consideration is security and resilience. And it's up to every organization to evaluate all three and draw their own conclusions about what can be used and what cannot be used, although they do not wish to use. And I would imagine that there will still be concerns about deep sea and other models that would cause companies. needs to take a pause and say that maybe this is something that we are still not very comfortable with. I wouldn't be surprised at all. This is a very natural consequence of organizations having to weigh the cost and benefits as well as the many dimensions of what makes an innovation worth the effort. So the other thing that's related to this and that that's new over the past year is that you know we in the US we have a new president now. And relations between the US and China have gotten, uh, safe to say much more tense and in many ways more acrimonious. President Trump is imposing very large tariffs on China. China has been retaliating in kind. The US has tightened restrictions on selling chips and other technologies to China. I wonder whether you know and we talked last year about Singapore's strategy of being sort of non-aligned, uh, being a kind of a Switzerland of Asia, a space where both Chinese and and uh uh US companies and tech players could could operate together. And so my question is can Singapore still do that? And this also sort of applies to the rest of ASEAN. Can it remain strategically unaligned, or are the two giants trying to force small and medium sized economies like this one to pick a side. I think Singapore's consistent approach is to act. In a way that meets our own interests. And that is the starting point that has to be our guiding principle. Now We would certainly hope that relationships between the two giants can warm up to a much greater extent, but it's not something that we can wish to happen and it will happen. I wish that was, um, you know, something that uh we didn't have to deal with, but it's a reality. Um, the way in which we go about it is to engage, you know, uh, all countries, not just China and US. Um, and Build upon our bilateral foundations. And to try and make headway in new technology areas too. So with the US, we have a dialogue on continuing and contin critical and emerging technologies. Similarly with China, we have a digital policy dialogue. They cover different areas of interest um that um we mutually believe are important for our own countries. But, you know, it doesn't prevent us from seeking to understand each other's concerns better and then continuing to find ways to move forward. So in AI Assurance in AI governance, for example, with our US colleagues, we did a mapping of our own risk assessment model against us, and this serves as a basis for us to engage with colleagues elsewhere around the world, particularly those that are involved in the AI safety network. Um, with our Chinese colleagues, we noticed that um there are industrial Uh, foundation is so broad and deep that the application of AI would be very interesting to watch and learn from. So there are different ways in which we engage with our ASEAN countries, we say, for example, that um even if we are not ready to move into the era of standards in AI governance, there's nothing to prevent us from agreeing on what the ethical principles could look like first. And then with other countries um that are like us, small, um, we created a digital pillar in the forum of small states, which Singapore is the convener of. And with countries like Rwanda, for example, we created an AI playbook for small states. So these are the ways in which we are coming together for conversations around different aspects of AI hoping to meet, make progress. Interesting and, and, and thoughtful. Um, I wanna ask quickly if I can about um. Scaling the digital workforce to kind of support a lot of these initiatives. The last time we spoke, you described for us, the government's plan had a goal for training 5000 AI practitioners in Singapore, and you have since tripled that, as I understand it, to 15,000. Why the increase and how will you achieve it and what will be the background of these practitioners? Well, number one, I think there's a lot of interest, um. So many people in, in, in Singapore are aware of the potential benefits of AI and they are themselves finding ways to acquire the skills. Uh, I would say that, um, whether it is AI creators or AI practitioners, Uh, I'm overall optimistic about what can be achieved through our workforce if each and every one, were enabled to acquire some AI related skills. And you imagine that um certain basic AI skills will become as ubiquitous as you and I being very familiar with using emails, um, and perhaps in the earlier stages, Maybe it was not so common for people to be able to use um digital tools, you know, whether for word processing or making slides and so on. But over time, we all acquire a certain level of competence. But we think that it's not enough just to have basic level of competence. So what you described, the 5000 and 15,000 are what we call AI practitioners, we are hoping also to grow another pool to complement the data scientists and machine learning engineers. We're talking about people who who are in the professions, lawyers, accountants, doctors, who will become the early adopters of AI and then they show their peers how to make better use of it. We're also talking about people in different sectors, whether it's manufacturing, whether it is, um, you know, in healthcare or um in financial services. They themselves also acquire this facility with using AI and then they demonstrate how it can create more value for their organizations. This group of AI practitioners will have to exceed the 15,000 that I talked about to a much greater extent. So in the Singapore context, our workforce is maybe 3.5 million. I think. At the level of AI users that are AI, they are competent, you, you will need to get to a much larger number than what we were talking about last year. So watch this space, we will have more to say about this. We, we will watch it with great interest. We've got just a couple of minutes here. I wonder if we can come back to this initial point about assurance. Uh, it's very interesting to me because it seems that what Singapore is doing is it's trying to become a kind of a test bed for safety and responsible AI and And to create a kind of haven. And build a brand around that in much the way that Singapore has done with FinTech regulation and cybersecurity services. Is that, is that the idea and Maybe you could say a little bit more about the philosophy behind the emphasis on insurance. The broad idea is that this technology um can have many applications and you don't want to overly restrict its growth and development. On the other hand, for a technology that can be used in so many different contexts. You've got to watch that it doesn't cause harm because the moment it does, and people become very wary of seeing it being used in even more ways, then it's much harder to recover from that sort of loss of momentum. So the way in which we'd like to go about it is to set out the broad directions and also to set out what are the principles that we should be working along. And then to uh say to industry as well as organizations that are using AI, let's try and find a way to define the risks and also then to find ways of mitigating those risks. That's generally the approach that we take. Small steps, um, not necessarily always big bang, but when we're ready to move, then move quickly. It's always fascinating for us to kind of watch those small steps and to try to observe them and analyze them. I think that many of them are of great relevance and and benefit to other kind of medium sized states as to how they can navigate in. This really rapidly changing technology environment. We look forward to tuning in again and coming back for the next installment of this conversation we hope in years to come. Thank you so much, Minister, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Debbie Dyson, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen, Ken Frazier, Chairman, Health Assurance Initiatives, General Catalyst; Co-founder and Co-chair, OneTen Moderator: Alan Murray, Chief Executive Officer, FORTUNE

CEO Initiative 2023: Leveraging Tailwinds To Navigate Headwinds

Debbie Dyson, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen Ken Frazier, Chairman, Health Assurance Initiatives, General Catalyst; Co-founder and Co-chair, OneTen Moderator: Alan Murray, Chief Executive Officer, FORTUNE

Debbie Dyson, OneTen, Ken Frazier, Health Assurance Initiatives, General Catalyst; OneTen Moderator: Alan Murray, FORTUNE

Right. Everyone in this room knows that 2020 started a mass a massive push to bolstering den I and ESG commitments in companies, uh companies working to make public commitments and to live up to those commitments and entities that didn't factor those considerations into their strategies. Felt pressure both from their own employees and from the outside to, to step up. But what we've seen in the last year, year and a half as we've discussed uh earlier today is uh backlash a political backlash and some backsliding. I've seen evidence that some companies are at least pressing pause and saying, wait, hold on. I don't want to talk about this right now. And so that's what we want to spend a little time talking about now. Joining us to talk more about it and the reasons and how leaders can respond are two people who have put themselves at the very forefront of the dei movement. Debbie Dyson, who is CEO of 110 uh the a coalition that aims to bridge the opportunity divide by creating 1 million jobs for Black Americans in 10 years. And Ken Frazier, who is chairman of the health Assurance initiative but was also a co-founder of the 1 10 initiative. So please join me on the stage, Debbie. Thank you so much. You're welcome. It's been since yesterday. Yeah, we, we Ken and I did this this routine yesterday. So I, I have a preview of, of uh his answers for a different audience. Um But, but look, I, I, I'd love for you, Ken first to start about to talk about why you created this initiative. And I'm gonna get Debbie to talk about how it works. So it's sort of amazing how quick the political environment in the country has changed. But if you went back to 2020 in the wake of the tragic murder of George Floyd companies were asking openly in the Business Council and the Business round table, what should we do about these kinds of issues of racial injustice in this country? And Ken and I were in some of those discussions and people were talking about making donations and putting out statements and all the things that normally happen. And we said, you know, what's in the wheelhouse of our companies is to hire people. And we pointed out that the census said that 76% of African Americans at age 26 did not have a four year degree and more than 95% of the jobs in our coalition, which is made up of 70 leading companies required a four year degree for almost any job So what we said is we really ought to look at the question and it reminded me of the discussion we just had about artificial intelligence where you look at the taxonomy of jobs and decide what the real skills are. And we said, what if we took a skills first approach to hiring for certain jobs instead of acquiring the credential of a four year degree. We said we wanted to actually have people be hired because they had certain skills and uh the goal of the coalition, it was initially to hire 1 million African Americans who lacked a four year degree into family sustaining wage jobs. Important. Basically, that's $50,000 a year or more. It's of course adjusted whether you live in Mobile, Alabama or Seattle, Washington. And that was the goal. And for the last two years, we've been active in that area with some success. So Debbie, how's it, how does it work and how is it working? Yeah, let me start with the latter first in terms of how it's working. So as Ken mentioned, we're entering our third year, we've hired to date about 108,000 jobs in terms of hires and promotes. We have over 70 some odd members in our coalition, representing about 65 different types of jobs. We have 23,000 current profiles that sit on what we call our platform, which is where our employers can go look for talent. So simplistically, the way that it works is we meet with our coalition members to try to understand what their human capital management, talent acquisition journey is. What are the types of jobs that they're looking for? What are the location, what are the skills that they're looking for? Based on that criteria, we post the jobs on our platform. We then work with an ecosystem of what we would call talent developers and talent partners that are really sort of dedicated to trying to skill up the talent so that we can make sure that talent is actually work ready by the time that they're presented. And so, you know, call it a little bit like a match making. So it's, here's the job, here's the talent and hopefully there's a match and then from there we go. And is it explicit? And you know why I'm asking this question? Is it explicitly for Black workers? So at its inception, we, we had a mission of attempting to close the talent gap explicitly for Black talent. But I know why you're asking the question and we've addressed that recently, you know, with the Supreme Court's opinion and the change in the atmosphere, we've been very clear that while that was indeed the initial reason for it, it's open to anybody who needs help. So it's not exclusionary in any way. Um It's really more and more about getting companies to focus on skills first because if they change systemically, how they think about jobs. I mean, again, 76% of African Americans lack a four year degree, but 50% of all Americans lack a four year degree. So the 1 10 goal is 1 million jobs in, in 10 years. Right. Not necessarily just for blacks, but for people without college degrees. Absolutely. And, you know, just to add on to what Ken said, what's been kind of fascinating is as we've been putting together and sort of identifying talent, we are seeing a wide range, it's not just black talent, it is every range. And many of our coalition members have said, once we sort of put this thinking into the mindset of our coalition, they've actually see the benefits that they're opening up the opportunities for others to apply that do not have a four year degree as well. But Ken, let's go back to the race issue because as you know, there's, there's not only the Supreme Court decision, there's been a real backlash. We have a member of this group, Elizabeth Gore who runs an outfit called Hello Alice to help small businesses who is being sued for having a program that pro provide explicitly provides help to black owned businesses. The Fearless Fund is another example which is being sued uh in the wake of the Supreme Court decision for providing grants explicitly uh uh to black owned businesses. What's going on here? I mean, is there a legal case? You must think there's at least some legal risk or you wouldn't have made the change with 1 10. And how do you explain what's happening? So, first of all, I think it's pretty clear that there is a movement afoot in our country against some of these programs and the lawsuits have started to build before the Supreme Court case. I think it's important to point that out. Um, you know, the way that I look at this situation is in our country, we have a couple of challenges. Number one is we want to be a country where we don't judge people by extraneous factors like gender and sex and things of that nature, right? So as an organizing and governing principle, most people would agree that race neutrality or color blindness, whatever you want to call, it is a good thing for a multicultural and multi racial society. On the other hand, I think most people would acknowledge that there are still continuing vestiges of the way this country is run for 400 years that explain why the unemployment rate for African Americans is so much worse. Why life expectancy is so much worse? Why after years and years of red lining neighborhoods are segregated? So the question becomes, how can we deal with those issues? You know, which of course people were worried about when people were in the streets about George Floyd. How do we deal with those issues in a way that balances our need to treat people fairly. But at the same time, acknowledging, not everybody has had the same life experience. If I'll just use one autobiographical example, I'm the eighth of my dad's nine Children, my younger sister and I came along in a birth order where the social engineers in Philadelphia decided to make race conscious decisions about who went to what school he called that school desegregation. So the youngest two of my dad's Children were bused out of the ghetto to better schools. Because if you lived in my neighborhood, your parents didn't, couldn't afford real estate, that was proximate to where the good public schools were. I happen to think that that obviously it benefited me, think it might have benefited Merck at some point. But the fact of the matter is, I don't think that that actually hurts somebody. Creating that opportunity for me wasn't at the expense of somebody else. And so the question becomes, how do we keep these two seemingly inconsistent goals in mind? That is to say, treating people fairly. On the other hand, creating opportunity for people whose lack of opportunity in some ways relates to the history of this country on race. So can't let me, let's push this a little bit further because I, I spend a lot of time talking to CEO S different CEO S different industries, I would guess. And I'm, I, I don't have the data on this, but I would guess 90% of them would agree with what you just said. But I can also tell you 90% of them say, but please, please, please keep me out of politics. I don't want to have anything to do with it. I, I it's, it's, it's broken, it's pernicious, it's polluting everything you, you played a really for, for, for whether intentionally or unintentionally. You played a really critical role in the politics of the last five or six years in, in 2017, you were the one after Charlottesville when the president made ambivalent comments about that, unite the right uh rally. You were the one who said I have to resign from his committees and all the other CEO S and I know this from talking to him and the other CEO S who resigned, resigned because you resigned. So you led that movement. It was a critical point. A lot of backlash 2020 after the election when the Georgia State uh legislature, the Republicans adopted a Voting Rights Act. You and Ken were the ones who called Ed Bastian at Delta Airlines, uh called the CEO of Coca Cola, convinced them to get involved, which prompted a huge political backlash. Um So how do you, how do you think about your role as a CEO versus your role as a citizen in politics? Because I can tell you and I think, you know what I'm saying is correct. Most CEO S don't want to have anything to do with it. So let me just say that while I found myself in a lot of those situations, it wasn't my goal to be a political person. It seems to me that businesses and CEO S don't want to get in the middle of every political dispute, especially given how divided our country is right now. But at the same time, I firmly believe that there are a series of principles and conditions that make our democracy what it is and they are conducive to human beings and they are conducive to commerce. And there are situations where people in elected office, either neglect or abandon those principles, you know, free and fair elections is one rule of law is respect for private property, equal treatment. All of those things that we were taught in grade school are the fundamental principles of this country. It is my view that while I don't want to drag my company into every political dispute that when those kinds of principles are not being upheld by our elected officials, it becomes the responsibility of the citizenss really, it is the government of us to take a position on those things. And I think ceos obviously are among the most influential citizens. So my whole thing is pick your spots. Ask yourself, do you have a right to speak to this issue? Does your company's values speak to this issue? And if so, I think ceos should not be cowed into not speaking because at the end of the day. If it is, in fact, a principle like the right to vote, the fact that someone else politicizes that principle doesn't make that principle intrinsically political. And I'll just make the point that came up this morning. The US business community has acted in unison around democracy in Ukraine. It strikes me as a mildly amusing. I'll say that we have a hard time talking about democracy in these United States. Yeah. No, it's so your message to this group is pick your spots but get involved when you have to get involved. But by the way, and I say to people don't allow your company to be pushed to one way or the other by the left or the right. Do what your company's values say that you're supposed to do. Because at the end of the day, there are a lot of young people in our companies and they're watching us and when we give up on the things that we've said were our values for decades, why would they believe us about anything else you did? I just want to stick with this for a second because you're in a regulated industry, obviously resigning from a government advisory council when you're in a regulated industry. And by the way, the president was already talking about legislation to increase or to control over drug prices is pretty significant. Did you talk to your board about this? Was this this a decision you made by yourself or I'm gonna get back to you, Debbie. I haven't forgotten you, but did, did you talk to your board about this or how, how, how did you handle it? I had an obligation to talk to my board. I mean, the fact of the matter is, is a company that is regulated in that way, not necessarily by the president's tweets though. I want to point that out. Uh, I did call my board and I said to them as a person of conscience, I cannot remain after these comments. Um But when I put out a statement and I intended to withdraw in a public way, I want the board to opine on whether I should speak to my personal conscience and values or should I speak to the company's values? And I can tell you unanimously, they said we want you to speak to the company's values. Every one of every, everyone back you up on it. Anyone have any questions on this before I want to go. Yeah, go ahead, please. I like Wilson Hispanic Association on corporate responsibility. My, my question, um Ken is, can you, um, give guidance to many of the CEO S here in the room who um sometimes on one ear, they may getting guidance from their uh Chief Diversity Officer on the other ear. Their general General general counsel, I used to be a general, you know, and in this environment where, you know, G CS who are not as willing to lean in, um, and stand by those principles out of fear that doing that, I can tell you. So my bottom line is you have to uphold your values. I'm, I'm a lawyer but not in the pejorative sense of the word. And the fact of the matter is that lawyers often feel their job is to protect the company from being criticized or sued. I think when you look at what the law is, by the way, the law did not change around race and hiring the Supreme Court brought the law around education into compliance with title seven. I think there's still a lot of maneuverability here and I think it's a mistake to overcorrect because you might be criticized. At the end of the day, I think ceos ought not be pushed around. If we have values, we ought to uphold those values, but we ought to do them sensibly. That's why we made the change in 110 to make sure that while we originally did it to close the talent gap for Black Americans, we say, but no, we want to help anybody who needs our help. That doesn't stop us from helping a lot of people. Let's get back to, let's get back to 110 because it is important work. And, and you know, we know we've seen the data inequality in our society has increased. The, the there's a sense that the escalator of mobility has slowed or stopped. You have a program to address that. What can the people in this room do to help? Yeah, I mean, a couple of things that I want to make sure just from something that Ken said. So I was retired, I had retired after 34 years at a company called ADP and in, I guess it was November. I had an opportunity and obviously you're all enthralled with Ken as I am every single day. It's like a gift. No, seriously, it's like a gift, brownie points. So why I say that is the case. So this is sort of a long winded way to get to the answer your question. But it was really just through the conversation with him and Ken and the other members of the board that honestly pulled me out of retirement. I could have stayed out of retirement. And my, my answer is it was important for me to, I wanted to say something. I wanted to be something and I wanted to do something. And so when we're meeting with the CEO S and we had a call just recently to talk about the whole scotus, it was probably one of the most inspirational discussions because we talked exactly about this. And what was rewarding was this resiliency and almost like, um and anger to, to be honest with you, of wanting to really lean in further of what can we do as a coalition to spread the word of impact. I mean, we're sitting here as the numbers that Ken sort of mentioned with excellent opportunity of untapped and underestimated potential of talent that is in the workforce today that has just been unseen, unheard and unappreciated. And so how do we as a nation sort of start to see that talent that for whatever the reasons were, didn't have the opportunities to go down a collegiate path for all the reasons that I think we know. And here is an alternative path to say, put the four year degree to the side and look at the skills and the potential of the talent in front of you and offer them the opportunity. So that's the, that's the, it's also a really important collective action effort. Uh because we know what's happened in the past, even with very well intentioned companies have had de i efforts and changed the way they hire a lot of times you end up just competing for the same group of educated people and, and bidding up their wages, but not addressing the problem you're trying to address. So, so kudos for you, uh both uh for doing it. Um by the way, if you're interested in, in, uh if you're as enthralled with Ken as Debbie is, and you're interested and you're interested in hearing uh uh more on what we were talking about earlier. The, the conversation that we had yesterday was for Fortune's Leadership next podcast and that'll be out in a week or so. You can get it on, on Apple or Spotify. It was really a fascinating uh 30 minutes and I would urge you to listen and dig in more and I would urge you to reach out to Debbie uh and get involved in 1 10, any contact information you want to give this 1 10 spelled out as it is dot org. So just, just feel free can make closing comments. We're talking about leadership. You know, I think leadership is about upholding what we think our values are ultimately and we can't let people outside our companies tell us what our values are. You know, my dad worked for United Parcel in the early 19 sixties and the company made a decision that it was no longer going to have segregated facilities. The law and the custom in many American states was that segregation was the right thing to do today. When we look back at that, we can all pretend that we would have been brave enough to make that decision. That was the right thing to do before the law caught up with it. And I think we can ask ourselves, do we think it's the right thing to create opportunities for talented people, irrespective of their race because we know that they can do jobs without regard to their four year degree credentials or not. I think that's the right thing in a country where our working age population is not growing at all in terms of the overall size and it's becoming more diverse here here. Thank you very much for what you're both doing and appreciate you being here. Thank you for having us here.

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