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Salary talk used to be frowned upon; now it’s a conversation that leads labor rights debates and sets new expectations for executives and employees. As governments and regulators push for greater pay transparency, too, companies are being forced to rethink compensation strategies and open their books in ways they never anticipated. The challenge ahead is balancing transparency with organizational governance, while ensuring salary decisions reinforce fairness and trust. This panel brings together a CEO managing that complexity and the creator who helped make salary transparency a mainstream cultural expectation to examine whether openness is a risk or a competitive edge.

Maria Colacurcio, Chief Executive Officer, Syndio 			 
Hannah Williams, Founder and Host, Salary Transparent Street
Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

A Secret No More: Is Salary Becoming Less of a Taboo?

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As conversations around the four-day workweek gain momentum, employees are becoming more open about feeling overworked, and companies are being challenged to ensure their teams don’t burn out. As conversations around the four-day workweek gain momentum, employees are becoming more open about feeling overworked, and companies are exploring how best to support their teams. Many of the factors that contribute to overwork sit within leadership’s influence. This discussion will explore how leaders can rethink priorities and workloads and challenge the old rules of work to make productivity and well-being thrive.

Malissa Clark, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Director, Healthy Work Lab
James Reinhart, Co-Founder and CEO, Thredup
Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit 

Burnout is Breaking Work: Can a Four-Day Week Fix It?

I'm going to start by just setting the table a little bit. AI is upending assumptions about how work is valued, what humans uniquely bring to the table. And what kinds of work can be automated or done by LLMs or agents. The bigger question may be whether customers cus sorry, whether companies are willing to redesign work itself, cutting low value tasks, redefining productivity, and making it safer for employers to say employees to say when the system isn't working. James, I'd love to start with you, particularly after the conversation that we just had. Um, I'd love to talk to you about the 4-day work week that that you've implemented at Thread Up. Uh, you started out with an experimental 4-day work week during the pandemic and then made it permanent. What nuts and bolts changes to Thread Up make in terms of meetings, decision making, staffing, manager behavior? To make this happen and what are the biggest changes that you've noticed since you implemented it? Sure, uh, it's great to be here. Yeah, we, we started the 4 day work week during the pandemic, um, and people were at home, and one of the things that I noticed thematically when people were at home is they were working all the time and people were very productive once they had control of their own schedules. Uh, collaboration was up, you know, Google Meet, we were able to track all the data, and we just started to see this explosion of, of productivity, frankly. And so when, and of course none of us go to our offices and so we had all this extra commute time and our right so there was a lot of more time in our day so then when people came back to work. Um, I just found that like wow, there was this explosion of of opportunity here. Why not just maintain the 4 day work week and, and so for us it was a it was a top level decision. It was not a we didn't take a poll, it was we're gonna do the 4 day work week because I've been sort of obsessed my whole life around organizational design and how do you get the most out of employees and the fundamental idea was that um we waste an enormous amount of time at work. An enormous amount and so I thought why not making the organization be prioritized more? Why not cut all the fat in the meetings? uh why not reduce the sort of meeting before the meeting um and so I just said look we're gonna, we're gonna try this experiment and everybody thought that was a great idea and since then we've been tracking productivity and stuff but I have seen just tremendous uh improvements in employee happiness. Uh, in an employee creativity, I think we're working on the hardest problems, uh, and I think people, uh, in our retention metrics are through the roof, yeah, and so we'll probably talk about that. But, but to me, like, uh, unlike Ryan, like we're, we're not going back. I actually think these days with the sort of the explosion in AI, I think the world is moving more rapidly, and I think we need our best employees and their most creative minds working really concentrated hours on the most important things. And Melissa, as an expert on this, you know, better than most, not all four-day work weeks are created equal. How should we think about the difference between compressing work and genuine genuinely reducing work and how do those models work differently? Yeah, that's a great question because I think a lot of people think 4 day work week, all right, let's just take 40 hours and cram it into 4 days. That is not the philosophy behind the 4 day week movement, uh, and it's not what you're doing, so it's literally shaving 8 hours off of your work week, so a 32 hour week, and so a compressed work week is taking those 40 hours and. You know, just smushing them 4 to 4 day work week is 32 hours. Another kind of myth about this is it doesn't have to be 4 days. Your model is 4 days, I think Monday through Thursday, right? And some pushback I hear is, well, we need people there every day of the week. We need somebody there. That's fine. You don't have to have everyone on the same schedule with a 4 day work week. People can choose different configurations that work for them. Someone could work 6.5 hours a day for 5 days because that works for them. They'd have to pick up their kids from school and it works better with their family. That's great. Uh, the bottom line with the 4 day work week is shaving those 8 hours off. I'd love for you. This is a question for James, but you may have thoughts also, Melissa, to speak directly to the leaders in this room. We have a lot of uh people and HR leaders in this room who might be interested in experimenting with the four-day work week or other changes in work structure, especially as we rethink everything in this era. Um, they're gonna probably face resistance, uh, and maybe the stance that like this might work for Thread Up, it's not gonna work in our company, it's not gonna work in our industry. Um, or a cultural unwillingness to challenge all assumptions about what productivity is. Um, what advice, I'd love to ask you, James, and then you, Melissa, what advice would you give to, to, to our audience here if that's the position that they're in? Um, you know, I, I think the thing to think about is, is the companies that you work at and the teams that you serve, are you ultimately going to win by The number of hours in like is this a truly an input scheme or is it that your teams are coming up with the best ideas, right? um, the most innovative products, uh the best uh engagement and and retention metrics and so I really think about like this idea that that thread. And I think a lot of companies, especially in the world of AI, are going to win by delivering superior workplaces and superior products. So I'm like a, like, and we've all been part of it. Think about the time when you were writing a paper in college, right, and you're like you're grinding at your computer and it's like days and days and days and then you're like. And there's a spark and you have a moment and in 30 minutes you've like you've nailed it, right? Think about like the number of moments that you can have where you have real sparks of innovation and creativity. That is what I'm optimizing for and so I think if you think about the the opportunities in your organizations to how can my employees do the most exceptional work of their lives, what would it take to do that. My guess is you wouldn't say show up at 9, leave at 55 days a week in a, in a, you know, in a desk environment and so that's, that's kind of what I would push people is where can you spark creativity, um, and then one small thing is just I'm a huge believer that rested employees and genuinely happy employees are way more creative. And so for me the idea of the 4 day work week is that when employees come back on Monday morning they're like they've gone on hikes, they've spent time with their kids and families, they've done stuff like they're ready to be the best version of themselves they're not going to spend the first like 4 hours of Monday getting back in the groove and reminding themselves why they still want to work here, right? So it's a real mindset shift. What, what would you arm people with when they're, when they're having this conversation, Melissa? Yeah, well, first of all, I wish more CEOs had your philosophy behind rest and creativity and productivity because you know one of the conversations we have around AI is, OK, we're using it to shave off time from all these tasks that kind of build up throughout the day. OK, so you've shaved off 10 minutes. What are you going to do with that 10 minutes? And to your point, the research shows that the most effective thing to do with that 10 minutes is engage in a rest and recovery activity. This could be as simple as walking around the building or just turning off your cell phone and just sitting and relaxing and deep breathing, and that has been shown to link to greater productivity, greater creativity. I mean, I know myself when I write. The best ideas sometimes come to me when I'm on my walk or the shower. It's not when I'm, you know, working on this thing for 6 hours in a row. Um, so I'm just curious how many companies or people in their companies out here do have a 4 day work week formally? Raise your hand if you have a 4 day work week. Any companies that are, is there one handbag? Uh, she works for me. Oh, look, so this is so depressing, right? But the, the science is so clear. Like the science is so clear on the, on the sleep, on happiness, on walking for creativity. Like it's amazing that we're so willing to trust science on so many things, many things, and yet on this particular thing, like, nope, nope, nope, yeah, head in sand, yeah, so for my book Never Not Working, I interviewed one of the co-founders of the 4 day week global movement. I'm not affiliated with them at all, but I'm a huge fan. And so they've conducted very psychometrically sound research studies that show over these trials of implementing the 4 day work week all of the well-being metrics were going up, uh, burnout was going down, turnover was going down, but companies always care about the bottom line, and this is the most exciting part revenue went up in the majority of these companies and it's sustained over time. And one of the most interesting pieces of data from the recent study that I read about was that 90, so this isn't the most interesting, but 96% of employees said they wanted to continue, OK, but 15% said they would not go back to a 5 day work week for any amount of money. Wow, that I thought was shocking. So in that scenario that you set up actually that the, the CEO says, well, you know, with AI we're gonna be able to, to do, you know, 20% more or we're gonna be able to do the same amount with 20% fewer people. Um, what questions would you ask, uh, about, about how they're thinking about that? I mean Look, there's no question that AI is going to make us more productive. Like, I think the the, the science is clear on that too, right? I think it'll ultimately be how are we leveraging these tools in ways where generative AI is doing stuff when we sleep, right? So to me right now, and I bet for many of you. Like the AI leverage you're getting is how you're interacting in a prompt-based world with chat GPT or cloud, right? You're not actually like, have you, you've not actually come up the other side of the J curve where, where cloud is working for you at night, right? Right. And, um, and I'll give you an example of this is a really simple one which is if you've not used Google's Notebook LM, so who is, has anybody used Google's Notebook LM? OK, there's a feature in there which I'm sure those of you raise your interviews, which is the creation of the podcast. Where you feed it a bunch of data and then these really exciting hosts talk about your idea, right? Um, that is an example where like you, you set a prompt right you feed it a bunch of information and you come back and sometimes it takes 30 minutes, sometimes it takes 1 hour, yeah, that's like the smallest example of this right where you're you're. Going to do something else for an hour while it's producing this podcast for you. Extrapolate that out to large data sets, right, to redesigns of work systems to how your, um, your workforce deployment across 10,000 people might look, those are actually the problems where AI is going to actually have great leaps forward, and I think to get and to nail that you're going to need the most exceptional employees in the world. And those exceptional employees are gonna work wanna work at Thread Up 4 days a week. And so you're going to be competing right against companies like mine for these exceptional people and you're going to lose and so to me, like I, I mean I'm joking, I'm sure you will win, but others will lose, right? But like I think that so to me and I think that's the question, right, is how are you going to compete in a world where the very best people are going to find the leverage in AI, right, um, right, and I think a lot of companies are very shortsighted with thinking about, um. You know their workforce and going pedal to the metal all the time and sure there might be a burst of productivity but we're human and uh eventually we are going to fatigue and at the extreme burn out and guess what that's gonna be costly not just for the individual and their health and their family. But to the company, uh, there was a large scale meta-analysis, for example, that found that for every $1 put towards wellness programs, the company saved $3 in healthcare costs. So I think just thinking about and I hate bringing up these metrics that shouldn't be the end goal, the ultimate criterion in my opinion should be employee well-being. It shouldn't be profit, um, but I know companies like to talk about profit, so I'm giving them data. Um, and then the other thing I think to point out just big picture, uh, and that I would challenge people to think about is why are we still stuck on a 40 hour work week as some of you know this was implemented by Henry Ford, uh, you know, and we're still here and it's funny you can look at anecdotes from a century ago, people predicting that we would be working 15 hours a week now and taking 2 months of vacation. Uh, French, very French, and why are we still here? And with every technological revolution there are these predictions, and can we please for the love of God implement those predictions and at least shave off a day. Right, and people are making those predictions now, of course, about AI, including Elon Musk famously saying, you know, basically we'll, we'll just all have butlers, AI butlers and to work 120 hours a week, right? So if you're imagining this idealized workplace 10 years from now, AI is deeply embedded, uh, maybe we are all working 4 day work weeks. What would you hope is different about how leaders are thinking about people's time? And their capacity at work. I would say that I hope that leaders could start focusing on rewarding working smarter and not working longer. I think we continually talk about wellbeing and the idea of. Rest and recovery as hindering productivity, but as your examples point out and a lot of other data, it actually helps productivity. So it's a false dichotomy, and I think we really need to stop pitting the two against each other. They work together very well actually. Yeah, I mean, I, to me like I, I really do think it's going to, it comes down to the war for talent. Like I really do believe that. I mean that, that, you know, the, the 10x employee, like there are people in all of our companies that they're just exceptional, right? They're, they're so much better than other people at our companies. And so when I think about the, the folks at Thread up that are exceptional, um, the 4 day work week is a big part of like why they want to work there, but I'm asking myself what are the conditions that I can put in place to find more of those exceptional people. And I think about the 4 day work week is just one input in that, right? There's lots of things that go into it, but I do think that especially in a world of AI, like I think it's the war of talent that's gonna be, that's going to be more, um, more profound than anything. Can I just piggyback off of that? So we, you know, a star athlete, a star athlete is not working every day of the week at their craft. The star employees, the same kind of thing athletes build. Rest and recovery into their routine. It actually is part of why they're amazing. And so why don't we think of our top talent like that and you know it helps with retention. It also helps with recruitment. We talked in this conference about Gen Z and what they want out of work, so I think many benefits. I love that you've talked about both attracting that talent but also allowing that those talented people to do their best work. I feel really proud of the work that they're doing. What in one sentence, uh, and, and we really only have time for one sentence. Um, what's one rule of work that you think leaders need to retire if they want productivity and well-being to coexist as, as Melissa said. I would say Stop thinking you can just say you're going to implement something great like the 4 day work week or unlimited PTO or whatever the buzz thing is then just start acting in a way that your culture is supportive of having more of a balance, and culture is determined by the worst behavior that is tolerated. So if you are letting those behaviors slide, even if you have these policies that will become your culture. Yeah, and I just think that I would emphasize how much, how much time we waste at work and how much unproductive time we spend in our lives. And if we really focused on being more productive and more deliberate with how we spend our time, I think we'd all be like a lot happier both in our personal lives, but I think for for companies in their in their professional lives. So to me it's about how we manage our time. Thank you so much, both of you for this great conversation, everyone for, for your attention. Thank you.

Toxic cultures, unchecked power, and pressure-cooker leadership have become Hollywood's favorite raw material. But what those stories can teach us about diagnosing and fixing the real thing in our own workplaces? Former CNN journalist Brian Stelter, whose book Top of the Morning inspired the Emmy-winning series The Morning Show , joins Denise Shull, the performance coach who inspired a character on the Showtime drama Billions, to discuss how fiction can be formed by real organizational dynamics—and the concrete lessons on culture leaders can take back to their own fast-paced environments.

Denise Shull, Founder and CEO, The ReThink Group
Brian Stelter, Analyst, CNN; Producer, The Morning Show
Moderator: Indrani Sen, Senior Features Editor, Fortune;, Co-Chair, Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit

When Workplace Culture Becomes a Hollywood Story

So both of you have had roles in creating hit workplace dramas that delve into the ways that high performance sometimes comes hand in hand with tension, drama, even toxicity. Denise, you've been described as the real-life inspiration for Wendy Rhodes, the psychiatrist and in-house performance coach of the fictional hedge fund depicted in Millions. In your professional life, you advise people in extremely high pressure environments, traders, investors, athletes, coaching them on risk, decision making, emotion, and performance under pressure. Hopefully not yelling at them like the clip we just saw. Um, what did Billions reveal about the work that you do that surprised you, if you have any specific examples I'd love to hear them. I'm actually having a little trouble hearing you or understand what was the end of that? Oh, what, what did Billions reveal about the work that you do? There's a lot more to a good decision than we think there is, um, you know, in short, it does reveal the emotion behind the decision. We're always talking about take the emotion out, behave rationally, like, you know, use your head, all of that. Like, the show does demonstrate how much emotion there is even in a financial decision, which is where everyone thinks at a minimum there's not. It's not true, not true. Um, Brian, you're an accomplished journalist and your book Top of the Morning inspired the Morning Show, which you've consulted on. What has it been like to see your own workplace, perhaps some of your own experiences in newsrooms transposed onto the screen for entertainment? Has watching that fictionalized version of a TV news operation given you any Insights into the real thing. It definitely has, and you know, I will be the first to say the morning show on Apple, it's a soap opera, you know, it is not entirely true to what really happens behind the scenes at morning television shows, but the tension is real, the drama is real, the stakes are real, the human relationships are real, and I think that's what we bring to life on the show. When I wrote this book a long time ago on morning TV, I had not worked in television yet. I was still at the New York Times. Now I'm at CNN and I have a better understanding as a former anchor myself of why anchors are sometimes called anchor monsters. Like there's a reason why some of these TV egos get so inflated. There's a reason why, you know, those heads sometimes explode in TV. So I think we have certainly dramatize that and we have fun with that on the morning show, but it's getting at something very real about how to manage talent, about what talent even is in 2026. The question for both of you, um, we're watching these high-pressure TV shows and these workplace settings. They, they tend to, they feel recognizable to any of us, even if we've never worked in a venture fund or or a newsroom. Um, are all companies on some level hives of drama and, and if so, why, why is there so much drama in the workplace? Well, for one, we're human beings, right? And like human beings. We don't know this, but like I just said, you have to have emotion to make a decision. We all have a whole variety of fear, frustration, disappointment, desire, like longing, jealousy, and so we recognize it, right? And it's everywhere. So it happens in these two venues. There are a lot of really quick decisions like the, the pressure is right now. So I think it intensifies the, the demonstration of those emotions as opposed to when you at least get 5 or 10 minutes to like make a decision, you know, um. But yeah, it's that we show real human feelings. We all relate to them and we get to see these powerful, successful people experience these difficulties, conflicts that we experienced that we sort of thought, you know, maybe they've got it all together. Right, and we find out the opposite is true, and that makes us kind of happy, right? As a media beat reporter, I always operate from this sense that nobody knows anything, right, that everyone's kind of faking it, that nobody really knows what to do, that even the top, you know, people who seem to have it all figured out don't, and that's what these shows are expressing in different ways. I also look, I think about my first job in high school, and even that was a hive of drama, working at an ice cream shop, yes. Yes, I mean, even, even the, you know, even the emotions there. So you know it's such a through line, and I actually think it's wild that there aren't more shows that dramatize this. You know, we can count on our hands like the number of great workplace dramas, and then there's maybe one more hand of great workplace comedies. There's not that many of these given that we spend most of our waking hours at a workplace with colleagues and everybody can relate to those feelings and emotions, right? We're obsessed with it, right? Yes, yes. Um, Denise, one of the themes, uh, in both of these shows actually and probably in most workplaces is secrets, what people know, what people don't know, and what eventually comes out in a work setting. What happens psychologically inside an organization when some people know something important and others don't? Wow, that's a really interesting question. One is that intuition is a real thing. So like you'll see, you'll hear it called intuition or you'll hear it denigrated by the behavioral finance people. It's real. There's a ton of academic research that shows it's real. And we all kind of know when we're being lied to, um, like we have that spidey sense, right? Like that's a real thing and we don't like it. Why don't we like it? The brain is always predicting if something is good or bad for us. So if we know someone is lying to us, it's a threat. We're like there's something we don't know that's creating a threat and then we may even overreact because maybe it's a little lie, but your brain is gonna say this is a threat. And people then react to threats, you know, I mean that we, we have an audience here with a lot of HR people, professionals. I wonder if you could talk about the difference between necessary confidentiality and, and when secrecy becomes a toxic culture. Well, I think by the same token, everyone understands that certain things do need to be confidential, that you don't need to know everything, you know, about a colleague or their salary or their whatever bad behavior they might be engaged in. Um, so there's a way to deliver the, the fact that it's confidential with respect and kindness, so you know you're not knowing. As opposed to being lied to when you're being told something that you get that spidey sense it's not true. I mean, at its core, it's like if you actually really listen to people and the person feels respected, they'll react better no matter what the subject, right? So it's almost like don't be secretive about the fact that there are secrets. Don't be, yeah, and don't be dismissive and don't be denigrating. Like why would you think that, you know, like so much is in tone delivery. That communicates like respect and hearing what the person asked maybe, right, right. I'll tell you what I can, I can, you know, I can say this, I can't say that. I hope you understand that it's not personal to you, right, right. Um, and Brian, I want to go back to something you said earlier about performing confidence and authority, which is a, is a thing that we do a lot in media, um, and it's certainly a big theme in the morning show. It's probably true in other fields too. How much of workplace dysfunction in your opinion comes from people faking it? Pretending to know more or control more than they really do. Yes, I sometimes like to ask folks, you know, who are, you know, kind of middle or rank and file, you know, actually, you know, keeping, keeping a channel on the air or keeping a website online, how many bosses do you feel like you have, you know, and do you feel like any of them are actually in charge, and you get really interestingly different answers sometimes, right, if folks feel like there's a dozen people who might think they They are in charge, but actually no one is in those cases. I think we see versions of that in the morning show. And as the seasons have gone on, I'm still a producer on the show. We're in the 5th season now. We're working on season 5 right now, and it's a great side hustle for me because the writers will come and ask me, we want X to happen, then we want Y and Z to happen. Can you help us get there? Can you help us make that plausible? Is there a plausible way for it to happen? And by the way, I would say, you know, oftentimes there's not, and so it's fun for me to try to brainstorm ways to make it possible, you know, I think that ultimately they are trying to depict a business that is In secular decline, right, broadcast television in all its ways, and in that environment, you know, it's a little bit, what's the line about academia, you know, the stakes are so low and so people behave a certain way. Like there's a little bit of that going on about people clinging on to what they have and trying not to change in an environment where it's slowly, gradually, but clearly declining. And I think in that environment hopefully people see through the calls for authority and the calls to fake confidence, but I certainly think that that's what we're seeing that for the last gosh, 20 years now at the actual big networks as they try to recreate themselves and rebuild themselves in real time. And but ultimately knowing that it's in decline creates, I think, even more pressure on those egos I mentioned. It makes some of those anchor monsters even bigger monsters sometimes. I'd let's talk more about Anchor Monster. Um, it's just something about the red light on the camera. Yes, you know, some people would die without the radio, you know, without, but that's what it is. It's not just in, in TV newsrooms, right, Denise? You've talked about the rainmaker, the hedge fund star who makes money but treats people badly. Every industry has some version of that kind of person, like the, you know, the brilliant jerk. Um, what should lead us do when the person creating the most value is also creating a huge amount of damage. Well, isn't that actually the question, like, really, no matter what environment, what show, like the person who creates the most value is creating the most damage. I mean, there's the, is the person at all interested in creating less damage or do they have some psychological need to create damage. Um, there's, you know, I'm always like, what are they feeling? Why are they feeling it? Can I know that? Do they want to know it? Because the problem is basically like we don't need to regulate emotions. We need to regulate behavior. Like what people feel is what they feel. Like, and the more they understand about it, the less they need to like act out onto other people. So I mean, in practicality, that's what I end up doing is helping them understand that whether it's against their team or their market. But like how do we do that in a world that thinks cognition is the most important thing, who, you know, overvalues rationality. Like you're acting out. Because it does something for you. So how do you interrupt that doing? I mean, the research, you all know the research says psychological safety is the most important thing on a team, but like the people leading the team sort of think, OK, well, it doesn't matter, you know, uh, I'm just gonna, I guess you could summarize that and say it's a different approach to both the conscious and the unconscious emotions going on in all of the people, but particularly the leader that's behaving badly. I realized. Yeah I mean I guess what do you do with that, but I. The manager has to be empowered, I guess, to, to be able to make that distinction. Say that again. The manager has to be empowered from the top to be able to make that distinction about a player on their team who is, um, perhaps, you know, helping them meet all their goals, but, uh, but it's making everyone else miserable. Yeah, I mean, I'll say it again, I forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but I think the more we understand how human emotion actually works. It's not this leftover thing from like evolution. It's a real thing with information. We need it now. It's exaggerated and distorted by our past and by situations, but like if, if the workplace began to really understand how emotion works, I think there would be less bad behavior and more strategies to address it. Right. How about you, Brian? Anchor monsters, how do we deal with them and anchor monsters in ice cream shops as well? Yes, right, exactly. Well, you know, I'm thinking about the biggest news this week on my beat is Stephen Colbert signing off The Late Show, and he's been choosing to be so positive. He's radiated gratitude. He has said, I'd rather be grateful for the time I had on air than be angry that it's ending, even though he thinks he's probably the victim of a political hit and he thinks that there's all sorts of shenanigans going on behind the scenes. I really admire that and I found myself wanting to lift that up in my reports because we need those kind of role models, you know, we need, I mean, as someone who was canceled by CNN years ago and now I'm back at CNN, you know, you need role models in every phase of your career, phase of your life, about how to go about living a certain way, and I'm thinking about Colbert as exactly what you want to be. As opposed to I have someone in mind for what I just heard is the opposite about the kind of people who are fearful, who are acting out of fear, who are acting out of, you know, self, you know, protection, but those, but you're right, they're in every company. It just happens to be in my case in television with the morning show where we're dramatizing and making it real. I love that you brought up Stephen Colbert. I think he's actually kind of a great example, Denise, of what you're talking about, about emotion at work too. Like he's someone who you can kind of see his emotion constantly, um, you've said, Denise, that, um, you know, as you just mentioned. Taking the emotion out of it is a mess. And even that some of the emotions we think of as kind of banned in the workplace like fear, desire, jealousy, frustration, you're kind of not allowed to express a lot of these feelings in the in the workplace. What would it look like for a workplace to acknowledge these emotions without excusing bad behavior. I mean. You know, I come from a modern psychoanalytic background, which is not Freud, which is not you did this because your dad did that. It's, it's more about like what's your emotional experience? How do we help you have a different emotional experience, and everyone knows the value of being able to just say how they feel without fear of retribution, like in no judgment, not judging yourself and not judging the person. Like if we literally could give people the ability to talk to someone, you know, maybe it's your group, um, or it's a coach, where they can say what they really think and what they really feel, so they can find the feelings that help them make the decisions in their jobs, like it would be a radical change. It would literally be a radical change because all that happens is the emotion gets acted out. Like that's all that happens, you know, um, it gets, you know. Perpetrated onto some junior person or um yeah. We need real conversa we need to be able to have real conversations and like To take it one step further. My thing is that what we do. Like we need a real conversation about sexual desire and power. It's not as much in millions as it is in the morning show, but like we don't talk about it, you know, all human beings have sexual desire, and ones that have power may misapply that. Like we need to talk about it without judgment. The benefits will be astonishing. Last thought, um, for, for our audience here, HR leaders, um, what should HR leaders take seriously in workplace TV and our obsession with it as audiences, even if we know that it's exaggerated, sometimes satirical or surreal. Hm. I take that first. I was talking a lot. I was thinking you could say, yeah, but I'm learning a lot listening to you. I mean what comes to my mind is that idea that those secrets which eventually always come out and blow up in at least on the morning show, we're showing those blowing up and taking you in ways that are out of control in ways that I find really interesting, you know, but that's in a dramatic way. What's yours? What was the question again? What, what should, what should HR leaders take seriously about how obsessed we are with the drama of workplace TV? Well, that this stuff is actually real. Like we can know that it's dramatized, but like this stuff really happens. So let's like not pretend that it doesn't and then actually think about like, OK, how can we make a difference like. As opposed to just viewing it as entertainment. I mean, it's definitely dramatized, but. Also, we like it because it's real. And there are times where for me as a consultant on the morning show, we've worked on plot lines and ideas that I thought were kind of too outrageous, and then I swear they've come true two or three years later. It is breathtaking how often that happens. I was just in Washington when the dinner shooting happened. And by the way, the HR folks were so good to us afterwards. I was so grateful to work at an institution that knew how to support folks who had been through traumatic stress, but I'm not joking when I say we've talked about one of those plot lines for the morning show, and then I found myself in that ballroom. So it's constantly art imitating life and life imitating art, and so that is why there's a lot we can learn from these shows. Truth is. Truth is stranger than fiction. That's right. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for such a rich conversation.

Pinky Cole, Founder and CEO, Slutty Vegan, Brice Klein, Co-founder and COO, Choppy, Brent Young, The Meat Hook Moderator: Indrani Sen, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Green Cuisine: The Future Of Sustainable Meat

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

Great to see everyone again. Um So we're gonna start uh with a few questions that I have, but as always, I would love to have some questions from the audience. So please think about your uh what you would like to ask our um our our guests here. Um You know, I think everybody knows the companies that you're that you're from, but there you're doing such innovative and interesting work each of you and so different from each other. I'd love to start by just asking you for kind of the 32nd elevator pitch to explain the idea behind your company. Um Pinky, could I start with you? Um You've built an empire slutty vegan based on making delicious vegan food accessible. It's a movement as much as a chain as Brent found out on his way in because he was hearing about it from all the cab drivers. Um And I wonder if you could tell us about the idea that started it for you. Um Great question. First of all, everybody, hello, I got married in this room last year. So this is my first time back here. OK. Um So it feels good. I'm still married. God is good back there. So, um I started this concept in 2018 and at the time I had my dream job. I was a casting director and a former producer for the Maury Show over three years wild. Um But I did a lot of production work. Um And in my two bedroom apartment in 2018 is when I came up with this wild crazy idea. That was so good that I didn't want to share it with the world. And it was creating a concept that would merge sex and food. And I'm like, oh damn, this is a good idea. And from that moment, not even knowing what I was doing, I came up with Flo and in six years, we've graced the covers of almost every magazine. I have 12 plus locations. We've had great partnerships. We built a concept that was just bigger than burgers and fries, but something that rallies the community together and I'm proud of the work that I get to do every single day and it gets ghetto sometimes. Um But the beautiful part of entrepreneurship is we get to do it and inspire people every day. So that's lady loves that. Um I'm gonna go to Brent um The Meat Hook which is a butcher shop in Brooklyn and in the Hudson Valley champions ethical and sustainable meat production. Can you elaborate on your approach to butchering whole animals um rather than buying parts and how that contributes to a more sustainable meat industry. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, Meat Hook is now 15 years old and we are a whole animal butcher shop, which means that we buy whole animals from local farms, butcher them on site and sell them to customers. It's a retail business and it's as simple as that with the simplicity being, you know, the foundation of the business, we wanna know our farmer, we wanna know our customer and we want there to be transparency along the way. Um utilization is the foundation of our business. So we work with regenerative farms. So the product is very expensive. Um It's very sustainable, very ethical. Um But we got to use all of it. It's very expensive. So, um you know, from an entire cow, maybe only 20% of that cow is actual steaks, 50% of it is bones, the other 25% 25 to 30% is ground beef. So with that, OK, what do you do? You make cheeseburgers? So therefore I started a restaurant pork. Same thing. Our specialty is sausages. So what is like the, you know, the through line with all, all of us, we make a whole variety of sausages. If you have an idea, like we probably made it into a sausage. We make a Banh Mi sausage, we make a Philly Cheesesteak sausage. We make a beaten onion sausage and, and uh like all of these things are to infuse different flavors, you know, into the product that we have so that we can sell all of it because we don't make any money unless we sell the entire animal. Um The mission of our company is rebuilding agriculture one cheeseburger at a time. And Bryce, uh Chappy offers hybrid protein options. Could you explain that? And, and then also tell us a little bit about what problem that solves for people who are looking to eat more plant based foods in their diet. Yeah. So we're making products that are like 90% plant proteins, 10% beef fat, bone broth and collagen. And in particular, focusing on kind of the processed meat category and what you get there is you get a product that tastes like it should is high in protein most importantly, pre seasoned and you just have to throw it in a pan to heat it up. And so with that, you're then no longer focusing on appealing to a consumer on sustainability reasons, but you're then able to treat or excuse me, Trojan Horse sustainability by appealing to consumers for actual consumer problems. Things like I've got hangry kids at home. I wanna make a quick case you got a car, I thought I can throw into it. And so trying to again, Trojan Horse, the sustainability problem of food, right? So it might look like we're about to have like a brawl on stage between all these different ways of eating, but there's actually so much in common um between your three businesses, high quality, healthy, ethically sourced food comes at a premium. Um At the same time, customers are experiencing sticker shock in this high inflation era. What are your thoughts on balancing sustainability and affordability for your consumers while also trying to run profitable businesses? Um I can go first. Um Can I be honest? Absolutely, because that's the only thing I can have it any other way. Um The the the plant based world is at a consistent decline just holistically, if you pay attention to the tickers, right? Plant based companies, it's just not in a good space right now. Um And I don't know if it's specifically because the trend a trending like how it used to be, right? Or if you know the the beef companies are like putting out messaging like who knows? Right. But the reality of it is, is as an entrepreneur in a plant based space. Obviously, it's affected us. The reason why I say that is, is because just quite naturally plant based foods are more expensive. So at the height of the business where, you know, pre and pro um right after COVID, we got lines down like every single day, people are willing to pay $18 for a burger. But then when you have all of these plant based companies and non plant based companies, now everybody got a burger and you go to Target and you look on the shelf. And if 10 companies are selling the same thing, there's so much saturation in the market. So now people aren't willing to pay $18 for a burger like they used to because they can get the same thing $3 over here. Or if they can go to Burger King, they can get it for four dollars. So there's been a challenge in trying to navigate through those things and what I've been focusing more on which I've always done. But I'm putting more of an effort on the experience because people pay for good experiences and if you can get people to pay for good experiences, it don't matter what the food costs, what we're gonna promise you is we're gonna give you a quality product, you're gonna be happy when you leave and you'll get the ultimate experience that'll make you wanna come back. Alright. Yeah. Can I um just a um piggyback on that? I feel like um everybody kind of wants to know your butcher and that is why we've started more retail locations because so much of what we do is built on trust. So we can tell the stories of the farms and we can look you in the eye whether you had a really good experience and you had like, you know, amazing short ribs. Ok. Those were fantastic or if your steak sucked, like there might be a reason for like, did it hang long? Did it hang long? Enough. Was there another issue in the animal itself? Like we're here for that? So, um the hospitality experience is very, very important to us. But to answer your question, like, I don't think the prices are going down. Like the beef industry, you know, the big three packers learned that they can control way that we eat meat in this country through COVID and it was maniacal and like really freaking messed up and the way and so those prices aren't going down and beef commodities in general, like you can't grass fed and commodity beef are like calves are the same price, finishing same price. Ok, so like why would you necessarily go grass fed well, because it's better for the environment, it tastes better and you know, it's better for the earth. Ok. The those are, those are great reasons to do it but like the New York Times did a great little article last week about the environmental costs of um lots of foods, but most specifically beef because if, and it's a really easy cool little infographic, please check it out that um the hidden environmental cost. The cheapest beef in Walmart across the United States right now is $5.38. You can't buy anything cheaper than that. The environmental cost is an extra $22. So that actually should be, you know, whatever. I'm not gonna be able to do math on stage. I'm sorry. Thank you so much. That's 20 $27 for ground beef. Like the meat hook, like ground beef is a loss leader for us. Like I keep the price low because I want to have something that everybody can afford. Sausage is the same way. Steaks aren't going anywhere. They're easy to sell, keep selling them. But like the hospitality aspect of making sure that people are met where, where they are at and understand the costs behind it and where their money is going is super important to me. And then my, my thoughts there are that the alternative, the beat industry has made a lot of, I think perhaps missteps in this realm and trying to sell products at a premium under the guise of being more sustainable, which when you have a worst tasting product that's nebulously healthier is a really hard pitch. And so we see there's white space. Then in that we think we need a strategy shift and see a lot of white space again in processed meats, ground beef, heavily subsidized, hard to get the cost on processed meats. There's an upcharge for them because they're more convenient for the end user. So it's easier for us to get to parity. And then also we are solving problems for the consumer and saying, hey, it's convenient, it's healthy and with that, you can have a bit more flexibility in terms of price as opposed to again, ground beef, which is more ubiquitous, ok. Um You know, that people often say you are what we eat, you are what you eat, right? Uh Increasingly food and the food choices that we make aren't just consumer choices. They're becoming kind of central parts of our identity, parts of the tribes that we belong to, whether you're a vegan or a carnivore or a flexitarian. How do you think about and speak to those identities and your customers? Or, you know, you may even, you may dispute the premise of my question also, I'll, I'll dispute it. Uh I like these guys but I, we have so many customers that come in that were, you know, vegan or vegetarian, say my doctor needs, you know, said that I need iron in my, in my diet. I need to introduce something and they're like sheepish to come in. So like we're, we're here for it. Come come talk to us like the all of these solutions need to exist in our food system. Like, you know, I am definitely not a 100% carnivore diet like that's crazy. No, no one caveman didn't eat like that. Like, you know, we've always had vegetables in our diet. So like how can we promote better farming practices to raise cleaner food, not mono crop it but you know, create more biodiversity and better farming practices to raise more high quality food for all of the things that we support. Yeah, I would agree that very much there aren't really these tribes like, you hear a lot of Liver King or Joe Rogan on one side of the spectrum. But in practice people, they just want things that taste good, meet the right nutritional profile and are sufficiently convenient. And if you can meet that, it's great. I was doing a demo at a grocery store in Omaha and sold a bunch of product to a guy wearing a backwards mega a F hat who, you know, ostensibly wouldn't be excited about this, but like was with his family, like our teriyaki steak because it was easy for his family. And so I think where you can provide the value would provide that experience, you can cross party lines. You know, it's interesting. I did a mckenzie brand equity study. Are y'all familiar with? Ok. Um I did a mckenzie brand equity study. Um, and what they said is 70% of the people who come to flooding vegan are not vegan. Right. And I knew that just with my simple math. Um, but, but what's interesting about why slutty vegan has been able to sustain so long is because I'm not attracting the vegan. Right. Right. I don't care if you eat vegan. I don't care if you are a meat eater, if you would like to eat pork. That's your prerogative. I married to somebody who got a chain of meat restaurants. I know it makes no sense. It would be a great TV show, by the way. But the reality of it is, is, uh, it's almost like we've been to the hospital before, right before you go into the back, before they admit you, you go into the triage, right? So everybody slutty vegan is like the triage. So you come as you are and however you come, we will meet you where you are. And I think that that is a part of the reason that has allowed us to just really navigate as a brand because our audience is not, we want the person that's just eating salad all day. That's not a person. We want the person who's eating vegan for the first time and wants to see what the hype is all about. And then when it tastes like the vegan, like, OK, I could do this right. And then tomorrow they can go to his restaurant and then they can go to grocery store and buy some teriyaki uh from him. And, and that is the person that is going to keep the business to continue to grow. And I like to keep it that way. Absolutely. We in our last couple of minutes. Um What do you see as the biggest challenges ahead for sustainable food? And, and also what makes you feel optimistic? I said one of the biggest challenges for us has been funding. Um and uh like we tried our hand at AC PG brand a couple years ago and it was actually a very disheartening um experience because everybody loved the product. We make all of these interesting sausages, like the green chorizo. Cool. My kids will eat this, like, it's bright green. But, um, the only funding available for these products was venture capital funding. And everybody wanted to know, you know, our pathway to 5 million in five years. It was like, we're the exact opposite of the type of agriculture that we're supporting here. So everybody loves the idea. But they just, you know, the finances just don't work like banks, like just don't want to take a big risk on that. And it's slow money and there's some slow money, angel investors out there. But, um, it, you know, when you need a million dollars and someone's willing to lend you 10,000, not particularly helpful, um which is, you know, why I just wanted to start more retail locations so that people know the brand, trust, the brand, know the butcher and hopefully we can see it grow from, from there. I think very much agreed on the funding side. And then that ties in. I think one of the biggest challenges right now is consumer trust. There has been a lot of venture capital or fill in the blank dollars thrown at various companies across the alternative meat landscape, many of whom have not met consumer expects stations. And it's hard to convince people to come back and try something that might be notably better when they've already had a slightly soured experience. And so overcoming that is a challenge. I think things I'm optimistic about are a lot of these kind of more regenerative approaches. There are now many more brands taking that strategy. And then also, you know, there are a lot of somewhat more upstream companies doing things like algae based feed to give the cows to reduce emissions. And so I think there are a lot of compelling solutions across the value chain there. I think the story line is that we all need money. Yeah. Ok. I see. Um very much so. Um I think that uh access to resources and financial resources especially is a lot different today than it was in 2020 21. Would you all agree? Right. People are clutching their money more than they did before. Back in 2021 everybody was throwing out cash, throwing out valuations. It was great like it was a party. But now people are unsure because the economy, there's so much instability that's happening. So for me in my industry here I am, I asked chat GP T by the way, I said, who's the most notable vegan restaurant? And they said slutty vegan. I'm like, ok, cool. I'm cool. But I see all of my peers closing their doors. Yeah. Every week there's a different vegan restaurant closing. So it's a blessing and a curse. The blessing is like, ok, I get to monopolize but the curse is that like, am I next. And it's, it's a hard reality that you have to ask yourself. But it's because people, especially private equity firms and investors. I don't honestly believe that they believe in the plant based movement like they did before because there's not many comps like I am the only cop left, right. So I'm creating a blueprint by, by also trying to make people feel comfortable and it's difficult, but it's worth every step of the way. And I wouldn't stop it for anything in the world. Love that. All right, we're gonna end on that note. Thank you so much to our team panelists and to our audience for engaging.

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