J.S. Held

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<p>Employees say:</p><p>"I believe we have amazing management and colleagues we work with throughout the company. I have met many great individuals working here and developed not only great work relationships but also friendships. I feel valued as an employee which makes it an even better place to work. I also think the way we all come together during major events to work together to get the job done but look out for one another no matter the service line is amazing—we support each other during these high stress times."</p>

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Dennis Woodside has held senior operational roles at Google, Motorola Mobility, Dropbox, Impossible Foods, and now Freshworks, where he is CEO. His breadth of experience raises a pointed question: What actually transfers when the industry, business model, and mission change completely?  In this conversation, Woodside will share which fundamental operational skills proved universal, which demanded fresh thinking, and how the COO role prepared him for the top job. 

Dennis Woodside, Chief Executive Officer and President, Freshworks
Interviewer: Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune COO Summit 

Succession Spotlight: How to Be a Universal Operator and Transcend Industries

Conferences

Dennis does a fabulous haiku. We'll see if you come up with someone on the spot, but let's start. So let's start with FreshWorks. You've had obviously this great background, but you are in the middle of a very interesting area with software right now. So you're doing well. What are you doing right? Well, so FreshWorks, we're a software company. We provide software primarily to two teams customer support and IT. And as such we're right in the middle of the AI revolution for better and for worseification of everything, so changing your cost model and changing every business here. So if you think about customer support, many organizations here probably have hundreds of people in support or IT. You have hundreds of people manning a help desk in the next. Years you might have 1/10 the number of people and most of those kinds of operations questions are going to be handled by AI and that's the software that my company builds at the same time we're that's not 10th the income for you, no. So and that's the challenge is that we come from a seat-based model where we price based on the number of agents that you have. What happens if you have no agents and we have customers that literally have gone to support teams of zero and everything is being handled by AI, so your pricing model changes, your products have to change. There's completely new competition from startups as well as huge companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Many customers here, if you want, you can go to those organizations and build your own software. You couldn't do that a year ago. Uh, so it's a tremendous time of change. At the same time we have the right to win because we've got 75,000 customers. They trust us. We provide software today that actually solves their problems for them. They want governance. They want security. They want control over those outcomes, and that's what we do. OK, so let me, you have been you were a CEO, you're a president really. You're in an operating role and you've been a COO to CEO before. I was talking to another guy this morning who talked about the vision when you're in that COO role and you know that you're going to be in charge, which you did. Did you, um, did you have a vision? Were you going to change things from day one, or was there sort of a tacit understanding that, you know, they were going to start your process once you came on board? Yes, I think it's really interesting, you know, the COO role means different things in different organizations. I was, I was the CEO of Motorola Mobility. We sold it, which meant. I sold it, which meant I sold myself out of a job, and I went to, uh, Dropbox, helped take that public as the COO. Uh, my role there was very much about complementing a very strong founder who, who cared a lot about product and engineering, so I focused on everything else coming into FreshWorks. Girish Mahatra Bin is the founder and CEO for 12 years of the company, also a really strong product visionary and product leader. He wanted to spend all his time on product and engineering. He didn't wanna deal with go to market and sales and finance. And so we just had a clear understanding. I'm gonna focus on the areas that he doesn't wanna, that those happen to be the areas I know the best, and I'm gonna learn from him on the product and engineering side. And if things go well, potentially someday I could become the CEO. But it was a long, you know, there's a lot to do. I had to earn the trust of the board and of. Garish in order to win that job. Well, I think the yin yang of the rule is very interesting, and one of the things I don't think we've actually surveyed who wants to be a CEO here? It's hard to raise your, OK, there's, so there's, OK, and then who's not raising their hand, who's not raising modest and being modest, but you, when you want to be the CEO, what have you learned from your prior experience? that maybe made you better prepared this time around. Well, I think it's important. It's interesting that not many people raise their hands. I think if you have the title target on your back, maybe, maybe I want your job, but if you have the title of COO, you have it for a reason. The board and your CEO decided that you are on a path to being ready potentially to be the CEO. Maybe they didn't say that to you. But that's what the title implies, and I think it's important to recognize for yourself, do you, do you aspire to be the CEO or not? Some people don't, and that's fine, but if you do, you have to act a little bit differently. I think it's important to have a very open conversation with your CEO. Again, based on the trust that you've established, you have to be excellent at what you're doing today. You can't just talk about what you want to do tomorrow, but I think you have to have that conversation. I wanna be the CEO someday. Help me get there. The board needs to understand that the board, the board's job is to make sure there is a succession plan, and the COO can be an important part of that succession plan. So I, I, I found when I was in that role. No one really told me that, uh, and you kind of had to figure it out yourself, but I think it's really important because if you establish that, hey, you know, at some point in time, I want to be ready, you start acting differently. You start thinking differently about your job, and it opens up a whole level of growth that you might not otherwise have. So when you became CEO, especially replacing a founder, was it clear to you what needed to be done differently? Yes, I think that's another thing that's really important as the COO. You know, you have a purview that's probably the largest in the company next to the CEO. I was with the Instacart head of operations. He said he has about half the company reporting in. So you probably know a lot about what's. Going well and what's not going well maybe you know you have a different perspective than the CEO. I think it's important to develop that independent view of where should the business go, have an open conversation with the CEO when there's differences, but also be ready to act so that if you are called into the role, you, you take the company in the direction that is uniquely yours and you're not just perpetuating what was happening before. Even in the best run businesses there are things that you can do differently and better. There are changes happening from the outside, you know, AI is disrupting us, but every business here is going through some disruption. Of different making and you need to understand that and think about well how can we do things better so when the time comes that maybe you do become the CEO you are ready to go. You're not like spending six months figuring out what to do and you don't feel anchored by what was in the past because you have an independent view and you've already talked about it with the CEO. The CEO already knows that maybe you have a different view as to where the company should go, so boom, you move and you take the company forward and that's when I came in as a CEO here. In the 1st 3 months we bought a company, we shut down a couple product lines, and we wound up doing a riff and refocusing the organization, and it's worked and the CEO exited the building, so you didn't have to have them there to help. Well, no, Garris was super supportive. He was on the board for a year and a half. He was the executive chair, which meant that he helped me literally build the next set of products. A lot of the AI roadmap that we have now is because. Girish, he was, he was building AI products six years ago when AI was not a thing yet and so I valued that a lot and I wanted him involved as long as possible. Now he's now focused on his own venture capital fund. He invests in Indian-based entrepreneurs. That's what he wants to do full time. But we're still friends. He literally bought a house down the street from me, and I think that relationship is really important. I know in other situations it's like the old goes out and there's no relationship with the new. I think that's probably suboptimal. So I do want to be aware if you have questions, raise your hand. One of the things I want to talk a little bit about the personal because you also do a lot of Ironman competitions. You've worked at a remarkably eclectic group of firms including Impossible Foods, very different. Give me a sense of how those experiences have shaped the playbook you have as a leader. Well, I think, I think it's important to just other than being fit, we all have to be fit. Yeah, I think it's I like, I like to challenge myself. I think it's important to surround yourself with people who like challenges and like big things. And the great thing about, you know, I've been very fortunate to work in Silicon Valley and The companies that come out of the valley, they typically have very big visions. Impossible Foods was one where Pat Brown, our founder, he, his vision was to completely replace animal meat with plant-based meat, and there's lots of good reasons why that's a good thing for the planet, um, but that's not a small mission, and you know that's not always going to work. It's going to be hard. In that case, food is really hard. It's hard to change consumer behavior. We're a long way from fulfilling that mission, but. But I think, I think people who are attracted to those big challenges, um, like you had Charles from the Navy on, like, you don't, you, you don't, you volunteer to go into a submarine. You do that because you're, you're, you're deciding I want a big challenge for myself and I want to surround myself with people who like those challenges. So I've just always liked to do that. And I've been fortunate that these ideas keep popping up in the valley that keep interesting me, and I'm good at scaling stuff. I could never invent a company myself, but I can help these, and I know you're you're skipping over the Ironman part, but I am curious because I'd say one of the differences in my career in covering CEOs is it is very much now seen as an athletic pursuit in a way that it wasn't. 1520 years ago, I mean, I do want to do that correlation of personal health. How do you think about that? How do you conserve your energy because everybody wants a piece of you? Well, I think there's a couple of things. So I've done, I've done the Ironman 18 times. I usually finish close to the top of my age group. I'm doing 4 races this summer, not a full, but 3 halves in a short race, and And I think it's good to have something outside. It's a lot easier now that my kids are older. When the kids were younger, I couldn't do any of this. But now that the kids are older and out of the house, I think it's good to have something that pushes back against work, like something that where you can think. It's, you know, some people meditate, some people do yoga. I go ride a bike or I go for a run, and that's what I think about things. And I think even if you're not thinking consciously, I think you're probably subconsciously processing what can I do better. I'm going to speak at this event. What do I want to say? And so for me that's always been an important part of my day. I schedule it all in. I collect all the data. Now I'm using AI to plan my, uh, plan my, do my training plan for the year. It's all done on cloud, so I try to mix work and the and the sports stuff in together, and I find it, I just find it rewarding and I like to compete. So that's why I do it. Let's go back to the business and. Especially not just the business you're in and how you are reforming it, but AI generally and the fact that a lot of people are spending a lot of money right now and not seeing the return, you get a frontline view of that. What do you see going on? What advice do you have? Yes, I think so. Recognize how big this is. I think if you're not right in the middle of it. Hard to, it's hard to fathom. We are going to invest $1 trillion in caps and systems and chips for AI. The semiconductor industry has added $1 trillion in market cap in the last year. The software industry, like I said, has gone down by $1.3 trillion. This is a massive transformation. Every business here is going to be affected as the COO. It's your job to figure this out because it's going to define how business is done for the next several decades. It's bigger than the internet. It's bigger than mobile, and it's important to start. Re start acting now in a way that makes sense. Business sense. There's a lot of hype. I guarantee you, a lot of companies are gonna go completely under. You don't wanna partner with them. You wanna find trusted partners that are gonna be around for 10 years that have strong business models that have understand your business and understand what you're trying to accomplish and can drive real business outcomes. But I think if you're the COO, you need to take AI very seriously and personally learn how to use cloud, understand what MCP is, build your own software. You can do all that right now. You do that, of course. I use, I use Cloud. I use Lovable, which is a prototyping app. I send ideas that I've created just on Lovable, you know, in my spare time to the product team, and then they figure out, is this a good idea? It's usually a terrible idea. But um, but I think you have to. Have to walk the walk and talk the talk, and the value of AI is it allows people who don't have deep programming backgrounds to build things and to build tools that you can use internally to build tools that you can ship to your customers. You have to, you have to get your hands dirty on this stuff. And one other thing in the final minute or so we have is you are somebody who also likes to in some ways represent the industry. A COO job is very internal. I mentioned at the start. The narrative around AI, the narrative around software, give me a sense of how important it is you feel to be getting out there and helping to shift that narrative right now. Yes, that's one of the things that you know as a COO you typically don't have to do a lot of your communication probably is internal to your own don't have to deal with the likes of me, no, or investors. You probably aren't, but if you get a chance, spend time with investors, understand how they think because they think very differently than maybe. Than your board does, uh, and, and I think shaping the narrative externally is super important. I probably spend a third of my time on communication to investors, to media, or to the teams internally, and that certainly wasn't true as a as a COO or as a president. Great, please join me in thanking Dennis Woods. Oh wait, do we have what? No, you know what? Can I, um, in 30 seconds just give us a quick comment and then you can continue after. What would you like to say? I wanted to ask a quick question. Is probably not gonna fit in 30 seconds, but, uh, wanted to know you work with thousands of companies that try to automate their operations, right? And I wanted to know from your point of view what differentiates the ones that are successful versus the ones that are not successful, that is a haiku, is it OK. You've got 10 seconds. The ones that are seeing real value have a business leader who's deeply engaged, who says we have a business problem. Let's see if the technology can solve it. The ones that fail, that's vague and unanswered, and that is not you, Dennis Woodside. So there you go. Thank you very much to be continued and thank you thanks for.

Hosted by ROSHN Group  
Around the world, significant strides have been made to increase the number of women in corporate leadership positions. In the U.S., women make up 29% of C-Suite level roles and hold approximately 30% of board seats. And here in Saudi Arabia, nearly 10% of board positions are held by women, a new reality made possible by the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategy and other significant government-led reforms. Even with such progress, untapped opportunities remain in industries where women have traditionally been underrepresented – from construction and engineering to technology and energy. In this special lunch program, we’ll explore the strategies needed to advance women into C-suite positions, create more inclusive workplaces, foster untapped talent, and create a path to parity – not just progress – for women at all levels of business.
Panelists:
Dr. Maryam Ali Ficociello, Group Chief Governance Officer, Red Sea Global
Giovanna Carnevali,	 Executive Director, Master Planning, ROSHN Group
Dr. Saeeda Jaffar, Senior Vice President and Group Country Manager – GCC, Visa
Jena Ladhani, Chief Executive Officer, Global Workplace Solutions, KSA, CBRE
Renée McGowan, Chief Executive Officer, India, Middle East, and Africa, Marsh McLennan
Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Contributing Editor, Fortune

WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP LUNCH PROGRAM: ADVANCING WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Mat dos Santos, General Counsel, Managing Attorney, Our Children's Trust Grace S., Youth Plaintiff, Held v. State of Montana Moderator: Kristin Stoller, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: The Case For Climate Action

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

It's being called a landmark climate lawsuit and the first of its kind in the United States, a group of young Montanans aged 5 to 22 sued the state arguing that it put fossil fuels over their health. The court agreed ruling that the state's actions violated their constitutional right to a clean environment. One of the young plaintiffs and an attorney on the case is going to join Fortune's editorial director, Kristen Stoller in just a moment. But first, we want to hear, we want you to hear from Elizabeth Stern. She's part of the Swiss female climate elders who also won a case against their government for not doing enough about climate change. It's another example of how private citizens across generations and borders are taking climate matters into their own hands and prevailing climate change is affecting women above the age of 75 very strongly during prolonged heat wave. That is the population group that more likely dies prematurely. We are all women who had been activists all our lives. We knew how to fight for our rights in a peace movement and the environmental movement, the women's movement. So what is, what is my message for young people. First of all, a big thank you that they are putting part of their young life, which is meant for learning, for playing around that they have to work on something that should be a given for them like it was a given for me. So to these young people, I applaud you that you want, you are on the winning side and just keep going on to express the message. Oh, all right, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us and great message from Elizabeth Stern. I'd like to welcome Matos Santos General counsel and managing attorney from our children's trust, the legal nonprofit group that brought the case on behalf of the plaintiffs and Grace s who is one of the young plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state of Montana. Now because Grace is a minor. We're withholding her last name for her privacy. So Matt, I wanna start with you. So we just heard from Elizabeth Stern in the Swiss case. Uh Can you talk to me a little bit about how you advise the, the Swiss woman and then how that also relates to your case and give us a brief summary of, of the Montana case. Sure. Um Thanks so much for having us and for allowing us to speak to all of you. It's really a pleasure to be here. Um The, the, the, the case that you just heard about which we colloquially call the Swiss Grannies case is um really remarkable. They said uh a new press in Europe, um looking at human rights from the lens of an incredibly vulnerable population, right, older women who have huge huge um reactions to extreme heat whose bodies may not be able to tolerate um different climate consequences. And that's what we do at our children's trust by representing Children. We're representing one of the most vulnerable populations in the world. Um 2 billion lives, right? 2 billion children's lives are at stake because of climate change. And it's not just because Children born today are going to live with the consequences of our choices, right? For the next 90 years. But it's because for the 1st 26 years of their lives, we know that their brains circulatory systems, lungs are all developing and having climate pollution or extreme heat will have lasting consequences on the rest of their lives. Amazing grace. Why did you decide to get involved? So I first, you know, started thinking about environmentalism early in high school where I was working specifically on like plastics production in my hometown. And during doing research for that project, I read that the US uses fif 50 million plastic straws a day and I was like, that's a little bit more than I can handle on my own. And so I was looking for ways to have a bigger impact. Uh And around that time, I heard about this lawsuit that was happening in Montana and I was like, that's pretty cool. And I talked to my parents and they were like, well, it's probably not gonna go anywhere but it would be a great learning experience. So then I emailed the attorneys and became a plaintiff in this case. Um, and I think that the point here is that I was looking for a way to have a bigger impact. And for me at that time, that meant approaching the government and asking the government to take control to do what they are responsible for in protecting both the environment and their people. You now, do you feel like this case? And I, I guess grace, this is for you too. But do you feel like this case is already creating a, a precedent for, for others? Yeah, sure. And um so I, I think that any time you have a victory like this cases around the world will look at it, right? So even though it's in Montana and it's binding only on the Montana courts. Um Right now, I I know that there are other case cases that are moving forward that are actively citing the held v state of Montana case. And in fact, we had another big victory just this here in Hawaii and part of Hawaii's willingness to come to the settlement table and really reach this like one of its kind um settlement agreement with us where the state of Hawaii has agreed to decarbonize their entire transportation system, not net 00 emissions by 2045 I think is a product of the incredible work. Uh Grace and her co plaintiffs did in Montana and I know we have um some images to illustrate the, the fight that you're going through and, and some of you with Grace as well. But um and here we are which are are great. I love these um Grace. Why do you think it's important to center a case like this on young people? Because we saw with Elizabeth, they centered it on a as Matt calls it the Swiss grannies. What is, what is so important about the youth? Well, you know, I have mixed feelings about this. So I'll give you the full transparent answer here on one hand, I think it's super important to center youth because we are extra vulnerable. We will be around for um many more decades, hopefully. And so that gives us more time to be influenced by climate change, to see our lives changed by this. Um I think it's also I have a resistance to how much conversation we have about centering youth these days because I worry that sometimes we talk so much about giving youth a platform about putting youth, you know, in, in um you know, as part of the, the conversations that we're having that we don't actually listen to what the youth are saying. And I think the message has been very clear from youth for about a decade now, in terms of the changes we want to see, you know, we want to see a mission introductions, we want to see a livable future. And I think that's probably enough to work with for now. I totally agree and I wanna come to the audience for questions in, in just a second. So start thinking of those. Um, but not one for you in the, uh, before that, what are the rami ramifications of lawsuits like this for us energy policy? And what about corporations? How should they be thinking about this? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, in a like a what we're trying to do right through these state cases. And we also have a couple of federal cases here and in Canada and Mexico um is to create a, a clear pathway for green technologies to come in and replace what is a rather entrenched fossil fuel based energy system. So I think that by setting the standard, so we're not. So, I mean, I'm sure folks have heard of the, the cases against the fossil majors that are happening everywhere, both for fraud and other things. Um Our approach is very different. We're trying to enshrine a constitutional right in state and federal constitutions around the world, that is a value, right? That value, meaning like if we prioritize a clean and helpful environment like we did in Montana or a livable climate like we do in Hawaii, that will have consequences on the prices and the priorities that governments and then I think industry make um in developing our energy system. So while it is not a like A to B line, I think it's our, our intention is to create a pathway for any emergent technology to have a viable opportunity as opposed to fighting against just the existing fossil fuel infrastructure. Yeah, if I can jump in here for a second, I think um one of the things I've learned throughout being part of this case, right? Like I said, early high school, I was so confident that policy, that government was the way to have the biggest impact. Uh because, you know, that's what you learn about in high school government classes. But, you know, over the course of this five years that I've been a part of this lawsuit, I've understood firsthand just how slow government processes can be both, you know, bureaucracy and you know, regulation and everything. And also the court system also tends to take a bit. And so I've realized recently, like within the last year, the power of the private sector and especially in terms of your kind of dynamism, how nimble you all can be in your decision making and the the way that you can drive change in our society, whether that's, you know, through public perception of what is, what is right, or whether that's through, you know, working with the government. But I think you have a lot of power or in this, in a way that I didn't understand before. I mean, I thought I was going to go into the government my whole life and within the last six months I'm like, hm, maybe I should take a look at that private sector. So I guess I, I applaud all the work that you're doing and, and I ask that you keep it up and that you set your standards even higher. Yeah. And I can say high school government did not prepare me for, for any of the stuff you learn in the real world. So it's, it's important to get the real life experience. Any, any questions they have here in the audience. Ok. Well, I have a lot more. Um, so I'm gonna ask away. Um, now why do you think tying climate justice to civil liberties is a winning strategy? Why do you think that's so important? Yeah. So you just have to look at the history of our country to understand that, um, like Children and civil liberties and frankly the ability to see sort of what, what is truth, what is justice? Um, all go hand in hand. And a lot of so prior to being at our children's trust, I was at the ac lu where I worked on a lot of issues, um, on behalf of LGBT young people who had been discriminated against, um, immigration rights. Um, and, and one of the things that I think we're sort of seeing is this through line um of all of these various causes going back to, you know, desegregation suffrage where um you know, Children are really at the forefront and often when we are making these decisions, like as a country about our values, we are thinking about our future generations, maybe it's our niece and nephew or grandkid, our, our, our, our newly born daughter. And um and I think that ultimately these that like we should just be listening to them for some of the solutions and some of these intractable problems because folks like Grace, I think have great answers. I see we do have an audience question if you could state your name, title and company too. That'd be great. My name is uh John met with Deloitte. And uh the question I had is, can you talk a little bit about what of what actually was the decision? What, what would be the practical effect? Like what changes in Montana as a, as a result of the decision? Sure. So the district court. So in Montana, there's no middle court of appeals, there's the district court and the Supreme court, the district court in Montana essentially held that the um that their constitute right. Grace's constitutional rights had been violated that the statute that prohibited Montana from evaluating emissions or climate impacts when citing a new power plant um was unconstitutional. So, um the, the very immediate practical effect was the striking down of that statute, which prohibited them from even assessing, um, climate impact when they were doing, uh, you know, citing a new power, um, facility. Um, but they're sort of broader impacts. I think that are, we'll have to see, I think a little bit what the Supreme Court says in Montana. But, um, the broader impact is that, like the judge said, every additional ton of carbon emissions, um, is a constitutional violation at this point because we have already put the dial way past 100 so, um what does that mean for the future? I think that likely means that now every new power facility will have this much higher threshold standard to satisfy before being cited. And children's constitutional rights will be have to be part of the equation when they're making these decisions. And now I think the audience may have also heard of another big case that our children's trust worked on, which was um Giuliana versus the United States. So that was a climate case that spanned a nearly a decade and three presidential administrations. Um which I think is, is absolutely wild. What did you learn from that case that you took into the Montana one? Yeah, I mean, so Juliana is a big federal case that's looking at the, you know, substantive due process clause. Like many of us in this room myself included have rights today that did not exist when I was born, right? I can marry my um partner um who is of, you know, was born the same sex as I was, um which was emerged as a right from the federal constitution in 2015 after the obergefell decision, um Juliana seeks to enshrine this a similar um substantive due process, right? But a right to a livable future, right to a stable climate in our constitution. Um It is, it, you know, one of the things that I think we learned through Juliana was that um you like the federal courts are going to take a long time and that having an effective state by state case strategy. Um And really, we looked at the sort of same sex marriage cases when thinking about this was really something that um we needed to be investing in because in order to move, I think the federal courts, there needs to be a groundswell of movement from the States first grace, what's next week? Because eventually you're no longer going to be a youth activist. Um Where, where are you going to take this and, and your case next? And how are you gonna work to support climate change? Great question. Um Trying to graduate first. Yeah. So that's my plan. Uh my interest now um is kind of almost in reaction to our lawsuit. I've realized, uh you know, the impact that this will have on Montana that I think generally are awesome. But I think a lot of the resistance in the state comes from the fact that our state is traditionally a fossil fuel estate, we are still massive coal producers. Um And of course, I think that needs to change for the climate, but I also see the impact that that will have on our communities. Right. And so my interest now is how do we uh go about these energy transitions in coal communities and ensure that these places will still be around afterwards? Right? Because we have this mine in Montana in Butte Montana, which you may have heard of that massive copper mine and when the mine shut down, the city was just decimated. And so I want to make sure that that doesn't happen for these Montana communities. And so now I'm looking at, you know, this concept of a just transition. Um but particularly for rural, um native communities, places that are often not considered in this uh utility driven uh transition. And that for you, we're, as we all very much know, we're in the midst of a another election. Um How are you looking at, uh what could happen next month and how that could affect your, your future cases and the one that you have going on right now? Yeah. Um, the panel this morning was interesting. Um And sorry, uh I, I, you know, I look, we're gonna be one of the things that's true about our children's trust is that we've litigated no matter who's in office, right? Because governments today have basically invested in this fossil fuel infrastructure that had, you know, for the last 50 plus years, while many of them very actively knowing about the consequences. And so, um in some ways, it is uh not important to us, um who's in office because our cases are really about these, you know, like, how do we change the future of what is, um, you know, about our, like our constitutional values, how do we, how do we use our values to change our future decisions? Um But at the same time, of course, it's important, right? Like the, the person who holds the, um I think somebody said yesterday that, you know, people take their cues from the government, um which I, I think it was the mayor of Atlanta actually said that, that people can take their cues, their government. And I think it's so true. And so if you have somebody in office who's an active climate denier, um I, I think that's a problem. I think that's a setback for us and it makes it harder to have these conversations, whether we're having them around, uh you know, a conference like this or at the dinner table with our, our friends and neighbors, um or in the policy arena. And so, you know, of course, um uh you know, I, I have my, my hopes and dreams about the outcomes of the election um that I can't talk about because I run a 501 C three. and, but, uh, but yeah, that's, um, but I, but I think that, but it really does matter. It does matter quite a bit. And I would like to add that it shouldn't. Um, because I'm from a state that, you know, now is, is solidly read. But historically has been able to blend this idea of conservatism and conservation which you might notice, have the same root word there. And so I, I think it's um important to recognize that climate has been politicized. Obviously, I'm hoping you all have thought about this before. Climate has been politicized. But, but it, it does doesn't have to be right. It doesn't have to be a political issue. It's about rights, it's about economic progress. It's about how we're gonna come out of this challenge ahead of where we are now. Um And I'm, I just want to acknowledge how sad it is that it's been taken into that political arena with such um venom attached to, to that conversation. Well, very well said and thank you both so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Yes.

For years, celebrities have held director seats and provided expertise within boardrooms.

Are celebrities valuable to boardrooms?

Leadership

there are some growing trends in terms of celebrities that come into the boardroom, I'm here sitting on this board because I love the brand, I love the story, I love the people, I love the lives that you guys change. We see so many examples these days, you know, I always need to be a kodiak fan, I know how valuable it is to maintain a ritual focused on staying well. They want to have celebrities that their directors or even investors or even angels to their, it has been shown that it can generate some positive responses from external stakeholders, such as investors, given that they decided upon this particular celebrity and they decided to appoint them to the board. How does the stock market react when they publicly announced? I'm really excited, join Passmark because it really speaks to my core values and we basically find a positive reaction to that. It's even more favorable when the individual has what we call related business experience, it's not like just a flash in the pan where bang, we announced the appointment of celebrity to the board. The market likes that there's an uptick in stock price, we find that there's some sustained growth and sustained returns provided to the firms. In these modern corporations, boards are like the centerpiece of corporate governance mechanism, you know, these directors are appointed to act on behalf of shareholders and they served several roles right, monitoring the executives, they have to provide advice or resources through their networks um or expertise to the management and they are involving in important strategic decisions. So some of those celebrities can be, you know, business people um like Margaret Whitman formal ceo at HP who was serving as a director at Ebay. We know that Oprah Winfrey is also a director at weight watchers. Maybe you have a celebrity director that helps increase awareness of the company, You have a good finance person, you have a good accounting person, you have a good HR person, you have some with industry skills, that's a portfolio of skills, I suppose everyone having the same skills in papa, john's O'neill is appointed as director which had a significant impact and really, you know, when these celebrities are appointed um they can be a better ambassador almost um because um communicating strategic decisions, it's not always easy consumers or investors, they want to hear those strategic decisions, but you know, it would be better communicated through celebrities rather than through say, annual reports. You are able to do investor attention, invest their interest to the company, you're able to increase its visibility. That is an important contribution to the firm, but also at the same time, you know, appointing these celebrities is a little tricky in terms of effectiveness. The celebrity factor on the board may create a culture within the board that becomes ultimately dysfunctional. Start factor has a certain aura that may Intimidate other directors from really the full discharge of their fiduciary responsibilities. There is that attendance issue for example, J. M. Smucker noted that their celebrity director Nancy Lopez is a professional culture is the only director to attend less than 75% of the all board meetings in 2018 and similarly should kill O'Neill also attended less than 75% of board meetings at Papa John's in the year after joining the company. And so there are definitely more room for these celebrities to be part of corporate America. You're putting context without the other business people, other leaders that may open up opportunities in directions that you don't normally have or would be engaged with. And by bringing in those celebrity individuals as directors, it can signal that, you know, these firms are capable of bringing in those individuals and also there could be some positive spillover effect or halo effect coming from that.

J.S. Held

J.S. Held in Fortune Rankings

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