Shield AI

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Autonomous drones and pilots are flying places humans cannot go, while national security increasingly depends on data as much as force. Two prominent founders of defense tech unicorns discuss how Silicon Valley and the Pentagon are rewriting rules in a rapidly evolving (and unstable) geopolitical landscape. Where will AI redefine deterrence, surveillance, and battlefield autonomy fastest? Where is tech making progress on the challenges that the U.S. defense establishment faces––and what remains elusive?

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Hello again. Tara, Gary, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be here. Thanks for having us. So let's start really big picture, um, what are the biggest challenges of selling to the largest bureaucracy in the world? I don't think we have enough time for that question, Ali. Uh, I'm happy to start, although, Gary, I bet you have plenty of war. I do it, you can do it. I believe, um, it's speed and it is the restraints that are placed on federal government buyers and the ability to take great ideas, smart people who work in government who are trying to do good things and. Help them break through the bureaucracy and access funding. You know, we spend at least 6 months out of every year under a continuing resolution, meaning that year's budget hasn't even been granted yet, so it really compresses the ability of time to be able to drive this change and get that deal closed. Yeah, and I think about it internationally. I don't think about just the US government. I think about global governments and how we can better serve warfighters around the world. And the one thing that's really obvious and the thing that gives us passion every day is like how do we put better tools in the hands of warfighters and really make a difference. And the good thing is I think there's an understanding that it has to get better, and I think there's a lot of well-intended motivated people to try to make it better, but. As Tara described, like we're at the beginning of that journey to see radical improvements, and those radical improvements are absolutely required. And you think about everything you guys have heard here, the rate of change that's happening, which is super exciting, you need that rate of change to actually land in governments around the world, and they need to see the positive effects of that technology change. We're actually just coming off of one of the biggest defense conferences of the year where there was a lot of messaging around this. The Pentagon is saying things like it's time to move to wartime footing, for example, and really accelerating rates of adoption. How much of that is real and how much of it is theater? I'll start, um. I think there's very good aspiration to do something fundamentally different, but we're, it hasn't flowed all the way down into the bureaucracy. The one place that I would say it's happening every single day is in the Ukraine. So at SHIELD we have employees deployed in the Ukraine working alongside the Ukrainians leveraging our technology to get better outcomes against the Russians. And what we see there is this total agility where something works one day, you get feedback, engineers work overnight, we get them fixed, and it's back into the battlefield. And I think that agility, I think everyone's watching it around the globe. Everyone's watching really closely what's going on in Ukraine, and it's that agility and ability has constantly changed. It has really been one of the most important aspects of Ukrainian defense, and I think we as a nation, the United States, need to be better at that. Agility because that's the way the next conflict is going to get fought. I think building on those great points, a big part of what Secretary Hegseth's message is and what the US national security apparatus is trying to do from a move to wartime footing push is to really catalyze the American industrial base and drive production because much like we've seen in Ukraine, the reality of A future war that the United States is likely to enter is going to deplete stockpiles that are already anemic today because of what we are supplying to allies and partners around the world and rightly so because it protects US national security interests as well. Unfortunately those stockpiles are low enough and the United States has outsourced so much manufacturing capacity. At this point that the amount of time it will take to build the munitions and weapons systems that the United States needs is just much, much too long. That's why we have to get on wartime footing now, especially through the lens of the industrial. How long is too long? What are we talking about here? I mean, a lot of war games will show that in a notional war with China, the United States is out of munitions in 7 days. Whether you think 7 days is realistic or you think well maybe the beginning of the war will play out differently, you're still operating in things like days, weeks, or months, and the reality is when you look at Chinese war doctrine and the Chinese Communist Party's. Significant amount of time and attention spent studying, going to war with the United States. They are planning for a very protracted conflict and would be happy to draw that fight out to bleed American stockpiles dry because they aren't missing the economic piece of this puzzle. I'd be curious from the audience who here would say they're sort of familiar with the state of defense tech. Raise your hand. That's not that many actually, um, so I think it's maybe important to say, um, you know, I'll start with you Gary since you brought up Ukraine. I know SHIELD has been deployed in Ukraine had technology has been deployed in Ukraine. Um, what have you learned on the ground there and how much did the war in Ukraine change the state of defense tech? I think that the conflict there informed the way conflicts can be fought. There's a lot to be learned, but there's, I think, a conflict with the US would be different. But one, it's dominated by autonomous systems, whether it's one-way attack drones or more sophisticated autonomous systems. You're just not going to put. Warfighters at risk if you don't have to, and both the Ukrainians have learned that the Russians have learned that the speed of change is incredibly high because certain tactics work and then you have to regroup quickly. So one of the very simple examples is GPS is basically denied 100% of the time and comms are denied, meaning that if whatever weapons system or aircraft you had that was dependent upon comms or GPS. It's just not going to work in that conflict and so you learn and that could be life or death and that could be life or death, and it could be life or death for sure. And so being able to respond to the actual conditions on the battlefield have been absolutely critical and I think through those experiences for people like Shield, if you think about it from a product development perspective, you get a whole lot smarter about how do you drive. The innovation cycle and the iteration cycle that's absolutely necessary to ensure that you're delivering something to deliver mission outcomes and so I think Ukraine has really. Shown that you can be agile, that you can use lower cost kinds of lower cost kinds of systems, and that you can iterate quickly and get real outcomes, and I think that's that's so important in the world that we're living in today that is under so much change. And Tara, how has Ukraine affected defense tech from your perspective and particularly how you think about readiness? Well, I think that it has shown the urgency that we all feel in sort of an abstract way in terms of just how quickly those learning cycles have to happen. So today the. The United States is in a readiness crisis. Our weapons systems and military platforms have historically low operational availability, which basically means if we need to go to war, half the fleets sitting in depot or at dock. In what we've seen in Ukraine is that adaptation is probably the most important skill and so what we are doing as a company at Gvini is using data and software and AI in order to try and bend that curve on readiness. And I think to Gary's point, it's both making sure that you have the right set of systems, many attritable lower cost systems, and addressing that cost curve. Today in the United States we'll use a $20 million missile to shoot down a $2 million drone overseas. That doesn't work and it shouldn't work for US taxpayers. So how do we increase military readiness and also start to think about what the conditions of the future of warfare will look like and ideally this we sort of take for granted in the United States, but ideally do it in a way that this country can afford for the long term. And when you think about AI since we're at Brainstorm AI, um, how fast is AI being adopted in the military right now? Over the past, I would say 12 months, much, much, much faster than we've ever seen before. What's spurring that on? I think a lot of it is a combination of a maturity of technology and frankly a presidential administration that wants to work with tech and once you open the doors to tech industry and of course credit to the tech companies. For saying we want to support the defense mission and US national security, that's what happened first is the the company showed up, then the investors moved in and said, OK, we're in this too, we'll give you the capital to be able to develop your products with a national security or military application. And for a while the Pentagon was still like, yeah, we're not sure what to do with you, and we don't know if we can trust you. Aren't half of you gonna go out of business and, uh, and what we've seen over the real side eye there, yeah, exactly, and the reality is actually 95% of companies will go out of business, but the 5% are gonna change the world, and I think that's. Exactly the appetite that this administration has, which is let's find the 5% that are gonna drive this significant change and uh try and reduce risk in acquisition. I'm sorry, accept more risk in acquisition in order to reduce risk operationally. What about you? And, and I agree with Tara in that. It feels a lot better, but we are still, we have so much more to be done because there is so much opportunity, and I, I look, one of the things I'm most excited about is. The fact that AI will fundamentally transform the aerospace and defense industry, it, it's going to look different in 20 years than just radically different than it does today. You're going to have lower cost systems, AI led, software-led, um, not these super expensive. Incredibly elaborate systems that just get shut down and so I, I think there's a revolution happening and we're at the very beginning of that journey, um, as Sarah said I think the administration is really open to this, but we're, we're 9 months into that so a lot more to, a lot more to come on that front and we've got to move faster. We're going to open the floor to questions, um, but I am curious, uh, you know, the Pentagon is famous for moving slow. Silicon Valley is famous for the phrase move fast and break things. What is the biggest cultural clash between tech. And the Defense Department. We get to wear jeans. No, I, I think, I think, um, risk tolerance is the biggest clash and um. I mean, I'll use a company that isn't here on stage, but you know I certainly think highly of as an example. Look at the recent coverage in the Wall Street Journal of ARR and highlighting the failures of that company as sort of a way to put a wet blanket, what I would characterize as a way to put a wet blanket on what's happening in defense tech and what I think that story actually. Highlights is the reality that in technology when you are starting to really do innovative things that are brand new you're gonna see a lot of failures and that's totally fine so long as you're learning from them rapidly and adapting your own businesses and making products better and in the national security sphere especially around the US military. Risk tolerance is exceptionally low and frankly for quite good reasons you mentioned it earlier, Ali. This, this is all life and death and so I think both sides are genuinely trying to figure out what's the right balance of that when the money we're throwing at this innovation and experimentation is taxpayer money, so we have to be responsible about it and these are. Serious systems with very serious outcomes, we have to be able to rely on their lethality on the battlefield. And yet if you only ever play in the safe space and you don't take some risks and you don't embrace some of that failure, we're going to continue falling farther behind. And so that's the biggest clash that I see. Yeah, and I can give you a slightly different perspective, but building on that. So one of the things I'm most excited about, so at SHIELD we're building a next generation autonomous warfighter. So what is that? That's what does that mean? That's a plane that takes up vertically, lands vertically, flies long distance, 2000 nautical miles. OK, carry's munitions, like they would be the same. Same that you would see roughly on an F-35, 1/10 the cost, lifetime cost of an F-35. But what's exciting about it is if you think about the people that had to build the F-35, their number one thing is about not killing the pilot, right? Making sure that in all circumstances you're not going to kill the pilot. In our world, we're building an autonomous aircraft. We can go hard and crash. And try things that you wouldn't be able to try if you're engineering with a human pilot because you're going to be safety is going to be your number one priority in this world where it is autonomous, you can cycle fast. So think about the agility mindset in engineering and being able to try things, experiment, and, and iterate fast. What's also different about this next generation of young companies. Is we're raising private capital so it's not on the, it's not on the taxpayers' back that we crashed one day. It's, we have to be, we have to be prudent to our investors we have to be prudent and thoughtful to our investors, but that speed of iteration is what ultimately creates value and shareholder value for investors and you can be aligned on that, but it's very different if you're using government money and poor tax papers watching some auger into the ground. But I love this. Fast agility, test fast, go fast, and drive innovation that looks fundamentally different than what we've seen because you're not focused on, oh my God, we've got to protect the pilot. Do we have a question from the floor? We have time for exactly one. If not, I have one final question. Yes, please, name and company, and you're bringing us home. Hi, my name is Margaret Tong, and I'm uh building an AI agent to automate planning for aviation programs. So as someone from aviation background, I'm just curious about, um, like you mentioned, safety and risk is a very big um concern in our industries. So like, what kind of regulation, um, restrictions or challenges are you facing right now? And do you see that, um, As something that is like overwhelming you, like you said, like it's pulling us back from like letting AI to do more things for us, or actually it's something that we do need those safety guardrails to make sure that, for example, in terms of like cybersecurities, when we get hacked or electricity just gets stopped, like hacked by foreign countries, like um how do we make sure the safety is still in place when we have AI to do a lot for us? Sure, I think. So as we think about the broad profile of delivering final autonomous aircraft, we have to think through all aspects of safety, um, including cyber so what is that? Software development cycle, how do we ensure that we haven't, that we're tamperproof, that there hasn't been something that has, um, taken over the code, and one of the things that people think about is, oh, somebody's going to press a button and the drones will fall from the sky. It doesn't really work like that, um, and so, but that is a concern, and I think for us the burden is on us to demonstrate that we have safety throughout the process, whether it be cyber safety or flight safety. But we use a very strong path of iteration to test and ensure that we can deliver on those qualities and then we certify against a set of um kind of classic certifications that are absolutely required to give our customers comfort that we can deliver on those values so it's a very high priority it registers. Um, as probably the most important thing we do, but we don't operate with the mindset of killing human pilot, which has held back a lot of the speed that has traditionally been needed in this industry. We're out of time, but one word for what the future of war looks like, Gary. Autonomous Chaotic. Thank you guys so much.

As AI takes hold, so do the risks for the next generation. In this important conversation, filmmaker and children’s rights campaigner Baroness Kidron joins WeProtect Global Alliance founder Baroness Shields, OBE to explore how AI is impacting childhood – and what we must do to protect it.  

Who’s Protecting Our Kids from AI?

At the Fortune Global Forum, Brooke Shields discussed the 2024 election's impact on women, Donald Trump's influence on women's rights, and evolving beauty standards with Fortune Magazine's Editorial Director Kristin Stoller. The veteran actress, known for confronting her early sexualization, shared insights and advice for her Gen Z daughters.

Brooke Shields Finds Her Voice in the Beauty Industry: "I Have All the Control Now"

At the Fortune Global Forum, Brooke Shields discussed the 2024 election's impact on women, Donald Trump's influence on women's rights, and evolving beauty standards with Fortune Magazine's Editorial Director Kristin Stoller. 

At the Fortune Global Forum, Brooke Shields discussed the 2024 election's impact on women and evolving beauty standards with Fortune Magazine's Editorial Director Kristin Stoller. 

I actually have all the control, which took me a while to get comfortable with and even saying it, if you really think about how indicative that is of where we all are at this stage, I believe as women, you know, I never had a say, right. I have grown into finding my own agency. That's what I teach my girls. Brooke Shields is no stranger to the scrutiny of the public eye. She has been in the spotlight for decades as an actor and model, famously as the face of controversial Calvin Klein ads in the eighties last year. She was featured in a documentary chronicling her sexualization at a young age. I'm amazed and I survived any of it. I spoke with Brooke at the Fortune Global Forum about what the recent election means for women, society's evolving beauty standards and what advice she has for her Gen Z daughters and other young people. So Brooke last year, you were the subject of a two part Hulu documentary series Pretty Baby after the elections. How are you thinking about the role misogyny has played in politics? What advice do you have for women going into the next few years, I think, listen, misogyny has been around forever. Um I think the importance is not trying to obliterate it, but really focus on how our response is, where, where are we responding and how are we responding as a community? You know, how we being smarter, how, how are we responding in ways that will be good for our daughters and in ways that don't have to come from a place of vitriol or anger, but from resolve and power. And I think that if we come together more as even more as a community that will help us, I believe, shift enough so that the narrative is something that we are, we are owning. What advice are you telling your daughters about owning their womanhood going into this? It's a lot of conversation about everything from their sexuality to how they're spoken to, to how they all feel they love, talking about all of this. And I just try to maintain a certain level of integrity in how they talk about it because I think there is anger and I think there is this desire to be heard. And luckily now the younger generations have a voice that is heard. I say, you know, be careful because you don't want to just played by the same rules and then it's angry and there's vitriol and there's no movement. So I say be strong, be resolute in what you believe, but you don't have to lower your standards and succumb to um to, to a language that is not that you don't want to be represented by earlier this year, you launched your hair care line commence. There's a lot of, you know, celebrity beauty brands out there these days, a celebrity tequilas, a celebrity skincare and beauty. What do you think separates commence from all of the noise out there today? That was always our biggest, our biggest, biggest discussion and dilemma. And I think that what I said was, I'm not, this is not just another celebrity brand, but I am also a celebrity who has held up everybody and their mother's bottle of something over the years. And it's given me an entire career and a life, right? So I can't be a hypocrite. But what I believe the approach that we have is that we are, we began as a community. We are a community that, that the dialogue that is it is that informs everything we do comes from through and with the community, we maintain conversation with them. I do it personally. Um It's a full time job. We don't want to grow so exponentially and so fast and so and, and thin ourselves out. We want to be absolutely focused, we want to maintain our mission, our vision and then through that, if we, if we go into product, which we never planned to, they will be very specifically formulated products that solve problems that women over 40. And in this community are experiencing. So that involves so many different steps and you have to be able to start small, stay small and grow again exponentially. But with our feet solidly on the ground at every stage and we've had to pivot and we don't want to lose the community in those pivots. Um And it's hard. We're very small. We're a start up, um it's self funded and now we're going into a bridge round before a series and, you know, we don't want to immediately become backed by the biggest ever because we don't want to lose the DNA or the community. I think one of the things I find most fascinating about you as a, as a person is that for your whole life, you've been the face of many different products, but without much input, now you're finally getting to have a say in it. So how does that feel? And how much control do you have here? I actually have all the control, which took me a while to get comfortable with and even saying it, I think that I've spent my life. But if you really think about how indicative that is of, of where we all are at this stage, I believe as women, um you know, I never had a say, right? I have grown into finding my own agency. That's what I teach my girls. But having that voice standing in my full self as kumbaya as that sounds. That is that is what is happening within the brand. So when my formulator calls me and asks me a question and I have very clear specific. I don't have to look over my shoulder and say, can I say this or you know that feeling that we as women ask for permission? You know, there is this, I don't have to ask for permission to anybody. I ask for advice. I ask for information, I ask for their expertise and I surround myself with experts in their field. Therefore I can have my opinion and then I can get more educated and they'll say, oh, well, why don't we do this first? Because there's this and it'll be whatever, whatever the answer is, whether it's regards the company as a whole or any specific product that we go into, how has the definition of beauty and beauty standards changed over your lifetime? Well, I think it, I think it keeps changing, but I think youth and obsession with youth and turning back the clock, I don't think that's really ever changed and that's what we're trying to address as well that, you know, it's, it's important to have that not just be the goal, it's important to feel really good about yourself. I think there's more emphasis today on um individuality, not just diversity but individuality within our own beauty. And I, I don't know if you ever saw the Dove campaign, but I, I mean, I literally, it brings tears to my eyes and I watch it at least once a month, the way we see ourselves versus the way others see us. I think that's starting to become a really important part of the conversation because we, we self deprecate. We take down, we strip, we point out the one teeny flaw and becomes our whole person and I think that is changing as well. So I think there's an individual perception of beauty that we've grown into and it's more, it's more acceptable and advertisers and brands and companies are having to follow suit. Now pivoting a little bit earlier this year, you became the president of the Actors Equity Association with all you have going on. What was I thinking? Why did you want to do it? And what did you want to change the theater community across the country? Regional theaters, little theaters and little like they were the only community and industry that welcomed me with open arms, zero judgment appreciation and trust in my talent. And from that, and I know this was at a time when if you were a celebrity in any way and you were recognizable, you weren't considered a thespian or an actor and they didn't make fun of me, they didn't put me down. There was this just unbelievable community that I relied on. I relied on the stage managers, I relied on the ensemble. I, you know, I relied on the understudies and the, and those who know better than I did. And I've, after 30 something years of being not just on Broadway in six shows starring in them, but all through, all over the country touring as well as straight, straight theater, straight plays, not just musicals, I thought, you know what? They're being so mistreated and they're getting the raw end of so, so much, um, with regards to arts funding, with regards to tax parity, like there's so much that when you look at it and you break it down and these are my people and my friends, my family that, that had my back, you know, and pulled me up when I needed it most. And there's such talent and there's such integrity in, in all of our members and I felt my visibility was what they needed. So when you're saying, you know, as, as a celebrity, you can pick up these phones and have these conversations with people in DC. What is the top thing that you want to push for to see change? Listen, it's always funding, you know, it's always arts funding, it's always, there are so many little things that in 2017 got kind of dissolved for a regional theater in, in, in Bucks County or wherever. And you see these, these people who, this is what they want to do with their life and they have other jobs and when you look at the economic value, it's something like average $39 per person per show. That gets put back into the community community. But you have to have these conversations on the hill with in terms of economics because nobody's interested in the touchy feely part of how the arts bring us together or how, you know, I can tell you when I was miss us O and I was performing on aircraft carriers in Beirut, what that did to morale and the joy and the reprieve for a moment that these young people were so thankful for. Yes, I can do that. That, but that's one little conversation. We're talking about the economic importance of arts funding. So it's not just, oh, we, so we're paying for entertainment, is that it, or to follow a dream? No, it's about jobs. It's about the economics and it's about, and it's about joy and community and bringing people together and that's what we need as a people and as a country.

Brooke Shields, Actress, NYT Bestselling Author, and Founder, Commence
In conversation with: Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

Brooke Shields on the role misogyny played in the election: “I perpetuated it”

Thank you, lie. And thank all of you for being here in Brooke, especially. Thank you for being here and getting miked in the bathroom. I, I live downtown and I, you always forget how long it takes. Yeah. Iii I was born in the city and you'd think I'd learn always the, I guess you so thrilled you're here. You have had quite the year. Um So in 2021 you founded an online community called Beginning is now, um Now that's morphed into commence and you launched a hair care line this year. So tell me about it. Why was launching this line so important to you? So it, it's, we've, you know, like any start up, you sort of have to learn how to pivot and it, when we went through a few different machinations because it started off with it just being a community because I wanted the dialogue to start with women. Um I was really dismayed that at 5455 I'm 59 now, but I was, I started to really come into my own just as a woman and my kids were pretty cooked and they were leaving and, and you know, I sort of come to this sort of revelation that I liked myself and that I had a lot more to do and I felt stronger and prettier and I, I wasn't, I didn't compare myself to other people. There was this sort of just buoyancy that I had. I always said I felt like the Macy's Day parade. Thanksgiving when you're just being, like, blown up and you feel like you're, yeah, that was the way I used to be now. I'm just a good flying, uh, you know, whatever balloon. Um, but there was this feeling of, wow, I'm ready to start my life now because so much of my biological journey had been put in front of me and, and you had deadlines that all of a sudden and I was so dismayed that the marketing, marketing beauty, uh, what I was getting the message I was getting back was you've had a good run, you know, you're, you're good, you're good. And, and so why don't you just take, you know, go, I listen, I wanna learn to play mahjong. I really do. But that was the message I was getting, which was like, why don't you just go, go start a reading club or something? And, and it was this dismissive sort of once your ovaries didn't work, you somehow lost value. And it made me very upset. So I thought, ok, I can't be the only one feeling this way. Why am I not allowed to feel beautiful and sexy and, you know, these are wrinkles but they, they come from smiling, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna do peels and do whatever I can to sort of feel my best. But I'm also gonna work out and eat well, like all those things. And I, so I started this company called, this, uh, community called Beginning is now during COVID and we amassed an audience so quickly of like minded women who, who said they were in this place of confidence in their life, but they weren't being, it wasn't being supported by the beauty industry or by just the way we talk about everything is anti aging. And then we started talking about menopause and everybody thought, oh, that's revelatory. And then we came, we went to, we're just menopause. And so it was, I said, why are we either the hot girl at the bar or we're in pens like, yeah, it's like that are dentures. It's like, I was like, wait a minute, there's a bracket in here that's sexy and beautiful and strong and accomplished and, and, and financially hopefully at least secure um and independent. And we've done, we've worked at companies, we've left jobs, started jobs, raised families and we did, it just grew and very quickly I realized that they did want to buy something. And I kept saying, I don't wanna monetize you or this feeling, right? I want us to stay a community but I wanna understand really what your challenges are. And it started, the conversation started around um hair changes, scalp changes, beauty changes. Um I don't like the word dry and that's the word we keep getting associated with after a certain age. And so I, there were all these little, little things that I said, you know, maybe we do need to go into beauty and I didn't, I resisted it. And then I realized if I was very specific, if the whole company was geared towards keeping the conversation with the community open, we would do these zooms with 50 women all over the the world. And when you saw such a swath of, of women and, and socioeconomically and just the way their lives looked. But the through line was this sentiment about feeling powerful and confident and wanting, but wanting solutions to problems that they were facing without them being anti aging. You know, that makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that I find so interesting about you is that you've been the face of products you forever without much input into what's actually no, this is, I hold it fine. I don't know. How does it feel to, to take back that power and how much do you have power over this? I have all the power um which is an amazing thing to say. Um And when you are a smaller company and we work directly with the chemists where you're not bound to the rules that when you're with a huge, huge company, if you're backed by a PNG or something like that, they have minimums that you can use with regards to active um active in their products. So, you know, and too much of a good thing isn't always good. I mean, we saw that with recent companies, especially with hair and so I work very closely with the formulator and for instance, with the instant shampoo and I said also, I don't want to all of a sudden proliferate this, this thought with a million skews like I don't want it to be more complicated. I want it to be streamlined and I use a lot of different things. I, I, you know, I have a one eye cream for this and one eye that and I don't have uh it's a me, it's a mess in my cabinet, but I'm always searching. So I wanted this to be clear and solution based. And so we made sure that all of our actives are, you know, at a three or a four or five perhaps. Whereas a company that very, very big can say, oh put a 0.00000% of Hyaluronic Acid in that product. And we can just put it on the label and it, nobody knows the percentage. So I wanted to start with an instant shampoo because if I get like a good blow out like I just like this. Yeah. Um I wanted to last, I plan not to wash my hair for at least four days. Um And yet I wanna be able to clean my scalp without drying my scalp. So we formulated um an instant shampoo which is a rice powder. All of our products are formula of plant based, but I said you have to have a moisturizing component. Hyaluronic acid is a molecule in and of itself that is too large for your pores on your scalp to absorb your skin can. But so we needed to find and it's impeded by a pair, you know, with the follicle. So we found a way to quadron it and, um, bring it down to its smallest form one that is acceptable to a, to your scalp and we encapsulated it. So I always think of it like little M and MS, but they're like little army. They're doing like an army crawl and they, if they call it, it's so funny in the lab, they call it a smart product because what it does is the rice powder absorbs the extra sem and, and sweat and everything. And then the, um, Hyaluronic acid actually delivers moisture to where your scalp is dry. So that was the first product that we came up with. And I just wanted to do one product. I wanted to do a Hero product and that was it. And that proved a bit difficult with minimum. And and with the lab. So we ended up, started starting with just three products and you clearly researched it a lot. I'm obsessed with this stuff and you go to the lab and all you have to do is be, like, be interested and they love talking to you. Our lab is in New Jersey. We're all entirely in the US. The only thing full disclosure is the packaging is from China. We can't afford to do it here yet. Um And it's all recyclable except for the spring on the pump. There's full disclosure, there's everything you have to be like we we we, you know, they ask you all these are you green? We are as much as possible doing it all the right way. So disclosure later, but also, you know, what's hard is I don't wanna now just be a hair, a hair care company, right? So it's, it's a balance. You can abandon the community. The community is why we're here. The community informs us. Um you know, skin care, I think there's a glut to it. I I think there's so much of it, it terrifies me. I don't know if I'll ever go into it. Um You know, color cosmetics is its own world. I don't, that's not my, where my motivation is, my motivation is eyebrows. Um You know, I've been talked about my eyebrows for my entire life and that is and this hair like so there are certain organic offshoots that we can, the goal is not in my mind when I hear lifestyle II I, it, it has gotten a, it has become a very often used term and I get, I think it's confusing and I don't wanna fall into that trying to be everything to everybody. So it's a, it's a delicate balance. It's much harder, you know, it's easier to be one and then sort of have the other but to start as a community and morph into or not morph into, but grow into um selling anything product, anything you have to be really, really, really careful. So we just brought a new uh board member who was the president um of Victoria's Secret. So he is now left there and he's um on our board. And so I'm bringing in top beauty people, but also top people in, in community building and strategy and marketing. And Brooke, speaking of community, I know there's a lot of powerful women in this room. I know I've chatted with a lot of people who have watched your, your documentary last year. The subject of a two part uh Hulu documentary titled Pretty Baby. Um Looking at how you were treated and, and sexualized as a child in the toxic culture that perpetuates misogyny. Now, a week after the, how are you thinking about misogyny? And how about, I'm sorry, did you? OK. How are you thinking about the role misogyny has played in this political cycle? And what's on your mind now, going into a second Trump term here as women. I mean, listen, you know, I'm also a part of the problem. I perpetuated it, you know, that's how I made a living. I, I was the one in the jeans, I was the one in the, it paid the bills. My mom had, we could pay our rent. It's so I'm in a, it's a slightly precarious place with it And now I'm a mother of two daughters and my whole career gave me a life, you know, and so tho those are the things that I grapple with, you know, in therapy and, and, and all of that. And the only so my personal approach to it is to write books about things like postpartum depression, to stand up for what I, what I believe and I want for my Children. I am really truly slightly terrified and it almost doesn't have, it's, it's almost, it's almost not about politics. It's, you know, it's um I was charming. Um, excuse me. Um It's almost not about, it's, it's, it's this belief, this internal fear that I have for my daughters that they are losing, they are losing their agency. You know, the part of the whole film was about finding your agency about and sex cells, right? OK. It's always going to, how do we, how do we reconcile that? How do we stick up for what we need while still we all want to feel beautiful. We wanna be gazed upon and thought of as attractive. So it's, we're in a difficult position, you know. And I think if we can find a way to do it without anger, it, it's gonna be important, but there's a lot of fear and I fear for my, for my daughters, although they have a stronger voice than I ever did at their age. So, Gen Z is, is really good at that. They are, I think they have to be careful too. I think you can swing so far in one direction that you alienate and you lose sight of how to make actual strong moves and, and that helps, help the, the community and help, help women and help, you know, I mean, it's interesting, I, we have a very, very close um friend of my husband's uh person he works with who is now a trans um woman and the person was a male and six is 78 something. And, and, and she is now getting hate from the trans community because she's not a pretty woman and she's not putting in what other women or other trans are feeling is the right amount of money and time and effort into her appearance. And it's a fascinating conversation that I've had to have with her because I've said, you know, now you kind of understand what, what we've been dealing with and how are you gonna handle it? And so I think we just need to keep the conversation really open and, and empathetic and, and just try to keep all of the, the, the vitriol and the anger out of it because that's not who we are either. It has to come from a place of confidence and pride and resolution that we and faith in, in, in who we are. That makes a lot of sense. And I know we only have a few minutes left. But you have a new book coming. I didn't even answer this one. No, no. And I, and I wanna, I wanna come back to it. So you, you have a new book coming out, Brooke Shields is not allowed to get old. Um As that's been coming, which is a great title, by the way. Um So any advice have for, we have a ton of incredibly powerful women in this room. We have one minute left. Any quick advice you could give to them on how to survive this, this next four years than anything you've learned from your book. Well, the book came from a guy that f he was flirting with me and then he found out my age because I said it as if it's not easy to Google, but he, and he went, oh, you shouldn't have told me that. And I was, and I was like my eyes turned into like w wheels and it, what, what I realized was it ruined a fantasy that he had of something of me in the past and I realized that that's what women are also dealing with. Um, I'm never one to give advice because I'm not an expert in anything. Um, but what I, what I will say is that rooms like this conversations like this real shared information and, and, and coming together and growing like this is gonna be, I believe where our power is because we're formidable alone and we're really formidable together. That's fabulous advice. Well, thank you so much for being here and thank all of you for listening and I appreciate you. Thank you.

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