Good morning, everybody. All right, we're going to change things up a little bit sound I have talked about it we have and I would like to start with a word of prayer, if that's okay with you, and I would like your help in it. So if you can stand up, find a hand to hold. Make sure we don't have a break. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Everybody must touch somebody. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Thank you, okay. Bow your head, take a breath. Almighty. I thank you for this morning. I thank you for this gathering of powerful women. I thank you for this space, to be here, to be present. I thank you for the knowledge we have, the knowledge we don't have, the knowledge we're gathering. I thank you for the inspiration. For the leadership. For the sisterhood. I pray for the conversation Ellen and I will have today, that it will hit hearts in the way that it's supposed to. That women will walk out of this room today being different, than they walked in. That we will all go forward More boldly, more audaciously and more unapologetically. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I command in this room, the spirit of women who have gone before us, who have led the way for us to be here today and I pray that will hold them up. In the spirit of power. In this I pray, amen. Amen. All right, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Now to stop my earring from jingling. You define. Back to the fashion all right. [ LAUGH ] We will talk about the outfit at the end. [ LAUGH ] Yes, there is a lot of information about this outfit. [ LAUGH ] Because when we talked I joked with you that I've been following your career not only in the news but in conferences, you know [ UNKNOWN ] one panel after another one conference and other many of them at fortune. And I joked with you that if you had asked me before we talked, I wouldn't have been able to describe what you did. [ LAUGH ] It's something with headphones, something with soda, something with ride sharing and ethics. But it wasn't until we talked about how we wanted to present ourselves today, that it occurred to me that what is secret about you, what is magic about you In every job you've ever had, is that you know how to help people feel a certain way, which is not something I'd ever really thought about in terms of marketing before. So I thought we could just start, faith is clearly a big part of your life, but I thought we would just start in a very general way with How some of the bigger themes of your life [ UNKNOWN ], has been works in your work. Hmm. Well, yeah, I that's an interesting way to put it, making people feel. a certain way. I certainly. lead with my heart and lead with my gut. Sometimes. In ways in which people don't agree with [ LAUGH ] Okay. Or don't trust, but I feel that there's actually no way for me to be except in all of my feelings. I'm in the feelings business is really what I'm in. And it is a part of course the data collection and Creating strategy and you know writing all the plans that are needed in order to move a business or people in a certain way. But moving them means taking the emotion, right? And transferring it this way, or that way. It can be you know, feelings of love, it can be feelings of. Hope it could be feelings of fear. Desire. Desire, all of them, all of the emotions. And so for me, it's been a journey of that really. So it hasn't necessarily been about the specific product or the specific company, but how is the audience and how are the consumers feeling and how can I utilize some of that emotion. To move them forward and for me that he's been the corner stone of my own career, it's personally. Yeah. And that I do trust my feelings. Right [ LAUGH ] I am an emotional person, I'm a woman of faith, I use that in many ways. I feel that if we were all more open about our feelings, Yes That we might have a more empathetic society. You know, it's not that my faith is greater than your face or that your experience is greater than my experiences if we share that more openly And better understood what drives us then we might actually work better together. You strike me as someone who is such a mood reader isn't the right term, but someone who is able to really detect and name emotions in other people. Yeah. What are the technical tools that you use to help you do that? [ LAUGH ]. At Scale. I don't know if they're technical tools. Right, right. You know. Yeah. A little bit of Okay, if the wind is moving. Okay, yeah. Some people call it witchcraft, in the past. [ LAUGH ] I was recently in Scotland and I went to a place for lunch called The Witcher three. And I thought it was kind of just cool until I found out that they used to burn witches there. I was like, You don't have, all right, well, let's just change this energy right here, gather all of that, but I think this is the amazing thing about women. And our power which is over the centuries, sorta absent flowed in what was acceptable. And we are coming into another phase of our power which we do need to utilize all of our feelings, all of our emotions and not try to quantify so much. About, you know, what the actual technical reasons are or the data that supports the work that if we returned to that place of intuition. We actually will probably recapture our power. So take us back to Colorado Springs. You've had this incredible life. [ LAUGH ] And I have a path here. Yeah. I'd like to go from Colorado Springs back to Africa. Yes. Lets start there. Okay. Colorado Springs lets see alright. Well my family moved there when I was 12 from Ghana. Hm hm. Both my parents were Ghanaian. And as you can imagine, I kinda stood out. Not because of a full pink outfit- [ LAUGH ] But because of a full black girl. .> [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] And it was an interesting moment in time, because as we all remember being 12, you really don't wanna be that different from anybody else And my mother, in her power, was very cautious of making sure that we understood what and who we are. Right and how unique and special and wonderful that is. And it wasn't in the telling of things it was in the behavior. She didn't say things like, hold your head up high or walk into the room boldly. She didn't say those things. It was in her. It was in our actions. Things like when she, when I had a sleep over or friends came over, she didn't dim Our culture. She didn't order pizza. Unfortunately. [ LAUGH ] No, my little 12 year old self was like, why can't we have pepperoni You know? And she would she would make hot pepper soup and make these little white children. Just read. [ LAUGH ] Yeah. Was very embarrassing, wasn't meant for me. But the power of that experience just meant that I understood that I didn't have to change for the audience. I didn't and obviously now as an adult, I can look at that and see what that meant. But those lessons I was learning at that time without realizing cuz I think if she had said it, I probably would have ignored it. Right. Or rebelled against it or something like that. She just did it. She just did it. She made us do it. I have three younger sisters and so the four girls, we live that and throughout my life and then throughout my career, I have then Very able to move into spaces in which maybe was expected for me to assimilate into culture. Right. Whereas then I said, well, no, we're not gonna have the pizza. We're gonna have this hot pepper soup right here. Yes. And make sure that it felt It felt like I was showing up, right? And not demining down for anybody else and it has then of course taken me all the way to my experiences now where I am blending both my professional life as well as my personal life and my personal interest in the context of Africa and raising awareness, raising. A changed narrative about the continent and making sure that we are all doing right by Africans. See this is very important. A couple of years ago I was on a reporting trip to Lagos, and armed only with my Ancestry DNA test, I announced that I was 49 per cent West African and immediately burst into tears. Because it's such a painful thing to be African American and that Ghanian American, Nigerian American, and I was immediately claimed by everybody on the streets of Lagos. Yeah It was their cousin and it was fine. I could be there. And so I am really moved by the idea that we could be part of a narrative. That reclaims that helps African doesn't help Africans but helps us all understand who Africa really is in the world and what who Africans really are. But I think it's a it's a community responsibility actually. It is. I don't believe it's up to Africans or up to African Americans or black Brits or any African in the diaspora. I believe it's us, all of us are responsible, Right. We cannot remove the history of what has happened over the course of time and pretend as if somebody else did it, and therefore it's no longer our responsibility. It's our current responsibility. It's why we see the challenges in diversity and inclusion, and we have issues amongst even our sisterhood. About whether or not you know black women come along in the journey of feminism. Right. And I think it's up to us to reverse the narrative that has been told and embrace Africa as the power that it is an especially African women. And that means Africans women issues that means their art their culture. Yes. Their business their commerce. Yes their health. Opening and their health. Yeah. And their Wakanda t- shirts. Correct. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] I love the Wakanda t- shirt. True fashion. Thank you, it's not, we only have a minute left, I know everyone wants to know about the outfit. Could you please just explain how it works? [ LAUGH ] My gosh, really? I'm like okay, it's a two piece outfit okay, it's not just a jumpsuit. [ LAUGH ] It's very complicated. There's a zipper here and there's a zipper here to get me all up into it But yeah. Yeah, and of course you got to do a little sparkly shoot because why not? Absolutely beautiful. [ LAUGH ] Thank you so very much. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for being in communion with us. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Bozoma Saint John Reflects on Coming to the U.S. From Ghana

International

The CMO of Endeavor joins Fortune’s MPW Summit.
