Name: CEO Initiative 2019: Action Reports
Uploaded: 2019-06-11
Duration: 18 min 31 s
Description: Highlighting members’ recent work and collaboration around the Initiative’s core focus areas.

This is really what the CEO Initiative is all about. We look for people and companies who are making a real commitment, as part of their operating business, as part of their core business, to change the world in some positive way. And we've got some amazing examples of that. As you know, the CEO Initiative work streams, or annual meetings, are built around Seven core themes developing and training the workforce. We heard some amazing stuff about that from Michael Corbett. Technology as a tool to empower. We've been talking about A. I. and other and other tools there. Financial health and inclusion, employee community and employee and community health and wellbeing. Creating a diverse workplace culture, and more critical issue than ever building a planet for his company and focusing on long term value. And so we're now going to highlight some of the activities and initiatives undertaken in these areas since our first meeting At the Vatican in 2016, through the last year. So first, I'd like to introduce the Last Mile Health cofounder and CEO Raj Panjabi, whose gonna tell us a little bit about what he's been doing. Thanks Cliff. My name's Raj Panjabi. I'm the CEO of Last Mile Health. It's good to be here. At that Vatican meeting a couple of years ago A number of us were in the room talking about the global health care challenge. Now we know that companies including in the CEO initiative have made some great breakthroughs in medicine. But a lot of those products and services are not reaching people at the last mile in rural communities around the world. We know that half the world. Access to the central medical services. And we know the challenge, is that the world is experiencing, one of the greatest health worker shortages, in all time. About 18 million is how high the gap will be, 18 million health worker shortage by 2030, if we do nothing more. So this group, realises any one company taking that on. Would be too challenging. So how could we work together? And we made a commitment to both Frances and to each one of us. And in the weeks following, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis. A number of CEO initiative members joined forces with Last Mile Health, our partner of living goods. That audacious project in [ UNKNOWN ]. And together We decided we would co- create a vision to train community healthcare workers. So these are not physicians like myself, although more of them are needed, but actually people from villages in communities use online and mobile technology to empower them to go door to door to serve the health needs. So imagine Ruth Tarr, one of my colleagues, in a rainforest community in Libera, eight hours away from the nearest clinic. Ruth would be the least likely of health workers. She has a sixth grade education. She has never been employed but through this initiative we've employed her. We've trained her using smartphone technology to take on the most life saving services, from treating children for Malaria Pneumonia. She goes door to door when a mother is worried that a child is sick with pneumonia or a woman in the community needs a contraceptive. It's actually Ruth who comes to her doorstep and provides medical care on the spot. So the challenge now becomes, 190 countries have said if we scaled up a work For [ INAUDIBLE ] routes around the world. We can save an additional 30 million lives by 2030. But the challenge becomes how you scale workforces. Governments alone can't do that. Business and technology have expertise in scaling and training workforces. So we created the Community Health Academy together, which is using online and mobile technology, our partners Living Goods, we've made a commitment over four years To help six countries in Africa to scale up and digitally empower 50, 000 community health workers like Ruth with smartphone technology that allows her to look at training videos on how to give contraceptives, how to deliver vaccines. And we've made some interesting progress just in the first year. And with the governments of Liberia, Uganda, and Kenya, some of the poorest countries on earth We have helped empower 12, 000 community health workers, where communities have gone generations without healthcare. There are now 8 million people receiving healthcare. Where community health workers have been using flip charts and markers to learn. They're now getting a YouTube- like media channel through a group called Digital Campus that allows them to see a testing video on malaria. How do you learn to do testing, how do you spot the next outbreak? And what we've seen is that it's possible now to actually move this work forward. We're gonna move to Malawi, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone, work with those governments And we're not stopping there, we're seeing results. 50 % of the kids are getting treatment, more so than they did before. In Uganda, 25 % mortality reduction has been achieved with these workers. And we've decided to opensource everything we're doing. So six countries, 50, 000 workers is a good start. But we know that for this to scale, we've got to share our methods openly. So we've launched an online classroom on Harvard and EDX where anyone anywhere that wants to build this these types of programs to hire local people from their own villages to become can be helped workers can learn to do that. I'm excited announced Cliff that I'll end with this. Is that we launched the classroom last month. In just a month people from over 165 countries have signed on. And importantly 25 % of them are actually Americans from Ohio, from Kansas, from Florida, from Tennessee, who are all working with can be health workers to help patients get affordable Medicines, to get food, to get transportation. So what I've learned from this Cliff is that even some of the biggest problems illnesses universal, healthcare is not. That's been true almost all of humanity. And for business to be a force for good, for capitalism to be inclusive it's gonna start with investing in our workers, investing in our communities. And if we can do that I think it's possible to have a world where there's no patient out of reach and no person Left behind. Thanks. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Guys, that was amazing. Okay, next let's hear from the present- [ INAUDIBLE ] Please. [ INAUDIBLE ] And involved in [ UNKNOWN ] flying doctors. And they are quite active, and already decades in Africa. Are you cooperating with them? For sometimes I do have the feeling that we are Active parallel and it would be when when when we are cooperating more The Emirates and incredible organization 60 years where the short answer is yes, we're collaborating with them and and Salesforce actually is also starting to get involved with their educational workforce efforts. So thank you for that. Okay, thank you, so I was, [ COUGH ], about to introduce the president and CEO of Hyatt, Mark Hoplamazian, who has launched an ambitious and challenging plan, frankly, to hire 10, 000 unemployed and out- of- school young adults by 2025. How's that going, Mark? It's started, [ LAUGH ] Lemme just say it that way. Raj I love what you're doing, and not crazy but I'm following you, but I love what you're doing so keep it going. We've launched a program called rise high which is a dedication to commitment to higher 10000 So called opportunity- youth, these are young people between 16 and 25 years old around the world, who are out of school and out of work, economically disenfranchised or disconnected in some way. So why did we do this? First and foremost, it's the fullment of our purpose as a company. Our purpose is to care for people so they can do their best. And when we defined our purpose, people was, specifically left to be a broad concept. Not just guests that we serve in our hotels but first and foremost our colleagues, of course our guests and customers, our owners, hotel owners. But also members of the communities in which we operate The impetus for this particular program was really observing around the world where our own teams are turned to support their communities. I really found the two areas, one was education, and the second one is employment. We employ a lot of people over 125, 000 people in 65 countries. And we have a large pipeline that for new hotels that are being built it for which we will need to hire an additional 65, 000 people over the next five years. So, when we look at our need, we have a need for a lot more talent in a lot of communities Where you've got significant gaps. And the gaps are wide and growing in virtually every place that we do business around the world. It's acute in my hometown of Chicago, and I'll come back to that in a second. But we see it everywhere. We observe that talent is much more widely distributed than opportunity is. So, the gap in opportunity, and income, and wealth and skills is really significant and creating a big gap, a big problem in a lot of societies. So, we're Committed to do it we're using some virtual reality videos to help bring young people into hotels. Where a lot of the people that we're trying to hire have never been inside of a hotel. We're using new assessment tools to gauge life skills. And we're using community based organizations to help us actually find and help to train people. The difficulties are life challenges that are really real for a lot of these young people in Chicago in particular. These are young people who are the primary breadwinners in many cases. They have parents or siblings that are incarcerated, who are trying to hold down multiple jobs. They are primary caregivers to younger siblings. These are the challenges that we're facing. So it's going to be hard work. Okay, thank you, Mark. That's fantastic. [ APPLAUSE ] These these share things are also opportunities for people to stand up and say, hey, I've got an idea. I've got a potential partnership for you and to collaborate. So So this is that opportunity to do that, so please find each other as you hear these great stories. I'm gonna call on Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane to share the work that Synchrony is doing with BuildOn, to empower youth through service learning. And we've got some slides here, right? Sure so I'm on the board of builds on Synchrony's very engaged with Bill Dawn and really what Jim said earlier is Bill Dawn is a not- for- profit in urban high schools who's really their goal is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations. It's really hard to Describe the impact build on [ UNKNOWN ] to give some opportunity to figure that out the end of this. But it runs an intensive learning service program where the students who participate on BuildOn actually work in their communities. [ COUGH ] And it's really hard to describe how these kids rise up. And become a big part of doing just incredible things in the community, whether it's giving food to the homeless on the street, working in an elder shelter, working with youth in their local community centers. It's just amazing. Their students have contributed, if you can believe it, over 3 million hours of service in the communities that they're in. And their typical high school graduation rate is basically, at best, 60 %. I always asked him, Is that really the number? But 98 % of build on students actually graduate. And 88 % of those students actually go on to college. So this past March, a couple of us here in the room, John Seaford. Alum, Mary, we were actually up in the South Bronx and participate in what we Call 36 hours, which was really an immersion. For you to really get to know the kids, get to know the challenges they face. Get to understand what the schools face. And I will just tell you, as someone who lives in Connecticut, Fairfield County, I support the schools in Bridgeport. It's 15, 20 minutes from where I live, and it's a different world. So I would encourage all of you to think about really engaging with our youth to think about how you can serve with build on. I'm just gonna give you one quick example. When I was up in Bridgeport, I guess about a year ago, there was a young man there, who came from Haiti had a family of 12 Desperate poverty, wasn't doing well, joined [ UNKNOWN ]. His goal is to be the Mayor of Bridgeport. When I met him he had already graduated the high school. He was doing community college work and I knew he didn't really could afford tuition. So we actually hired him as an employee. He works for [ UNKNOWN ] right now. We're paying for his college tuition. And the thing I'll leave you with. He came to see me the other day, he wanders around every once in a while he came in my office, and he said to me that his entire life has been changed by synchrony, and he said people at my church young people come to me and say. I want to be like you Rubin, so what I'm telling you is you can really have an impact, everyone in this room. An I encourage you to talk to Jim, and figure out how you all can do your 36 hours. Thank you. Fantastic. That's awesome. [ APPLAUSE ] And finally we're gonna hear from Vital Voices global partnership president and CEO Elise Nelson on financial inclusion initiative called We Empower Global Challenge, which was inspired I understand about a conversation you had right here. It was, abosolutely, two years ago, right here in this room. Yoiu know I really think that CEO Initiative is not a conference. It really is a community and I think that was evidenced even further by what Alan said this morning with the survey results of 84 % of people in this room And this community believing that companies are responsible for making the world a better place. And that's really in the vein of this partnership. So two years ago sitting in this room having lunch and a conversation with James Loree, who is the CEO of Stanley, Black and Decker. I was surprised to hear that there were the leading companies in terms of great places to work for millennial women. And I thought that's intriguing and we started chatting, and we started talking about the Millennium Development Goals. And then we started talking about the Sustainable Development Goals, the 17 targets for making the world a better place put out by the United Nations. And the World Bank had done this study saying that in order to achieve these we actually can't have the usual partners involved. We have to go from billions of investment to trillions of investment. And that means everyone getting involved. And we started talking about this and we thought women entrepreneurs are this great untapped potential, there a third of the entrepreneurs around the world. But yeah we don't look at them as agents of change. And so we began brainstorming, we also brought in sales forces and a number of other partners within the CEO initiative and created this we empower challenge. It's a global competition that searches the world. For women entrepreneurs who are doing exactly that, using their businesses to drive social change and help to achieve the STGs of improving the world, whether it be environmental change or girls education. And we actually, that was so successful, that first competition. And the training program that we launched, coming out of that, that we're doing it again this year, around the UN general assembly, the search, the training, and it's led to incredible growth for the women who've gotten the award. Words as part of that. So thank you. Thank you Elise. And I said, I said finally too quickly because our real finally is Mark Smucker, the JM Smucker Company president and CEO. He was gonna talk about developments, about long term value creation, implemented inside Smucker and his ongoing research collaboration with the CEO of I Network. Mark? Thanks, Cliff. Just for everyone, Smuckers, probably, a lot of people just think of jam and jelly. Our largest business is pet food, our second- largest is coffee, and then our third is food. We've been in business for 122 years, so you can imagine that thinking long- term is sort of part of our DNA. But we've been public for 60 And even in the last 15, we've been probably the most visible, at least with investors in Wall Street, than we ever have. And so, as those of you who are a public company know, it is difficult sometimes to balance both the short and the long- term because we all have quarterly pressures. But we also want to do the right things for the business. And as you look at some of the dynamics that we've seen lately, that it has been proven over and over again that cannot cut your way to growth. And so, it is important, and I would bring it back to one fundamental thing, and that is the importance of reinvesting In our businesses and in our communities. When we talk internally about who our constituencies are, it's consumers, customers, suppliers, employees, communities. And the sixth is shareholders. And we have said since our inception, particular since we have been public. In 1959, that if you take care of the first five, you will automatically take care of the shareholder. And so I could go on and on about, I think, some of the comments before, just all the tremendous work that are really focused on our communities and our employees, Really does pay dividends. And so if we still continue to reinvest in our business, make meaningful change, have the courage to do so, but also continue to invest in our communities, We're huge supporters of education and the arts. We, in our various locations, in terms of New Orleans, we support, obviously, housing initiatives as well. And so the convergence of supporting our communities. As well as supporting our businesses really does pay off for the long term. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. [ aaa ] So, yeah, let's have a hand for everybody here because we're just extraordinary [ bbb ]

CEO Initiative 2019: Action Reports 

Leadership

Highlighting members’ recent work and collaboration around the Initiative’s core focus areas.