Name: Saving Seattle: How the city's corporate giants banded together to combat coronavirus
Uploaded: 2020-04-17
Duration: 10 min 3 s
Description: The companies found themselves on the frontlines of the first U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

The greater Seattle area experienced America's first case of COVID- 19, that was back in late January. Six weeks later, there is news of a second case in the Seattle area, the same county which is over board outside of Seattle. And that really set off A number of people worrying realising this disease was in the community already and it was spreading. The very next day, the area reported it's first death due to Covid 19. That was the first death in America due to the disease and it reported an outbreak at a nursing home facility. Just outside the city, it really took a toll very quickly and kind of signaled not only to Seattle but to the nation that COVID- 19 was here and really could cause a lot of damage and suffering. [ MUSIC ] With COVID- 19 we've really watched the whole country struggle with. This pandemic responding to the disease and having enough supplies. And it really showed weaknesses and supply chain, and in weaknesses and collaboration information sharing. What we've seen in Seattle, they also slow to respond, but we've seen the community come together Really, a response that draws upon many strengths that exist in the community that has a number of leading global companies. Seattle also has a number of really leading public and global health institutions. These resources and infrastructure really helped the city and I think. I think it's part of why it has responded fairly effectively to the pandemic and filling some of the gaps that existed, and that we've seen elsewhere in the country. So there are strong public health institutions, businesses, and the government all tend to work together. This existed before this pandemic in the form of the organization, Challenge Seattle which was started by Washington's former governor, Chris Gregoire. Challenge Seattle is about five years old now. It began kind of as a effort to provide some community leadership. We hadn't had some civic leadership in the greater Seattle area in some time. So these major companies, all the large international companies came together to kind of take a new view of what the problems were in the region. And add their skills, their technology, their new way of thinking, their innovation, to trying to solve those problems. We had had a dinner basically the preceeding week of our first death in the state. And as all the CEOs began discussing it, they said, how much would this grow? And I showed them some information that I had secured from a cancer center, the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. That showed it could be very dramatic. And so people left there that night very sober, trying to think their way through it. It wasn't that long thereafter that we had our outbreak at the nursing home that Friday night. And on Saturday, our first death so we had an emergency meeting of all the CEOs on Sunday, March 1 [ MUSIC ] We decided that, right then and there, we had to speak with one voice, as best we could. Because we represent about a quarter million employees. So, we wanted to make sure that we communicated as transparently as we could, with all of those employees, that we were saying the same thing. that it was based on facts and experts. Not a not an opinion or rumour, and that we would act in unison and so the messaging started to go out on Monday, and the big companies began taking action virtually right away on a voluntary Pretty basis kind of etting the tone and setting the pace for the entire business community. But they did it together, so that employees or one would not be spekeptical about why was something else going on with another large company. So they talked in unison and they acted in unison. The first question for everybody in Seattle area Was basically how far could go and how fast we should go in effect, encouraging people to stay home. And we went through this cycle over the course of about 72 hours from day one telling people that they should work from home if they felt more comfortable from Working from home to day two recommending to people that they should work from home today three telling people they should really work from home and shouldn't come to work at all unless they had a job that required them to do so. And what we also then quickly recognize was what we really needed to do was have not a conversation with the business community by itself, but a conversation that brought together the business community and the public leaders, perhaps most especially from the public health side of the county. Where Seattle is based as well as the state and only by really building on expertise data and this combined effort of the public and private sectors. Together with it, we have a better prospect of managing this successfully. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] You need to recognize that there are somethings that can only be done by the public sector. The private sector can help fill in the gaps. We have great logistical capacity especially in global companies with their supply chain infrastructure. And we can sometimes move more quickly than the public sector. So if you bring us all together and coordinate the right way, you can do so much more together than either group could ever even dream of doing by itself. And I think that's one of the key learnings here .>> At our noon briefings, we will always have a update from Local government and state government and it's during those occasions, that we've been asked whether we had any possibility that we could find the personal protective equipment, that our first responders and our healthcare community needed. And so we reached out right away, and immediately we had some of our companies. Who already had supplies coming in, they donated those to the state, then they used their supply chains to get more. And then as it spread, we began to look at new supply chains that they could get tips on. We created a procurement distribution, Dream Team, if you will, under our National Guard and that was comprised of Experts from two of our largest companies, Microsoft and Amazon. And so together we started to get that necessary supplies To our supply chain had procured a quarter of a million surgical masks, the so called A 95 masks that none of us had heard about six weeks ago. And so they had procured them internationally. They had gotten the support of the local government to let them go. They had been imported by FedEx into the United States. And they were literally sitting for three days in Memphis in a FedEx import control area, And they couldn't be released until somebody from the FDA came and signed a paper saying that they were fit to go. Everything was in order but there was no one from the FDA who was able to go. So in that case, I was alerted. This was about 5pm on a Saturday. And I reached out to people at the White House and specifically someone at the National Security Council. And by Sunday morning they had it taken care of and it was released by FedEx. We've gone beyond that now where they call on us frequently to do philanthropic things, whether it's food, which was yesterday or today, how do we get the word out uniformly? As to how one applies for unemployment compensation and can get it literally within five or six days, versus the unemployed person who's ill prepared and that delays the processing of their application. I have been so overwhelmed with the response by the business community. I mean virtually anything government asks for they begin the process of trying to make happen. It is a unprecedented public private partnership. Whatever disagreements there were yesterday are gone. Whatever competition may have been in place. Is it today, everybody is solely focused working as one. Trying to ensure that we return to public health safety and we get people back to work. So Seattle is definitely not out of the woods yet. Governor Jay Inslee has said that but, They have been successful at flattening the curve at really avoiding the worst case scenarios. So there's lots to be learned from the experience in Seattle and really how the community came together there. What was really key was how the private public and health sectors came together and really tried to coordinate a response. We've seen the country struggle with all sorts of resource issues, with supply chain issues. Just there are all sorts of gaps in our ability to respond to this pandemic but what we've seen in Seattle, was not ideal when a community comes together they can help fill some of the gaps [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The companies found themselves on the frontlines of the first U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

Saving Seattle: How the city's corporate giants banded together to combat coronavirus

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The public and private sectors united to combat COVID-19.