Driving Innovation and Economic Equity for a Better World at Leading for Good 2023
By Allyson Hamzey
On April 5, 2023, Wintrust Hall was packed to capacity with more than 200 business leaders, scholars, and staff across the disciplines from Loyola and the Chicagoland area for the spring Leading for Good conference.
The conference's theme this year was “Co-Creating a Future for All.” The speakers and guests were united by developing a shared vision for a more equitable and sustainable future. Throughout the day, the conference's collective of innovative leaders discussed solutions for sustainability and economic inequities, and ways to drive change at the individual and organizational level.
"Conversations like this — coming together for shared solutions — is incredibly important,” Daniel Cervantes, SVP, National Expansion, Skill's for America's Future, said. “Having a shared endpoint and looking at data and the evidence so we're aligned and moving in the same direction.”
This event was made possible through the collaboration of the Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility and the Institute for Racial Justice, in addition to our other sponsors, listed here.
Resounding takeaways from the panels:
- Creating a sustainable future requires reimagination, personal responsibility, compelling storytelling, and consistently applying a lens of equity.
- Innovation can create collective impact when it is guided by values of empathy, humility, and urgency.
- Bridging the economic wealth gap for Black and Brown communities will require leveraging community partnerships, assessing quality-of-life factors, and including those most affected by the policies in the decision-making process.
- In order to change the status quo at the individual and systems level, we must have courage to stand alone or to fail. Pathways to get there include aligning work with purpose and allowing employees — particularly marginalized groups and younger generations — to not have to “check a box” to bolster equity and inclusion.
Summaries of the panels
- Panel: Sustainability Leaps: Taking Action Together
- Impact in Action: Innovator Awards
- An Economy for All
- Panel: Entrepreneurs and Intra-preneurs Needed: New Ways to Impact
Panel: Sustainability Leaps: Taking Action Together
- Erin Amico, President & CEO, Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
- Paige Graham, SVP, Social Impact & Sustainability, Edelman
- Tonika Lewis Johnson, Folded Map Creator
- Joanne Rodriguez, Founder & CEO, Mycocycle
- Moderator: Karen Weigert, Director Baumhart Center
The first panel kicked off with discussions of systemic racism and its impact on access to efficient energy, the importance of sustainability storytelling, and how mushrooms can save the world. This panel was moderated by Karen Weigert, director of the Baumhart Center.
Storytelling and shaping public attitudes around sustainability is integral to driving climate change impact. Paige Graham, SVP, social impact and sustainability at Edelman, shared how everyone has a role to play in this movement.
“There are so many different places where people have to play. There's the policy, there's the regulation,” said Graham. “Our swim lane, so to speak, is really in, how to shift perception and get people to understand these topics that seem very complex.”
Spreading awareness of the inequities in accessing sustainable practices is another key component in this storytelling, said Tonika Lewis Johnson, photographer and social justice artist, Folded Map Project.
“We're working together right now to creatively put stories together to help people understand the importance of energy efficiency and the history of systemic racism’s relationship with energy, specifically in Black and brown neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “So, we are excited to introduce this project to the rest of the world — it's called Empowered and its shared stories about energy efficiency and how that plays out differently [by communities.]”
Without simplifying and contextualizing complex data, effective climate storytelling isn’t possible, Graham said.
“You have to be able to quantify and support the data, but you have to make the data mean something, you have to put it in the context your audience's life,” Graham said. “One hundred million metric tons of CO2 — that may be equivalent to flying 150 round trip flights from New York to Paris.”
Providing joyful experiences in nature, paired with targeted storytelling, is another critical element in leading climate change efforts.
“I think we as the Nature Museum and other cultural institutions have a really important role to play in helping tell that story to average everyday people so it can feel it as tangible, meaningful, and they can understand what the challenge is,” Erin Amico, president & CEO, Chicago Academy of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, said.
“You have to meet people where they are. One of our audiences are little kids under the age of seven, and a small child's not going to want to care about or protect what it doesn't love. When we're communicating to that group, it's play-based: it’s the frogs and the animals, and they have that moment of joy,” Amico said. “I think that can be a really powerful unlock to shift consumer behavior. Not just showing, ‘Hey, there's a real problem and let's help people understand it,’ but also with benefits of the reverse and having those positive connections with nature as well.”
Fungi aren’t only fun: they can help save the planet. The audience learned this from Joanne Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Mycocle. She explained the unique power of mushrooms have to clean up heavy hydrocarbons in nature and her approach to “reimagine waste as a value stream.”
“We reimagine waste as a value stream and not as a burden. My entire team's tagline is: ‘Pioneering natural for a carbon neutral future, through waste as a resource, not a burden,’” Rodriguez said.
We need robust and durable chemicals in building materials to be functional – but they sit in landfills for over 400 years when we dispose of them.
“Fungi love heavy hydrocarbons and petroleum, so that started the light bulb moment for me,” she said. “I decided to invest in myself and start a company that trains mushrooms to eat trash and create new materials.”
The panelists shared a consensus that prioritizing empathy and social justice are necessary ingredients in the formula for a sustainable future.
“The other side of that is we also have to offer [consumers] something of benefit because I think it really comes down to empathy,” Amico said.
Using data to bridge inequities is vital, particularly in relation to clean energy discrepancies.
“Being direct is how you get people to personalize these large systemic issues because sometimes we look at data, we look at maps, and we forget that it's made up of,” Johnson said, as she discussed removing barriers in energy efficiency.
“My home neighborhood, Englewood, and other predominantly Black neighborhoods like it, are blocked out of accessing this [energy efficiency programs] because of the inequities of home ownership and affordability to keep and to maintain their rules,” she said.
Karen Weigert, director, Baumhart Center and moderator of the panel closed out the Q&A with the question: “As we look ahead and we think about the way the economy grows, how do you steer a startup to what's next?”
“We grow diverse teams, we educate, and we imagine,” said Rodriguez.
Innovation Pop Up, VietFive Coffee:
Tuan Huynh, founder of VietFive Coffee, engaged the audience about how his journey as a refugee from Vietnam and someone who was previously incarcerated molded the foundation for his company. Hyunh, who is an award-winning creative director and community organizer based out of Chicago, Illinois, uses a welcoming-of-all approach in his innovation model.
“We create a space for people to be welcomed in… and to enjoy good coffee!” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunities love on thy neighbors like you love thyself."
Paired with an empathetic approach, investment into Chicago neighborhoods is a key tool for success, according to Huynh.
“I wanted to create a pathway for ownership and equity in our community,” Huynh said. “Lead with empathy!”
Impact in Innovation Awards:
- Social Impact Award recipient: Kathleen Caliento, President and CEO, Cara Collective
- Environmental Stewardship Award Recipient: Jimmy Samartzis, CEO, LanzaJet
- Parkinson Award Recipient: Jeff Hogue, Chief Sustainability Officer, Levi Strauss & Co.
- Moderator: Megan Christenson, Sr. Portfolio Manager, REDF Impact Investing Fund
Making impactful change requires belief, collaboration, and perseverance to lead to collective and transformative action. The winners of the Impact in Innovation Awards exemplify these qualities, and their remarks at this panel underline this.
"Cara Collective differs as a typical job shop in that we truly help people, as I say, find themselves before they find a job,” Kathleen Caliento, president and CEO, Cara Collective and Social Impact Award recipient, said.
At Cara Colllective, Caliento shared that prioritizing the dignity and humanity of job seekers are core values for her team.
"So many of our participants and job seekers have found us through misfortune, missteps, injustice...” Caliento. said “They've been told by society that they are their mistakes, so we help them truly think about what it means to let go of some of those beliefs and believe in the deepest sense and truth of who they are."
Time is of the essence for climate action, and Jimmy Samartzis, CEO of LanzaJet and Environmental Stewardship recipient, underlined the importance of this.
"One slogan that we use here at LanzaJet is: 'Someday is now,’ and say that intentionally,” Samartzis said. “We don't have to wait for someday to take action on climate change.”
“How do we move from intention to action?” This was a question posed to the panel by moderator, Megan Christenson, senior portfolio manager, REDF Impact Investing Fund.
Jeff Hogue, chief sustainability officer, Levi Strauss & Co and Parkinson Award recipient, asserted that “humility” was the word that came to mind, as “the work is never done.”
"Our guiding philosophy as a company is 'Profit through Principles'…this means that sustainability and doing the right thing is taken in consideration in everything we do, including how we produce our product, what we produce our products from, who we work with, and how we support the communities that we operate in,” Hogue said. “There's no tradeoffs between our values and the value that we provide to shareholders."
Discussing the pathways for an economy that works for all guided the Impact in Innovation panel. One answer is to diversify the pathways for talent, according to Caliento.
“To put it bluntly, this economy is not working for all,” she said. “We ensure job seekers have an opportunity they might not get elsewhere.”
Closing out the panel, Christenson summarized each panelists’ innovation guiding values in one succinct tagline:
“We’re going to generate profits through principles, and let’s get to work!”
Post Keynote Panel: An Economy for All
- Karen Freeman Wilson, President & CEO, Urban League
- Carl Jones, Jr., VP, Government and External Affairs, Comcast
- Andrea Sáenz, President & CEO, Chicago Community Trust
- Moderator: Brandis Friedman, Anchor/Correspondent, WTTW
Malik S. Henfield, founding dean of the Institute for Racial Justice (IRJ), opened the panel by recognizing how one of the IRJ’s key changemaking partners – Karen Freeman Wilson, president and CEO, Chicago Urban League – was in that very room.
“That's what we're all about: how can we do the research and the education, and most importantly, bring people together for this work?” Henfield said. “The future of Loyola is bright, and I'm so happy to be in partnership with individuals like those I mentioned, with the opportunity to partner with others in this room. Working together, I'm sure that we can address many of these stubborn and difficult issues.”
Creating an economy for all can’t be possible before assessing the many ways the economy is not benefiting marginalized populations. “The State of Black Chicago,” a creation of the Urban League of Chicago and the IRJ, does just that, as it demystifies the economic cost of being Black in Chicago.
“We all know about the racial and ethnic wealth gap. We all know about the reduction of significant growth in incomes, in education, in employment, in education,” Wilson said, as she described factors considered in the upcoming State of Black Chicago report. “What we really want to do is use this data that we are releasing to develop solutions.”
Quality-of-life and economic factors are intrinsically tied. Andrea Sáenz, president & CEO, Chicago Community Trust, discussed how measuring the quality of life of Chicago communities was the starting point developing the “We Rise Together” project.
“Our role at Chicago's Community Foundation is to focus on the things that are most important for the wellbeing of the people of the region,” Sáenz said. “What became clear is that it was a question of assets. Of household assets, community assets that allow some communities, mostly white communities in Chicago to get through an emergency, to plan for the future, to invest in education, to start a business — to do all the things that contribute to financial health and then wellbeing.”
Building into the discussion of quality of life, Carl Jones, vice president, government and external affairs, Comcast, emphasized the digital equity gap as a hindrance to high life quality, and the need to raise this issue to elected officials.
“It's that fundamental gap that we know about competing in the economy of today and the economy of tomorrow,” Jones said. “And as a media technology company, we realized we set this unique position of helping people get connected, helping people adopt and helping people get skilled in, in those different areas of what digital equity can mean.”
“A business, we realize there is a cost to inequity,” he said.
The panelists all concurred that the pandemic disproportionately drove disparities for marginalized communities. Looking forward, the group shared the following sentiments as their guiding thoughts for building a better future:
“Where is the system broken? Where are the things not working? And then who are the right set of people that can come together to solve them?” Sáenez asked.
“This isn't an urban or rural issue... it isn’t or a ‘R’ issue or ‘D’ or ‘I’ issue, it's an ‘us’ issue,” Jones said. “It’s an ‘all of us’ issue.’
“You really need the people who have the lion’s share of the resources to think about how they do the work differently and how they show up differently,” Wilson said.
Panel: Entrepreneurs and Intra-preneurs Needed: New Ways to Impact
- Kimberly Evans, EVP, Head of Corporate Sustainability, Inclusion and Social Impact, Northern Trust
- Joey Mak, Executive Director, Chicago:Blend
- Stephanie Morimoto, Owner & CEO, Asutra
- Moderator: Cherita Ellens, President & CEO, Women Employed
What is intra-preneurship? Cherita Ellens, president & CEO, Women Employed and moderator of the panel, offered the following understanding of the word to ignite the panel:
“It could be reimagining roles and structures, or it could be about creating social entrepreneurship programs that develop that drive impact outside of the organization,” Ellen said. “So, it’s a new way of thinking about equity and inclusion.”
In order to change the status quo, we must have courage to stand alone or to fail, the speakers asserted. Organizations must allow employees to be authentically themselves and to be allowed to be involved at different levels and positions of the organization.
Kimberly Evans, EVP, head of Corporate Sustainability, Inclusion and Social Impact, Northern Trust, said that “aligning work with purpose” is essential for employees looking to make a difference. She advised to the audience to ask, “Is this a role that I can contribute to?” when a job no longer matches with one’s principles.
Using entrepreneurship as a way to empower folks with widely applicable skillsets is one other method to driving impact, according to Joey Mak, executive director of Chicago:Blend.
“Entrepreneurship really comes down to a way of thinking,” Mak said. “To me, entrepreneurship is figuring out new ways how to do things in way a that is cost efficient, and impactful,”
Looking forward, the panelists shared what brings them hope for the future. The pandemic birthed new ways of thinking about systems that work for the greater good and problem solving. It also engaged a new generation to challenge others to have equal representation of identities at the table and to approach work differently.
“The impact of leading for good is about practice... and that's how we impact change at an individual level," Ellens said.
Together, we can elicit transformational, meaningful change for all by approaching systems and issues differently and challenging the way things traditionally have been done.
***
Note: Heather McGhee was unable to attend the event due to a flight cancellation.
By Allyson Hamzey
On April 5, 2023, Wintrust Hall was packed to capacity with more than 200 business leaders, scholars, and staff across the disciplines from Loyola and the Chicagoland area for the spring Leading for Good conference.
The conference's theme this year was “Co-Creating a Future for All.” The speakers and guests were united by developing a shared vision for a more equitable and sustainable future. Throughout the day, the conference's collective of innovative leaders discussed solutions for sustainability and economic inequities, and ways to drive change at the individual and organizational level.
"Conversations like this — coming together for shared solutions — is incredibly important,” Daniel Cervantes, SVP, National Expansion, Skill's for America's Future, said. “Having a shared endpoint and looking at data and the evidence so we're aligned and moving in the same direction.”
This event was made possible through the collaboration of the Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility and the Institute for Racial Justice, in addition to our other sponsors, listed here.
Resounding takeaways from the panels:
- Creating a sustainable future requires reimagination, personal responsibility, compelling storytelling, and consistently applying a lens of equity.
- Innovation can create collective impact when it is guided by values of empathy, humility, and urgency.
- Bridging the economic wealth gap for Black and Brown communities will require leveraging community partnerships, assessing quality-of-life factors, and including those most affected by the policies in the decision-making process.
- In order to change the status quo at the individual and systems level, we must have courage to stand alone or to fail. Pathways to get there include aligning work with purpose and allowing employees — particularly marginalized groups and younger generations — to not have to “check a box” to bolster equity and inclusion.
Summaries of the panels
- Panel: Sustainability Leaps: Taking Action Together
- Impact in Action: Innovator Awards
- An Economy for All
- Panel: Entrepreneurs and Intra-preneurs Needed: New Ways to Impact
Panel: Sustainability Leaps: Taking Action Together
- Erin Amico, President & CEO, Chicago Academy of Sciences / Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
- Paige Graham, SVP, Social Impact & Sustainability, Edelman
- Tonika Lewis Johnson, Folded Map Creator
- Joanne Rodriguez, Founder & CEO, Mycocycle
- Moderator: Karen Weigert, Director Baumhart Center
The first panel kicked off with discussions of systemic racism and its impact on access to efficient energy, the importance of sustainability storytelling, and how mushrooms can save the world. This panel was moderated by Karen Weigert, director of the Baumhart Center.
Storytelling and shaping public attitudes around sustainability is integral to driving climate change impact. Paige Graham, SVP, social impact and sustainability at Edelman, shared how everyone has a role to play in this movement.
“There are so many different places where people have to play. There's the policy, there's the regulation,” said Graham. “Our swim lane, so to speak, is really in, how to shift perception and get people to understand these topics that seem very complex.”
Spreading awareness of the inequities in accessing sustainable practices is another key component in this storytelling, said Tonika Lewis Johnson, photographer and social justice artist, Folded Map Project.
“We're working together right now to creatively put stories together to help people understand the importance of energy efficiency and the history of systemic racism’s relationship with energy, specifically in Black and brown neighborhoods,” Johnson said. “So, we are excited to introduce this project to the rest of the world — it's called Empowered and its shared stories about energy efficiency and how that plays out differently [by communities.]”
Without simplifying and contextualizing complex data, effective climate storytelling isn’t possible, Graham said.
“You have to be able to quantify and support the data, but you have to make the data mean something, you have to put it in the context your audience's life,” Graham said. “One hundred million metric tons of CO2 — that may be equivalent to flying 150 round trip flights from New York to Paris.”
Providing joyful experiences in nature, paired with targeted storytelling, is another critical element in leading climate change efforts.
“I think we as the Nature Museum and other cultural institutions have a really important role to play in helping tell that story to average everyday people so it can feel it as tangible, meaningful, and they can understand what the challenge is,” Erin Amico, president & CEO, Chicago Academy of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, said.
“You have to meet people where they are. One of our audiences are little kids under the age of seven, and a small child's not going to want to care about or protect what it doesn't love. When we're communicating to that group, it's play-based: it’s the frogs and the animals, and they have that moment of joy,” Amico said. “I think that can be a really powerful unlock to shift consumer behavior. Not just showing, ‘Hey, there's a real problem and let's help people understand it,’ but also with benefits of the reverse and having those positive connections with nature as well.”
Fungi aren’t only fun: they can help save the planet. The audience learned this from Joanne Rodriguez, founder and CEO of Mycocle. She explained the unique power of mushrooms have to clean up heavy hydrocarbons in nature and her approach to “reimagine waste as a value stream.”
“We reimagine waste as a value stream and not as a burden. My entire team's tagline is: ‘Pioneering natural for a carbon neutral future, through waste as a resource, not a burden,’” Rodriguez said.
We need robust and durable chemicals in building materials to be functional – but they sit in landfills for over 400 years when we dispose of them.
“Fungi love heavy hydrocarbons and petroleum, so that started the light bulb moment for me,” she said. “I decided to invest in myself and start a company that trains mushrooms to eat trash and create new materials.”
The panelists shared a consensus that prioritizing empathy and social justice are necessary ingredients in the formula for a sustainable future.
“The other side of that is we also have to offer [consumers] something of benefit because I think it really comes down to empathy,” Amico said.
Using data to bridge inequities is vital, particularly in relation to clean energy discrepancies.
“Being direct is how you get people to personalize these large systemic issues because sometimes we look at data, we look at maps, and we forget that it's made up of,” Johnson said, as she discussed removing barriers in energy efficiency.
“My home neighborhood, Englewood, and other predominantly Black neighborhoods like it, are blocked out of accessing this [energy efficiency programs] because of the inequities of home ownership and affordability to keep and to maintain their rules,” she said.
Karen Weigert, director, Baumhart Center and moderator of the panel closed out the Q&A with the question: “As we look ahead and we think about the way the economy grows, how do you steer a startup to what's next?”
“We grow diverse teams, we educate, and we imagine,” said Rodriguez.
Innovation Pop Up, VietFive Coffee:
Tuan Huynh, founder of VietFive Coffee, engaged the audience about how his journey as a refugee from Vietnam and someone who was previously incarcerated molded the foundation for his company. Hyunh, who is an award-winning creative director and community organizer based out of Chicago, Illinois, uses a welcoming-of-all approach in his innovation model.
“We create a space for people to be welcomed in… and to enjoy good coffee!” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunities love on thy neighbors like you love thyself."
Paired with an empathetic approach, investment into Chicago neighborhoods is a key tool for success, according to Huynh.
“I wanted to create a pathway for ownership and equity in our community,” Huynh said. “Lead with empathy!”
Impact in Innovation Awards:
- Social Impact Award recipient: Kathleen Caliento, President and CEO, Cara Collective
- Environmental Stewardship Award Recipient: Jimmy Samartzis, CEO, LanzaJet
- Parkinson Award Recipient: Jeff Hogue, Chief Sustainability Officer, Levi Strauss & Co.
- Moderator: Megan Christenson, Sr. Portfolio Manager, REDF Impact Investing Fund
Making impactful change requires belief, collaboration, and perseverance to lead to collective and transformative action. The winners of the Impact in Innovation Awards exemplify these qualities, and their remarks at this panel underline this.
"Cara Collective differs as a typical job shop in that we truly help people, as I say, find themselves before they find a job,” Kathleen Caliento, president and CEO, Cara Collective and Social Impact Award recipient, said.
At Cara Colllective, Caliento shared that prioritizing the dignity and humanity of job seekers are core values for her team.
"So many of our participants and job seekers have found us through misfortune, missteps, injustice...” Caliento. said “They've been told by society that they are their mistakes, so we help them truly think about what it means to let go of some of those beliefs and believe in the deepest sense and truth of who they are."
Time is of the essence for climate action, and Jimmy Samartzis, CEO of LanzaJet and Environmental Stewardship recipient, underlined the importance of this.
"One slogan that we use here at LanzaJet is: 'Someday is now,’ and say that intentionally,” Samartzis said. “We don't have to wait for someday to take action on climate change.”
“How do we move from intention to action?” This was a question posed to the panel by moderator, Megan Christenson, senior portfolio manager, REDF Impact Investing Fund.
Jeff Hogue, chief sustainability officer, Levi Strauss & Co and Parkinson Award recipient, asserted that “humility” was the word that came to mind, as “the work is never done.”
"Our guiding philosophy as a company is 'Profit through Principles'…this means that sustainability and doing the right thing is taken in consideration in everything we do, including how we produce our product, what we produce our products from, who we work with, and how we support the communities that we operate in,” Hogue said. “There's no tradeoffs between our values and the value that we provide to shareholders."
Discussing the pathways for an economy that works for all guided the Impact in Innovation panel. One answer is to diversify the pathways for talent, according to Caliento.
“To put it bluntly, this economy is not working for all,” she said. “We ensure job seekers have an opportunity they might not get elsewhere.”
Closing out the panel, Christenson summarized each panelists’ innovation guiding values in one succinct tagline:
“We’re going to generate profits through principles, and let’s get to work!”
Post Keynote Panel: An Economy for All
- Karen Freeman Wilson, President & CEO, Urban League
- Carl Jones, Jr., VP, Government and External Affairs, Comcast
- Andrea Sáenz, President & CEO, Chicago Community Trust
- Moderator: Brandis Friedman, Anchor/Correspondent, WTTW
Malik S. Henfield, founding dean of the Institute for Racial Justice (IRJ), opened the panel by recognizing how one of the IRJ’s key changemaking partners – Karen Freeman Wilson, president and CEO, Chicago Urban League – was in that very room.
“That's what we're all about: how can we do the research and the education, and most importantly, bring people together for this work?” Henfield said. “The future of Loyola is bright, and I'm so happy to be in partnership with individuals like those I mentioned, with the opportunity to partner with others in this room. Working together, I'm sure that we can address many of these stubborn and difficult issues.”
Creating an economy for all can’t be possible before assessing the many ways the economy is not benefiting marginalized populations. “The State of Black Chicago,” a creation of the Urban League of Chicago and the IRJ, does just that, as it demystifies the economic cost of being Black in Chicago.
“We all know about the racial and ethnic wealth gap. We all know about the reduction of significant growth in incomes, in education, in employment, in education,” Wilson said, as she described factors considered in the upcoming State of Black Chicago report. “What we really want to do is use this data that we are releasing to develop solutions.”
Quality-of-life and economic factors are intrinsically tied. Andrea Sáenz, president & CEO, Chicago Community Trust, discussed how measuring the quality of life of Chicago communities was the starting point developing the “We Rise Together” project.
“Our role at Chicago's Community Foundation is to focus on the things that are most important for the wellbeing of the people of the region,” Sáenz said. “What became clear is that it was a question of assets. Of household assets, community assets that allow some communities, mostly white communities in Chicago to get through an emergency, to plan for the future, to invest in education, to start a business — to do all the things that contribute to financial health and then wellbeing.”
Building into the discussion of quality of life, Carl Jones, vice president, government and external affairs, Comcast, emphasized the digital equity gap as a hindrance to high life quality, and the need to raise this issue to elected officials.
“It's that fundamental gap that we know about competing in the economy of today and the economy of tomorrow,” Jones said. “And as a media technology company, we realized we set this unique position of helping people get connected, helping people adopt and helping people get skilled in, in those different areas of what digital equity can mean.”
“A business, we realize there is a cost to inequity,” he said.
The panelists all concurred that the pandemic disproportionately drove disparities for marginalized communities. Looking forward, the group shared the following sentiments as their guiding thoughts for building a better future:
“Where is the system broken? Where are the things not working? And then who are the right set of people that can come together to solve them?” Sáenez asked.
“This isn't an urban or rural issue... it isn’t or a ‘R’ issue or ‘D’ or ‘I’ issue, it's an ‘us’ issue,” Jones said. “It’s an ‘all of us’ issue.’
“You really need the people who have the lion’s share of the resources to think about how they do the work differently and how they show up differently,” Wilson said.
Panel: Entrepreneurs and Intra-preneurs Needed: New Ways to Impact
- Kimberly Evans, EVP, Head of Corporate Sustainability, Inclusion and Social Impact, Northern Trust
- Joey Mak, Executive Director, Chicago:Blend
- Stephanie Morimoto, Owner & CEO, Asutra
- Moderator: Cherita Ellens, President & CEO, Women Employed
What is intra-preneurship? Cherita Ellens, president & CEO, Women Employed and moderator of the panel, offered the following understanding of the word to ignite the panel:
“It could be reimagining roles and structures, or it could be about creating social entrepreneurship programs that develop that drive impact outside of the organization,” Ellen said. “So, it’s a new way of thinking about equity and inclusion.”
In order to change the status quo, we must have courage to stand alone or to fail, the speakers asserted. Organizations must allow employees to be authentically themselves and to be allowed to be involved at different levels and positions of the organization.
Kimberly Evans, EVP, head of Corporate Sustainability, Inclusion and Social Impact, Northern Trust, said that “aligning work with purpose” is essential for employees looking to make a difference. She advised to the audience to ask, “Is this a role that I can contribute to?” when a job no longer matches with one’s principles.
Using entrepreneurship as a way to empower folks with widely applicable skillsets is one other method to driving impact, according to Joey Mak, executive director of Chicago:Blend.
“Entrepreneurship really comes down to a way of thinking,” Mak said. “To me, entrepreneurship is figuring out new ways how to do things in way a that is cost efficient, and impactful,”
Looking forward, the panelists shared what brings them hope for the future. The pandemic birthed new ways of thinking about systems that work for the greater good and problem solving. It also engaged a new generation to challenge others to have equal representation of identities at the table and to approach work differently.
“The impact of leading for good is about practice... and that's how we impact change at an individual level," Ellens said.
Together, we can elicit transformational, meaningful change for all by approaching systems and issues differently and challenging the way things traditionally have been done.
***
Note: Heather McGhee was unable to attend the event due to a flight cancellation.