Carol Cone:
Welcome to the first Purpose 360 episode of the new year. Today's episode is a special occasion, as we explore what lies ahead in purpose in 2024. It's the second year of our Purpose Predictions, and we have brought together an incredible group of thought leaders, innovators, and visionaries, to share their insights on the evolving landscape of purpose. Today, I'm pleased to host David Casey, Chief Inclusion and Social Impact Officer of Tapestry, Caryl Stern, Chief Impact Officer of LionTree and former CEO of UNICEF and former executive director of the Walton Family Foundation, and Andy Pharoah, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at Mars. These are three of my favorite people, who I'd love to discuss purpose and their insights about the work today, tomorrow, and what truly are the insights to make it sustained and great.
And what are my predictions for 2024? Well, authenticity will run supreme. "Authentic" was the word of the year for Merriam-Webster, and our work will be under a microscope more than ever before. We all know that we must be highly strategic, we must focus on core stakeholders, we must collaborate with partners, that can truly deliver and measure the heck out of what we're doing, and then, capture those stories and tell them in a compelling and persistent way.
Other predictions will be that our funding will likely be challenged, I hear that from so many of my colleagues in the industry, and that we will have to prove again, through the impacts on our employee engagement, recruitment, retention, the innovation, that we can inspire through the purpose, connections through our companies, as well as new partners that are going to come and work with us and say, "I choose you, because of your purpose work."
So before we dive in, I trust that you will sign up for Purpose 360, if you're not a subscriber already. Please share this podcast with your friends and colleagues. Because my vision for over 35 years has been to show business can be a force for good and a force for growth with authentic commitments to its purpose. So let's get started.
Carol Cone:
So joining me today is David Casey, he is Chief Inclusion and Social Impact Officer at Tapestry. Now, for those of you who don't know who Tapestry is, David, talk about the delicious and wonderful brands that encompass Tapestry and then we will get into the questions.
David Casey:
Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me back on, Carol. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about what's down the road. For those of you who are not familiar with Tapestry, we are a global house of three iconic brands, those being Coach Kate Spade New York, and Stuart Weitzman.
Carol Cone:
And I love them all. That's great.
David Casey:
We love you. Thank you.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, and for those of you... We had a marvelous conversation earlier in the year and we're going to put into our show notes a link to that because David is just, he's great. He's absolutely wonderful. So where is inclusion heading into 2024? I know there've been some challenges, not from you, but in the overall marketplace.
David Casey:
You're right, there have been challenges, Carol, from both. I would say when you think about the spectrum being left to right, there have been challenges on both ends of the spectrum.
One on the right end of the spectrum, challenges have come from a place of this work should not be done at all. From the left end of the spectrum, there's been criticism that the work has not made enough progress and that we're not pressing the gas hard enough.
I think as we look at 2024 and even beyond, I think in the inclusion space, we'll have to continue to articulate, for those of us in a corporate setting in particular, what the actual impact is on business strategy and the fact that it is a win-win for all parties involved. It's not divisive. There are no winners and losers, but I think it's got to continue to be positioned as a critical part of enterprise strategy. It's not a program, it's not a set of initiatives.
Carol Cone:
Let's talk about the other part of your job, which is the social impact job. So where do you see social impact going in 2024?
David Casey:
Wow, 2023 was certainly a dynamic year in this space and I think 2024 is going to be even more so. I think that social impact as well will increasingly become integrated in the core business strategies, rather than being seen and positioned as a standalone set of initiatives. I think the prevalence and impact of climate, social, cultural, and I would say political and legislative moments will continue to intensify in 2024. I think so will the consumer and employee expectations that companies stand in the gap.
Lastly, I think there'll be a stronger focus and demand for a focus on measurable impact, for transparency and for accountability as organizations strive to stand in that gap and address societal and environmental challenges.
Carol Cone:
Very well stated as I know again you would. But you have wonderful management and leadership who understands the power of this as business strategy.
What advice do you have for our listeners who are going like, wow, I wish I was at Tapestry. They get it. What can you suggest to your colleagues in terms of you've got so many areas here. You're talking about social impact, inclusion, measurement, strategy.
David Casey:
Carol, I think one thing we have found to be effective, beneficial and something that creates that win-win win is when you think about this work, prioritize collaboration and coalition building. I think you have to prioritize that both internally and externally to drive meaningful change and sustainable change.
There's always strength in numbers. So not only do we take advantage of being a leader where we can be and should be a leader, we want to take a look at the broader horizon to see who else can we bring along. Who else can we engage from a collaborative or coalition standpoint.
Again, I think what's really benefited Tapestry in this space is that we do have a focus on data-driven impact measurement, creating innovative and sustainable practices and proactive engagement with all of the stakeholders in the value chain, because I think that helps to do a couple of things. It builds trust, it builds resilience, and it drives long-term value.
Carol Cone:
Very well stated. What do you think will be the challenges this coming year? Especially because we've got wars, we've got crazy political environment, we've got the Supreme Court and their Affirmative Action declaration. There's so many things roiling in the culture and such.
David Casey:
You hit on quite a few of them. I think there's going to be ensuring that purpose is always aligned with profit, because we do operate in for-profit organizations. So there's got to be alignment there. There will be an increasingly and ongoing need to manage complex supply chains, engaging with, to your point, stakeholder activism. Also, understanding and responding to continuously evolving regulations that are going to require careful navigation.
But I think one of the ways to address the challenges is to understand the opportunity that lies in those challenges, and that's the opportunity to enhance your brand reputation, increase customer loyalty and access new markets and partnerships.
Carol Cone:
So in closing, I love talking with you. It's always so much fun. What sort of parting comments do you give to your colleagues so that they can have tremendous success in 2024?
David Casey:
So you might already know this quote, but if you don't, there's a quote from Simon Sinek that says, "People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it."
Carol Cone:
Do it. Yeah.
David Casey:
So when you think about purpose and you think about sustainability, go into it with that mindset. It's not about what you do, it's why you do it.
Carol Cone:
Then it's so much more expansive and then it'll just draw other people in when you execute it brilliantly, as you do at Tapestry.
David Casey:
Thank you very much. We certainly strive.
Carol Cone:
Oh, you do a fabulous job. So congratulations on your great successes in the last year and a half. Here's to a very inclusive and sustainable 2024.
David Casey:
Thank you, Carol. I wish you, and your crew, and your family and your loved ones nothing but the best for everything 2024 holds in store for you.
Carol Cone:
And today, I have the unbelievable honor of interviewing one of my sheroes, and that is Caryl Stern. And Caryl Stern currently is the Chief Impact Officer for LionTree. So welcome to the show, Caryl.
Caryl Stern:
Thank you, Carol.
Carol Cone:
There's so much to cover so we're just going to get started. Where is purpose going in 2024?
Caryl Stern:
I think that purpose is going into the business world in ways that will allow us to see that profit and purpose do not have to be divergent entities, but can be intersected opportunities.
Carol Cone:
Fantastic. What sort of opportunities do you see in the future for businesses and brands who are truly going to identify their purpose and then truly live it?
Caryl Stern:
Statistically, we know that companies that have purpose are more successful and we know that consumers are demanding that companies have a purpose, and that they will be willing to spend more money at a higher price tag at a company that has a purpose, than spend less money at a company that doesn't. So there is definitely growth opportunities in the industry, but I also think that there are very few products currently or services, aimed specifically at solving social problems. And so companies can take a look at, "What do we do that we do well that has application to a social problem, and how might we bring that into our scope?"
Carol Cone:
That sounds great.
Carol Cone:
Obviously what is happening in the world today with the extremism and anti-Semitism is just probably horrific to you as to so many others. Talk a little bit about ADL and how you can encapsulate that, those 18 years into a few key learnings that you've now applied to UNICEF, applied to the Walton Family Foundation, and now to LionTree.
Caryl Stern:
The one thing I didn't learn, and I guess it answers your question, is I truly believed we could stop anti-Semitism, and I believed if we raised a generation with a curriculum, today you use the letters DEI, but at the time they didn't even exist, but if we put anti-bias training or education into our schools, that we would raise this generation that would do a better job. And we failed because we're more fractious than I've ever seen us. Anti-Semitism is higher than I've seen it in my lifetime, and I am... Three emotions: I'm horrified, I'm sad, and I'm scared.
And so as we're looking at the issues that are confronting the community today, there are those in the community that see Jews as the oppressor. There are those that see Jews as the victim. We don't fit neatly into a box that can be checked, and therefore it's easy to make us a target. We have also always been the canary in the coal mine. Bigotry usually starts with Jews, and then you watch it escalate. And so I feel like we need to roll back the clock. We need to go back to teaching anti-bias training, but we also need to teach fellowship. We need to teach the compromise and we need to put awe back into the lives of our children.
Carol Cone:
Very well-stated. Who would do that? Are we thinking government? Are we thinking individual corporations? Are we thinking religious institutions? Parents?
Caryl Stern:
D, E, all of the above. I think that first and foremost, as grownups in the world, we need to take a step back and say to ourselves, "What can I do to contribute to that?" before we even do it in an organized way. Have I sat down with my kids and talked about this?
I used to talk about this when I did anti-bias training that we teach our children about drugs because we know that they can kill if they don't understand them. We teach them about sex, so they have careful and protected sex, especially in the AIDS years. We don't really necessarily sit down with our kids and talk about diversity. We don't talk about understanding differences. We don't talk about conflict resolution. We don't talk... They're not on that list of mandates, but they should be.
Carol Cone:
Absolutely, they should be.
What other vision do you have for purpose in 2024, and as we turn the corner to 2025, which is an interesting milestone year?
Caryl Stern:
My vision for purpose is that the three primary sectors, the corporate sector, the government sector, and the philanthropic sector, will merge and that we will learn to tackle problems taking advantage of the expertise of each one. I have told the story before, but when the storm ravaged Puerto Rico, UNICEF had no staff on the ground in Puerto Rico. And so I didn't quite know how to respond to it. And I reached out to the then governor of New York because he had flown down to see what Puerto Rico needed, and I was impressed that he approached it by asking, "What do you want?" Not assuming we knew better.
And so I reached out to him and he told me that he had cleared space at JFK and that he had the State Attorney General down in the ground in Puerto Rico vetting organizations that could do distribution. And he was trying to figure out now what to collect and then how to get it there. And he goes, "So that's what I got. What do you got?" And I said, "Well, tell you what, Governor, I know what they need because I've responded in these situations. So when they tell you they need sanitation things or they need health things, I know what those things are and I know where you can get them in one source because UNICEF puts those kits together. And I know how to raise the money to make it happen." So that's what I got. But I got one more thing. I have the chairman of UPS... The CEO of UPS, excuse me, on my board, brand new CEO, and he's going to be in my office tomorrow for orientation.
Carol Cone:
Serendipity.
Caryl Stern:
So [inaudible 00:03:07] never got oriented. And I said to him, "Here's what the governor's got and here's what I've got. What does UPS got?" And he said, "Well, I have the ability to help you transport all of that to Puerto Rico. I have the best logistics in the world." And he said, "I have 500 drivers on the ground who have trucks, 500 trucks, and they have fuel in them, which was something nobody had."
So we put our heads together and I identified where the supplies were. They were in Italy. The governor got clearance to get them through customs far quicker than I ever could have achieved it. We got them to the warehouse. We used the warehouse for staging space. We unpacked and repacked. UPS transported them by ship originally and by plane later to Puerto Rico. The drivers literally distributed them sometimes with chainsaws in their trucks to cut down trees in the roads. And we got supplies to the furthest place, the most remote place first. We were first because all three sectors work together. So what I believe is the future of all of this, of purpose, is for the three sectors to learn how to work together.
Carol Cone:
Brilliant. Beautiful endpoint and wonderful collaboration. Caryl Stern, you are the best.
Carol Cone:
With me is Andy Pharaoh, and we've had Andy on the podcast. And I'm sure Andy, you'll give us your proper title, but we just love the work that he's doing on behalf of Mars. And so welcome back to the show, Andy.
Andy Pharaoh:
Great, thank you. Thank you very much for having me. I like the idea of a proper and an improper title.
Carol Cone:
Okay-
Andy Pharaoh:
My proper title-
Carol Cone:
... so tell me your proper title.
Andy Pharaoh:
... is Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability.
Carol Cone:
I love it. And there's a lot more senior executives that are combining those capabilities and titles that we're seeing in companies that truly have an authentic commitment to purpose and purpose activation and sustainability. So it's wonderful to have the breadth of your background. So let's just get started. The first question is, where do you see purpose or if you want to talk about sustainability evolving for 2024?
Andy Pharaoh:
I think the big shift, and I think we're starting to see it, is the debate really moves to the actuals. It moves to actually what you do than the rather less about what you talk about. And I think that that is the lens that lots of people are increasingly implying to companies. So I've recently returned from COP in Dubai.
Carol Cone:
Oh, I want to ask you about that.
Andy Pharaoh:
That was very much our focus. Our focus was on what is it actually possible to achieve and what are we achieving? Commitments are all well and good, but in the end, the only thing that matters is where you'll be against those commitments in three to five years. And if I look at me and my colleagues on the leadership team, we are the group of people that can help Mars deliver where it gets to in 2030, maybe a little bit beyond that and we can set the right direction to 2050, but really it's about that focus on the short to medium term and really delivering results. And what we found is that there isn't a trade-off between growing and doing well. You can grow your business and we've grown it by 60% at the same time as cut your carbon. We've got lower carbon levels, over 15 percentage points down from our peak in 2018 and 8 percentage points down from our baseline in 2015.
Carol Cone:
So congratulations. Those are big and really significant numbers. Share with our listeners your point of view of COP. What do you think of the outcome?
Andy Pharaoh:
I was there with my CEO. We had our chief sustainability officer there and we had actually three other people. So it was a small delegation. And I think in the end, I mean the [inaudible 00:03:30] on the outcome is that there's been 28 COPs, only a couple of them get remembered by the name of the city. Kyoto, and we have Paris. I think Dubai has the potential of being remembered because of certainly what happened on loss and damage, but also because of the fact that fossil fuels were mentioned and that was the clear direction. I think the only way we'll know whether Dubai was truly significant will be in the rear view mirror in five years time.
Anything involving over 190 governments is bound to be messy. And expecting one single meeting on its own to solve anything is as ridiculous in the climate change process as it is within any other area of business, right, so the important thing is there is dialogue and there is progress. And so I think you have to take progress over perfection. And I think the mentioning of fossil fuels was progress. I think the move on renewables was progress.
Carol Cone:
I didn't get to ask you, were there any big surprises at COP? For you or your colleagues? Could be a little surprise, but we were surprised by the...
Andy Pharaoh:
I think probably the surprise was actually how much progress was made. I think a lot of people wrote off this COP at the start and I think there was quite a lot of progress was made.
Carol Cone:
Oh, super. What advice would you like to give to your colleagues who are listening to this, which is like how Andy's got this amazing role and he's gone to COP and he worked with little six segments and Mars is privately held, so it's a little bit of a different situation, but what sort of advice do you have for your colleagues as they are trying to make this more strategic, integrated into the company further, make sure that they've got great measurement? Any recommendations?
Andy Pharaoh:
I mean, I think it's really focused on what you can achieve and focus on the actuals and what are the things that make sustainability or purpose? Things that you can truly measure and that benefit both your business and the world around you. And I think be exceptionally wary of opportunities just to talk. And one thing I think I'm very concerned about is I'm very concerned that too many people play into the polarization that exists, because sadly, on quite a lot of issues there is the growth polarization. It is quite possible to do a very successful [inaudible 00:12:59] marketing approach, which gets you lots of coverage and gets you lots of talkability but all it does is divide the, divide the signs. And for me, one of the things on it, and this is often not a popular view, but if sustainability is a core business metric and you treat it as a business topic, you have to accept that sometimes things will go faster, sometimes things will go slower.
Sometimes things will be less successful than you thought they would, just as it would be with everything else you do. And it's important not to view that as some huge theological failure that a program you had hasn't achieved the results or the fact that you may need to rebalance something and you may need to do it. But what we certainly know from talking to consumers is that we did global, we did polling across the seven largest economies a couple of months back and we found that nearly seven out of 10 said they want companies to prioritize the environment at least as much as they want them to prioritize economic issues. And that's at a time when the economy has been relatively troubled. So you've really got to do both.
Carol Cone:
That's tremendous. That's tremendous. So I always like to give the last word to my guest. So is there anything else you'd like to add as we say farewell to 2023 and look to 2024 with the very important work that we do?
Andy Pharaoh:
I would say, and certainly for Mars, is that no one's perfect and it's really important to be really be quite humble around what you're looking to achieve. And honestly, if what you're looking to achieve isn't difficult and hard, then you've probably got the wrong targets.
Carol Cone:
Ah, that's great.
Andy Pharaoh:
Again, because we're talking about a world in which we live around things that we don't control, whether it be outside of our own four walls or even in our environmental footprint, in our social footprint, in our economic footprint. So I think you need humility, you need to focus on progress over perfection, but absolutely focusing on what are the actuals that you can deliver. So when we, we were very careful, when we launched our net zero roadmap, we launched it because we need partners to help us deliver it. We launched it and we open sourced it because we wanted people to see what a sustainability approach with clear numbers or what it would look like, and maybe it was an approach that others could look to follow, but we did it on the back of having a business that's grown 60% and a CO2 footprint that's declined by an eight percentage points over that period in time.
Now minus eight isn't minus 50 and it's certainly not minus 80, which is probably where we can get to with the reductions before making up the rest with the credits in the long run. But it is rooted in progress. So focus on the actuals, do it humbly and recognize that nobody's perfect.
Carol Cone:
Super. Andy Pharaoh, it is always such a pleasure to talk with you and your ears will be burning throughout the year as I constantly just say wonderful things about Mars in all of my presentations and speeches and conversations. So thank you very much and have a great new year.
Andy Pharaoh:
You too, Carol. Thank you.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenney at Carol Cone On Purpose. Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at TruStory FM. And you, our listener. Please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
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