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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact.
I just love it when I can interview a hero on Purpose 360. And today I have the wonderful opportunity to interview a shero, and that is Caryl Stern. I had the great fortune to meet her when she was CEO of UNICEF USA. In 2008, I was researching my book Breakthrough Not-for-Profit Branding, and she was one of the top organizations I wanted to include. And we had a marvelous conversation. So marvelous that we've been friends ever since.
She's worked for well-known organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, UNICEF, the Walton Family Foundation, and now she's currently Chief Impact Officer of LionTree, an independent investment and merchant bank.
For 12 years Caryl led UNICEF USA as its CEO, transforming it into a fundraising powerhouse and igniting a movement to put children first. Her journey took her to over 30 countries where she witnessed firsthand the extraordinary tragedies and extreme challenges faced by the world's most vulnerable children.
The roots of Caryl's passion for doing good can be traced back to her upbringing as a daughter of Holocaust survivors. This profound background instilled in her a sense of responsibility to make a tangible and deep, positive difference throughout her career. Her empathy, her deep listening skills, coupled with an insatiable curiosity and her ability to capture and tell stories that totally capture your head and your heart has driven her to constantly seek new ways to address seemingly intractable challenges around the world.
So join me as we unravel the story of Caryl Stern. I know there are so many lessons to learn, so let's get started. So welcome to the show, Caryl.
Caryl Stern:
Thank you, Carol. That's one introduction. Whew!
Carol Cone:
Oh no, it's a great introduction, and there's so much to cover so we're just going to get started.
So Caryl, can you talk a little bit about your career, but I want you to also focus on, you talk about your mother who was a Holocaust survivor and what you learned because I believe that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Caryl Stern:
Sure, and thanks for asking that because she has played a really pivotal role in everything I've done in my life. She's an amazing woman.
My mother came to this country at the age of six with her brother who was four and they came alone. They were deposited in an orphanage on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And she came here because her parents realized the only way to ensure the safety of their children was to send them to the United States. And neither my mom nor her brother spoke English. They had no idea where they were going. They were too young to comprehend what was going on, but Kristallnacht had just happened and they saw the writing on the wall.
A family friend brought them here, and I grew up with that story, and I always wondered about that friend. What was she thinking? What made her so generous? And my mother always talked about her as the woman who saved her life and I know I wouldn't exist if not for that woman. So the idea that one person could make a difference was what my entire life with my mother has been about.
But my grandfather boarded another ship, the SS St. Louis, which was "The Voyage of the Damned." It was bound for Cuba. It had over 1,000 passengers, most of them Jews. My grandfather had sold his lumberyards, everything, to get on this ship. And when it got to Cuba, he hoped to send for children in the US, send for his wife who was hiding in Vienna, start life again. When it got to Cuba, they found out their documents that they had paid so dearly for were fraudulent and Cuba wasn't going to let them in.
Carol Cone:
Oh, no.
Caryl Stern:
And the boat sat in a harbor for 40 days while the world debated its fate, even the United States would not take these passengers so they were kind of stateless at that point. There were people who committed suicide because there was no place to go. And the boat ultimately was sent back to Europe. And my grandfather was amongst a few that got off in London, the rest went to Holland. And in London, he was arrested as a prisoner of war because he was Viennese. Never mind that he was a Jew, he was from Austria. So he was put in a POW camp, which saved his life. Those that went to Holland perished at the hands of the Nazis.
But I knew my grandfather. So while my mother was teaching us one person could make a difference, my grandfather was teaching us what happens when the world turns its back. And so I don't think I ever had a choice in terms of being a part of something that could make a difference. And my mother believed her life was spared. She was unbelievably lucky to be an American. She doesn't always agree with our country, but she understands the value of the freedom of our country. And she put signs in her hands and encouraged us to use our voice and march on anything we disagreed with my entire life, so it's not surprising that I ended up with the career that I've ended up with.
Carol Cone:
Except that in college, you studied painting.
Caryl Stern:
I did. I studied painting.
Carol Cone:
So did that help you to be more creative in a way?
Caryl Stern:
I think my art degree is the basis of my success. I truly do because you look at a blank canvas when you want to paint, and I used to paint huge canvases, six-by-six feet canvases, and it could be anything. It's endless possibilities and it's up to you to create it and you own it afterwards. So it's either good or it's not. And not everybody's going to like it. You got to learn to get used to that. You have to learn to explain what you're doing and to look at the world in ways that maybe are a little bit different than everybody else. I also used to paint very abstract paintings. I think studying art was the most wonderful thing for me ever.
Carol Cone:
I wondered because my mother was an actress and my stepfather was a modern artist, and I got a lot of her energy and his creativity. I want to talk about leadership and how you evolved from ADL to UNICEF and why you took the leap. And then I also love the story about, well, you lost your CEO at UNICEF instantly, and then, "Well, we'll give Caryl the interim job, but we're going to go out, we're going to go find somebody else who's better." Likely what they meant, maybe they didn't say that to you, but you took that on as a great challenge.
Caryl Stern:
Yeah. Well, so I left ADL because after 18 years, I realized that I had been working for Abe Foxman, who was a phenomenal teacher. I really attribute my leadership success to things I learned from him, but he wasn't going anywhere, and I was ready to take the next step.
UNICEF offered me a lateral move. And so at first, I really wasn't going to do the job, and then the more I thought about it, the mission was so in line with who I was, that to be part of saving the lives of children, I mean, what better calling is there? So it made sense to make a lateral move. And the man who I was going to work for, Chip, his name is Chip, he was very Gandhi-esque, which was kind of like the opposite extreme of what Abe Foxman is. I mean, Abe is brilliant and dynamic and loud, and he's often strong in different ways. So I was really excited to just experience this other leadership type. And then three weeks into the job, he got a job with Bill Gates and he left. And so the board said to me, "Well, you can be on the search committee or you can be a candidate, but you could be on the search committee."
Carol Cone:
Yeah, yeah. Like, "Don't even apply."
Caryl Stern:
Don't even apply. And I said, "Well, I'd really like to apply." And one board member said, "Well, but you've never put a toe in a developing nation. You don't know what you're doing."
So I had a year, I knew it was going to take a year. They were doing a global search, they named me interim president, and I packed my bags and I went to Darfur and went to visit the refugee camps. And this was really during the heat of Darfur. This is a long time ago already. And I sat at the feet of anyone who would teach me: the women who had been raped, the teenagers who had experienced it, the people who were serving them, the people who ran the refugee camp. I literally just was like a sponge, soaking it up. And I went from there, I went back to the States, then I went to Mozambique and I learned about delivering aid, and there were floods and how that got coordinated, and just did a whole lot of traveling with a whole lot of humanitarian aid workers and really began to understand what it took to respond and what it took to also get the American people to care.
And that then began my career as a storyteller because I started to come back and to tell the stories of what I was experiencing, and I ended up with the job. So then I woke up the next morning after they gave me the job, and I went like, "Oh my God, I have this job. Now what do I do?"
Carol Cone:
Yeah. I want to pause for a second because I think that's a really important learning point to all of our listeners, which is one... And also for women too because women get into this imposter syndrome. It's like when I took the job at Edelman and I went, "Oh my God, now I'm like Global Head of Business for Social Purpose. Now what?"
I love the fact you went to the field and you said, "I just would listen and learn from anybody who I could learn from." So this, it's a gene. It's like a superpower. It's like you're learning superpower. It's the power of listening, the power of learning. Can you share any of the nuances of that with our listeners, because those are two huge abilities for women and for people who want to succeed, but doing it with humility and smarts?
Caryl Stern:
Well, I think because I grew up at a time, and Carol, we both did, where they told us we could be anything we wanted to be, but there were no paths given to us to be what we wanted to be. So I didn't set out to be a humanitarian aid worker, but I did have aspirations to do something that mattered, but there was no path. And so we had to pave the road while we were driving it. And I think that's where I got the skill as much as from my mother was, look, it's not going to be given to me, so I better go out there and find it.
I also think the generosity of others is remarkable if you provide the opportunity for the generosity to come to you, and that would be-
Carol Cone:
Oh, that's beautiful. Great.
Caryl Stern:
... the biggest lesson I think of my career is I have been awed by the many people who have helped me, and it has definitely taught me that sure, it's great to put my hand up the ladder and pull myself up to the next rung, but boy, my hand better be behind me too pulling somebody with me.
Carol Cone:
Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Let's talk about UNICEF. And I love that you've said, in one of your speeches and such, "I'm going to take every opportunity on every stage and in every location to scream what the needs of children are." So talk about this role that you stepped in. And you also said, "I'm going to double in donations and I'm going to touch more children." It's a big deal.
Caryl Stern:
I think what happened for me is in one of my first years there, I went to Sierra Leone on a mission to do tetanus shots. And when we arrived in Sierra Leone, we learned there was a baby in a hospital that was dying of tetanus. And since we had never seen the disease, I don't know anyone in the United States who ever caught tetanus, you step on a nail, you get a tetanus shot, I went to the hospital. The Minister of Health invited us to come, we went. And you got to understand, this is like ground zero for child survival. So you go to this hospital, it's not a hospital like you and I know it. There are no beds. The kids are sleeping on a blanket on a floor or a mat on the floor. There are no monitors. It's one big room with all these kids. There are no nurses really. There's moms caring for their children, bringing them a pot to pee in, and going outside and lighting a fire and cooking a meal to bring them in for lunch. I'd never seen anything like it.
And off in a corner of this big room curtained off, I walk in and there's this baby that's... I guess it was somewhat of a bassinet. It was like a table with blankets kind of on it. And this mom. Now, I heard that the mom's name was Menumada, and the baby was writhing in agony. The mom was maybe 17 or 18 years old. She didn't speak any English. I didn't speak her language. And the only thing I could do was to hold her hand because it was the only way we could communicate to one another was, "I'm a woman, you're a woman, you're a mom. I'm a mom. Your child is dying and I can't talk to you."
So I held her hand and I watched this child die, and I knew that baby died before she did. And tetanus is an awful disease, the baby was in agony. And I had to go out and get a doctor, and the doctor came back in and I stayed outside, and the doctor told her her baby was dead. And I heard that woman's screams. Carol, I can still hear them in my head right now. And it was awful. And I realized, we've been telling these stories to people of 20, at that time, I think it was 28,000 children would die of preventable causes. And that was a number, but now it was one child and it was very real and I had just watched it and that this was just so unacceptable to me, so unacceptable to me.
And in Mozambique on my first trip when I watched... I went to a maternity ward and this woman was talking to me and telling me how excited she was because she was in a bed and that there were screens on the window. She had never seen screens on a window. She lived in a hut. And I thought at that time, I was over 30 years old. I don't know how old I was when I first went to UNICEF, but I sat there and I thought, where have I been? I gave birth in a modern hospital. My whole family was there. There were presents and flowers. I never even looked at the window to see if there were screens. And I realized and I learned that more women gave birth like this woman I met in Mozambique in the world than gave birth the way I got the privilege to. And I just couldn't bear that. And I couldn't bear that a baby died for want of a vaccine that was less than the price of my coffee at Starbucks. And that I didn't know that.
So I just felt like I have a responsibility to scream it. Give me the mountaintop, I'll yell as loud as I have to, but somebody's got to listen. And people need to know. If you know and you don't give a damn, shame on you, but if you don't know, how can I ask you to give a damn?
Carol Cone:
So that sounds like it was the birth of I Believe in ZERO.
Caryl Stern:
It was. When the baby died, that was the birth of I Believe in ZERO, that zero children dying of preventable causes, that even the death of one child, if it's your child or you have to watch the child, or it's your friend's child, there's nothing more heart-wrenching. This baby was six days old, didn't even have a name yet, and died of something that, again, that a few bucks would've prevented and not much more would've cured, and yet, couldn't do it.
Carol Cone:
Couldn't do it. And now you wrote a book with that.
Caryl Stern:
Yes, it's called I Believe in ZERO.
Carol Cone:
And I met you when I was doing my book, Breakthrough Not-for-Profit Branding. That's how we met. And I just thought, oh my God, this is branded, it's focused, it's evolving. And so that was 20... I probably met you in 2008 or something like that.
Caryl Stern:
I know. I was trying to think what year it was, yeah.
Carol Cone:
A while ago, yeah. And you were on the stage at Net Impact, which thousands of graduate students, MBAs and such, and you were talking about the book, and I believe you were bawling or the whole audience was bawling. What did you think of that moment?
Caryl Stern:
It was a really funny moment because first of all, when a friend asks you to speak, you forget you're speaking in a formal atmosphere. So I actually have referenced that day to so many people because I just felt like I was talking to you and I started telling stories and I told stories that I've never told before on a stage, and I definitely never told since.
But I have learned over the years that if you want people to hear you tell a story, and if you want them to understand the urgency, it has to be personal. They liken it to cancer. There are people who just... They hear about cancer and they say, "This is a horrible disease. I'm going to donate to get rid of it because I think it's a horrible disease," but most people wait until cancer touches their lives, either in someone they love or themselves, and then they get actively involved in the fight against cancer.
Well, when it comes to child survival in the United States, even the poorest child in the US has a tenfold over a kid in a developing nation because here at least we have a social welfare system. They're guaranteed an education. There are shelters, there are things. None of that exists. They have a birth certificate, they can prove they were born. That puts them ahead of a lot of kids in a developing nation.
Carol Cone:
I want to do a little bit of a pivot here because you've done so many great things at UNICEF, and I want to know, how do you balance the heritage of an organization with new ideas?
Caryl Stern:
So I definitely believe that we all stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us and that we have responsibilities if we take leadership roles to honor the shoulders we stand on. So I think legacy is important, and understanding history is important. But I also, I was always the kid that was in trouble in high school. I am a rule-breaker, and sometimes you just got to skirt the rules to get it done.
And so when I got to UNICEF and I kind of threw down the gauntlet after this baby died and said, "I Believe in ZERO, and we're going to bring that number down because we're going to raise more money to save kids than ever before. We're going to double the income." And we did it because we believed so strongly in the need and we were so motivated. But I also, and it kind of leads to what I'm doing today, this was the heart of it was there's got to be ways to solve social problems that aren't dependent on a philanthropic model because a philanthropic model may not be sustainable.
And so I started to look for alternatives. And I had a young man who worked for me at the time, Rajesh Anandan, who came to me with this crazy idea, it wasn't my idea, to build the first tracker for good, fitness bit for good. The idea being that children were starving all over the world. And if we could deal with that problem simultaneously to dealing with the obesity problem amongst children in the United States by getting them active, wouldn't that be brilliant?
So he said, "Imagine if we created a Fitbit that was just for kids. We made it low-cost so kids could afford it. And if every time they got active, it told them how wonderful they were, it lit up. It said, 'You're great, keep going.'" And that is, as they got active, it counted their steps, and when they reached a certain amount, they would earn a point and then it would celebrate them when they earned that point, and when they earn 10 of those points, we would release ready-to-use therapeutic food to a starving child. So the motivation to the American kid would be get off the couch, get active, get healthy, and you will save a life of another child.
The downfall of the program, and it worked, we saved a lot of kids' lives with it, was we didn't have the marketing budget to market. We needed $1 million to market it. But anyway, so we got Target to sell it, which was great. We even got NCATS out of Target. I mean, it was good, but it wasn't advertised anywhere, so you had to find it. And so it didn't take off the way I would've liked it to take off, but I believe in the two years we did it, we saved over 40,000 lives as a result of using that band.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, it was just brilliant. And Rajesh, he's an amazing guy.
Caryl Stern:
He's amazing.
Carol Cone:
Okay, so you're at UNICEF, you're doing these amazing things, I'm watching you, we're doing a tiny bit of work together, and then all of a sudden I read in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, OMG, Caryl has gone over to the Walton Family Foundation. What happened?
Caryl Stern:
I made the decision to leave with no idea what I was going to do next. I had been CEO for over 13 years. I do not believe anyone should be CEO for that long of a nonprofit. I really think you reach a point where you bring everything you can. If you're good at a nonprofit, you're giving your heart, your soul, your brain, your stomach, it's 24/7, and you can only sustain that at the level of necessity when you're saving lives for a certain amount of time. And so I just kind of woke up one day and said, "You know what? It's time for somebody else to take this over."
Caryl Stern:
But I took the job with the Waltons because I'll be honest, when they first offered me the opportunity to apply, it was like I'll apply because the size and scope of the foundation, talk about having impact. So the first round of interviews was with staff, and that was fun. And I liked the guy who was running the family office, but the second round was with family members, and I met the Waltons. They are an amazing family. Just an amazing family. There are 37 of-age Waltons. They are diverse. They are politically diverse. They are ethnically diverse because when you marry in, you become a full family member. They share a spirit of generosity. That's the commonality. And I was struck by them. They're the real deal. I didn't always agree with everything they wanted to do, but boy, the motivation for doing it was never something I couldn't get behind.
And I found myself, the more I met with them, the more intrigued I got, the more I wanted to be part of what they were doing and so I bought a house in Bentonville. But I have to admit, I missed being the one putting the spoon with the food in the mouth of the child. And I just kind of similarly, I had told them I'd stay three to five years. I stayed four. I woke up in my third year and said, "You know, it's time." So I was asked to write a five-year strategic plan, which I did do in my first year, and get it through the family, which we did do, and to help transition from generation two to generation three, which we did do. And it was the right time. I either had to commit to another five years or leave then.
Carol Cone:
I'm assuming is that you knew the CEO of LionTree. So ultimately, did you go for like, "Hey, let's have a cup of coffee. I'm a free agent again"?
Caryl Stern:
No, we had been talking for a couple of years about legacy, about purpose. The CEO of LionTree, Aryeh Bourkoff, is a really brilliant, really interesting man. He was on one of my boards at UNICEF at one point. We traveled to a refugee camp in Jordan together, which was first we went to Israel for a couple of days, then we went to Jordan, and it was a very emotional trip. It was during the height of the Syrian refugee crisis. So we cried together, we laughed together, we played soccer together in refugee camp. We had a great time with the kids, and it bonded us in a way as friends that he's a lifelong friend now, and we have had a lot of conversations about legacy and about purpose.
And so when he offered me the opportunity to come on board and really look at the intersection of purpose and profit in a new model for philanthropy, I thought, "This is what I want to do for the Swan song of my career"-
Carol Cone:
Love it.
Caryl Stern:
... "so let's go do it."
Carol Cone:
This is like the calling found you again.
Caryl Stern:
Yeah, no, I'm totally energized by what I'm doing and learning. That's the other thing I think is that this has opened up... I don't think I ever worked in the for-profit world before. I'm on the board of The Container Store. That's been my MBA, but beyond that...
Learning about investments, learning why you analyze a business, looking at who's doing something for-profit that is solving a social problem, and how do you go about deciding if that's a good solid investment or not, and seeing how you could move the needle more that way than you could through the nonprofit gift you might make and get a return on it. And then if you're me, you'll reinvest your return. If you're someone else, maybe you'll bank your return. I don't care. You're going to still get the problem solved.
Carol Cone:
So companies that want to approach you, what do they need? How do they need to get their act together? What sort of package do they need so that they can get on your radar screen?
Caryl Stern:
I'm in my homework phase right now. If they're looking for immediate answers, I'm not ready to give them yet.
Carol Cone:
Okay. That's fair. That's totally fair. So as we wind this down because I'm definitely going to have you back once you hit the ground with LionTree because I want to hear about all the great different ideas that you're funding and learning about, what sort of guidance, you've given a lot, but to someone who says, "Oh my God, I want a career like that. I want a career like Caryl Stern," what advice do you give?
Caryl Stern:
I guess I would just start with pick your passion. I know that when I was at ADL, given my family history, fighting anti-Semitism was real for me. And when I was at UNICEF, nothing mattered more to me than saving the lives of children and that's been the theme of my entire career has been kids. But you can't just do it. You got to believe it. So if you really, really want to do something that matters, then make sure it matters to you because then you bring your whole body to it.
Carol Cone:
What else?
Caryl Stern:
Secondly, there are skills. And it's not all, "Oh my God, today I get to save the starving child." There are budgets and board meetings, and so to the extent that you have business skills, you need them.
And then lastly, this is trite because everybody says it, but surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. I knew I didn't have the best... And I didn't have an MBA. I'd never taken an accounting course or an economics course. So I've always been totally keyed into having the best CFO I can possibly have and someone I trust implicitly so that I could know the numbers that were given to me were the numbers that I needed.
Carol Cone:
Fantastic. And I'd also say because you said this many times, the power of listening. I mean, I think that, yeah.
Caryl Stern:
You learn from everybody.
Carol Cone:
Right. You're a sponge and you love being a sponge. I mean, you're like a lifelong learner like me.
Caryl Stern:
Absolutely.
Carol Cone:
So Caryl Stern, this has been an amazing conversation. I love it. Thank you for taking the time. Yes, you continue to be one of my key sheroes and-
Caryl Stern:
And you're mine, you know that.
Carol Cone:
Oh, well. I appreciate that. And we want to welcome you back. Once you get your feet on the ground with LionTree, we want to really hear about some of your incredible investments, so please come back in the future?
Caryl Stern:
Thank you. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristen Kenney at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our 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.
This transcript was exported on Dec 13, 2023 - view latest version here.
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