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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Paul - 00:00:00:
Thank you for joining the podcast today.
Daniella - 00:00:03:
Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Paul.
Paul - 00:00:05:
So the first question is really about you personally. And I wanted to ask you, when you were at the State Department and then you transitioned out of it, did you have an aha moment when you were working on sustainable development, you were inside the government, and then something happened to you, and I'm not quite sure what it was, that brought you into this Leadership Now project work, which is about optimizing and strengthening our democracy. So can you tell us what was going on for you inside?
Daniella - 00:00:39:
Sure, thanks for the question. I'm going to make that into two aha moments that combined, I think, led to my work in this area. The first was shortly after joining the State Department in 2012. And I joined, I was an atypical appointee in the Obama administration. I had not worked on campaigns or been in a think tank or been a big donor. I was more of an expert and a business person who'd worked on issues related to international economic development, global health and otherwise in a business context. And as incredible as it was to move to Washington and join administration I respected and work with leaders. I was struck within a few months of joining government that our institutions did seem to be unable to keep up with what a rapidly changing world. I joined the State Department a few weeks after the WikiLeaks scandal. I was seeing Congress was unable to respond to many of the demands, and it genuinely made me nervous to see what seemed like a dramatic disconnect between our public institutions and what I had experienced in business and elsewhere, and as an engineer studying some of the most innovative systems in my degrees earlier on in my career. So that was my first one where I had this overriding feeling in government and concern that these were disruptible systems, that our public institutions were disruptible, because they were lagging the speed which many of the way technology was advancing with the internet, the way other systems were evolving. The second aha moment was shortly after the 2016 election. I was still serving in government. We obviously had a highly contentious election. It revealed a lot of polarization. Trump won the election and was in a way that was unexpected, which was a surprise to many. And it raised a lot of questions around, how did we not understand each other in this country in a way to know that there were these very big divides? I was grappling with trying to understand that. And I happened to go to leave Washington for a bit and go up to an executive education course at Harvard that was focused on getting women on corporate boards unrelated to any of these issues to clear my mind. And there was a session though by Professor David Moss, a historian, who started the session by explaining all of the data around how Americans' faith in democracy had declined over the decades. I was already thinking about the need for new institutions, for something like Leadership Now to emerge after the election. But I think that that data and his analysis of these underpinning issues, to me created a lot of clarity around what were some of the factors that were leading us to we were that where we were, that were beyond just the proximate election. So that started really a journey for me and for others that I was working with to tap into some amazing academic minds, tack into the amazing business minds, use my networks in a different way than I had in the past to identify what could be the type of new coalition and entity that would have a meaningful impact on where we were. Because if I learned nothing else in work to solve problems like where we collaborated on global HIV, on the sustainable development goals. You really have to think about what's the kind of tent you're building? How big is it? Who sits in it? How do you take different actors who have different ways of operating and get them to come together in coalition? I mean, in reaching the PEPFAR legislation, which you were very involved in, you had to figure out a way for evangelicals and the LGBT community and progressive groups and conservative groups to all come together in a way that didn't ask them to all change the nature of how they worked and what they cared about at its core, but to come together around a common goal. And I think democracy is that kind of issue where we can create a tent that includes most of America and really, and ideally, hopefully all of America in saying we need a strong democracy and redefining how we think about our obligations as citizens, about how we think about our businesses. And our political systems, uh, so that we have kind of a long-term way out of the, um, polarizations and, uh, frustration that I think. So many of us feel with where we are politically.
Paul - 00:05:59:
Yeah, thank you for that. And I want to acknowledge you because you've sensed that there was dysfunction in the government in your first aha moment and it could operate better maybe. And then in the moment of the 2016 election and the aftermath, you really saw that there was something wrong and sick about our democracy, and you just didn't go along and do whatever you were doing. You innovated and you're very entrepreneurial. And you created the Leadership Now Project, which has been up and running for about seven years. So can you tell us what is the Leadership Now Project and what are you trying to accomplish with business leaders? And are you dealing, like you mentioned cross-partisan mobilization. So I'd like to ask you to also touch on how you're working with business leaders on both sides of the political aisle.
Daniella - 00:06:57:
Sure. Well, I think after serving in government for five years and being engaged in diplomatic efforts that were very interesting and satisfying in many ways, but was in the context of a large bureaucratic system. My first question in trying to do something that was going to be meaningful, or my first orientation was that it had to start with an entrepreneurial orientation and innovation orientation. That the ways of working had to be different. The way that you brought people together had to be different and solve problems. So I have tried to, from the start of leadership now. So how do we take really kind of lessons from the past around how you create influential coalitions while merging it with the best ways of working and organizing people and their ideas for action that are based on much more modern innovative models. So I've just been trying to be very conscious of the how in addition to the what. Like if the what was a really difficult problem, we have this democracy that isn't working and that if we look at history, we know that if business people don't respond to threats to democracy because business, most people work in businesses, businesses are an influential part of the economy, they employ many people and if business is on the sidelines, well those threats happen, it's extremely hard to withstand threats to the system and we had already we're seeing some real erosion of norms of democracy and things that you know had been seen in Europe in the 1930s and elsewhere that were very worrying. So the Leadership Now Project was built on this on the premise that you can meaningfully build a coalition of business people who will thoughtfully engage in the system but with targeted high impact engagement. So. I always say there's a lot of things you can do in politics that have no impact. There's like infinite opportunities. There's lots of meetings you can hold and discussions you can have and candidates you could support, et cetera, and just do it in a way that doesn't really move the needle. And I was committed to finding ways that we were being as strategic and targeted over time as we could while recognizing that part of the impact having an enduring, well-informed set of people who are willing to act in multiple ways over time. So we have grounded our focus, our organizational design is membership organizations have always been influential in American politics. I mean, whether that's Chambers of Commerce or the Sierra Club or Common Cause, their influence Unions, all of these are membership organizations. When you look at the data, all of those organizations, there's thousands and thousands across the country remain influential politically, but their influence has waned. In various contexts and in part because there are organizations that are often not very dynamic and modern. So there was an opportunity to modernize that model for impact, but to retain some of the things that make membership organizations powerful. They represent real people. They represent interest beyond just the people in the room. The members are influential in their communities, in their businesses, etc. And they do have some of the features of collective wisdom, right? It's not just if I were to start a pack, for instance, raise resources from, let's say, a few very like-minded donors, maybe with great ideas. We can think bad things about it, but let's say you find a group of people who want to pull the resources. I and six people run an organization and we have a large pool of dollars to advance an agenda that seems good. But the limitations of that are profound because all you're doing is advancing a set of priorities with the people who already believe them in a narrow way. And I was interested in how do you attract people who are like-minded or influential in their networks and grow from there and keep building a common set of sensibilities and influences that will have incredible ripple effects in a way. And when you're solving hard problems, I think there's a basic premise to solve a really hard problem, like you just can't do it alone. And no matter how much smart people and money, like it's just it just doesn't work. Because this is a problem of like how we work day to day, you know, so. So that has been really powerful to say, yes, we're going to be strategic, we're going to be targeted, we're going to look at in this in state X gerrymandering is, for instance, undermining the effectiveness of democracy. And this is a place where we can really build influence and focus people's efforts, etc. But doing that in the context of a group of members who have a broader understanding of why democracy matters and how in their day-to-day, they're going to do things
Paul - 00:12:26:
Yeah, that's extraordinary because the other membership organizations that you talked about for businesses like the Chambers of Commerce or Industry Associations are really about the business objective of that entity. And you're asking business leaders to say there's another thing you should care about, which is the broader democratic democracy that we're living in that is allowing your companies to thrive. It may not be part of what they do as part of their business, but you're asking them to take that on. Do I have that right?
Daniella - 00:12:57:
Yes, although with the argument that in the short and long-term, this genuinely threatens their business and their community. And so some of that's long-term, right? When you have increasing disenfranchisement, when you have political leaders who don't represent the people, over time, they're going to make really ultimately bad decisions for society that are going to be bad to your business. But that also can be very short-term, for instance, in what we've seen with Disney, where the Government of Florida has taken a context where the state legislature is highly gerrymandered, the political culture has evolved to a place where some political leaders feel like it's okay to go after individuals or companies who say things they don't like and try to legislate against them. And you know, Disney has seen the impact of that. And where, you know, legislate had a direct retribution against their statements on LGBT issues that were, in terms of like real legislative decision-making that was really detrimental to their business and asked them to operate in a way that would be bad for their business. And we believe that that's not just related to the specific issue that Disney stood out on, although it was certainly appropriate for them to step out on an issue that they thought was important, but it's the basic threat to our Constitution and to American democracy and to capitalism that you will now have a political leader who doesn't like what you say and will go after you. And the danger in that, in a country that's been built on free speech, et cetera, is fairly profound. So we want to kind of also make clear that some of the things that are happening are not just one off concerns, there are signs of systemic issues that none of us as individuals or as a company are immune from.
Paul - 00:15:06:
Excellent. Thank you for clarifying that. And can you comment on how you work with business leaders that are across the political spectrum?
Daniella - 00:15:14:
Sure. You know, I mentioned that my second aha moment when I went back to school for a moment and started to really appreciate and understand what's happening in democracy. And one of the first people I met with while I was exploring what the opportunity was for Leadership Now was a Republican classmate of mine from business school. And she had been really concerned about the erosion of democracy, about how are the conduct of the Republican candidate in that election and what that meant. And so I reached out to her to understand what were her concerns now, and we were very aligned. Even though we'd always respected each other, but we had been pretty squarely on different sides of the political spectrum in the past, we found we were now in real common ground. And I have found that throughout that those who've been concerned about democracy, there's plenty of independents and Republicans and Democrats who share common concerns. I will say that as an organization, we have been clear though, that there are lines that once they're crossed, are threats to democracy. And those are election denialism, Right? So denying the results of a legitimate election is just a line that, you know, we believe any political leader, any business leader who crosses that line is not part of the tent that we're building. You know, obviously political violence, you know, a efforts to suppress participation, constrain the vote. All of those are the most important bright lines, but there's lots of things we don't have to all agree on in terms of specifics of social or economic policy or otherwise, and can still agree on those points.
Paul - 00:17:25:
Excellent, great. That's fantastic. That does model some of the work that I've done in the past and I'm doing now even that you want to build a big tent that includes a range across the political spectrum, the common values, common commitment to human rights and human dignity. And then there's like a line in the sand where, you know, we can't cross that line if we're going to adhere to those values. So, that’s really interesting.
Daniella - 00:17:53:
We, for instance, avoided the word bipartisan and used the word principled. Because we don't see our objective function being about how bipartisan we are per se, we see our objective function to be a cross artisan coalition that is principled and that adheres to certain principles. So sometimes when the objective function isn't clear on what principle you're standing for, and you're just trying to get diversity of political opinion, it's not that there's no role for that. But for us, we're saying we want to find a well-defined group that has a common ground and stands for something. So we're definitely oriented to stand for something. And I think something that's interesting is, I do think even within the political let's say within the democratic party or otherwise you have progressives or more moderates or otherwise and. I think sometimes there's a sense that there's some middle that doesn't stand for anything in the country, you know what I mean? That like if you're in the middle, you don't really, you know, like the extremes stand for something and the middle is just kind of without an agenda. And our perspective is that, most Americans do believe in things, whether you're sitting in the middle or not. And our agenda is one that can capture a pretty broad spectrum, including a lot of the disengaged middle or you know those who just kind of tune out in politics or are you know or consider themselves moderate in various ways but do stand for something. So I think really defining what it means to stand for something in our democracy, how we're staking out that ground on something more implicit in our work, but I do think can be powerful and also allow us to work with different types of groups, right? Because if we know what we stand for, I always felt like when we started the organization. I was a little bit careful about partnering too much in the beginning because I felt we had a need for our members to first really understand the context and have a perspective and be able to participate effectively with other organizations. And so now we're at a place where I think we can do that in a much more nimble way because we have a core of people who actually kind of have an appreciation for the role that they're playing with others.
Paul - 00:20:28:
Great, yeah, so Leadership Now Project also created a pathway for business leaders that were tuned out. You know, you were like saying, “don't tune out, engage.” This is important, this will affect you, both in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term. So you've created a pathway for tuning in, in a way that fits their interests too. So that's really a powerful role that the Leadership Now Project is playing. So when did I ask you, so you've been at this for a number of years now, it's 2023, and what is your diagnosis of American democracy now? How do you think it's doing? Has it gotten better over the last six years or has it gotten worse over the last six years that you've been doing the work that you've been doing?
Daniella - 00:21:17:
I'm torn on, some days I feel one way versus the other. But I think they're basically countervailing pieces to this, right? So there's, I think on balance, I'm an optimist, which he loves. Well are as well. And there are things that I see that do give me real hope in terms of the evolution of our system. But there are certainly very significant risk factors that remain. So I can start with the risks so I can end with the good things. But I think on the on the risk factor. It's dangerous, I mean, we, and I would not be alone in saying this with many of the Republicans that we work with, that having a political party though that is not fully functional, that has a fair bit of the party not believing in the legitimacy of elections and is struggling to define itself and losing a lot of its moderate wing is dangerous, right? We actually need two parties that are able to debate on the level of ideas and not, you know, be in a fight even over the legitimacy of the system. So that is really worrying. We obviously are about to have an election next year, which may be a repeat of the 2020 election. That is also worrying. And obviously we're in the midst of having a presidential candidate in Trump who is indicted on multiple counts, et cetera. So those are, I think, worrying factors that some combination of in one sense have a set of the country really doubting the system at its core. And then in another sense, for those who don't actually fully doubt the system in that way, but just delegitimizing politics, not wanting, you know, people just feeling like this is absurd or otherwise like something that is not credible or serious. So, I think that over those are all really worrying and they're significant. And it will take us some time to, even if we get kind of out of, if the current context evolves to a place where we don't have some big risks, I think it will take time to get out of. The last piece on the risk side that I'll say is, I mean, I think around the 2024 election, we do see there are risks of political violence. There are risks, you know, some of the proposals that are in the public domain around how institutions would be changed or dismantled. The proposals that are out there are worrying in terms of our democracy. If you, for instance, have another Trump presidency, and I think that is, that's really who those are real risk factors and concerning both in terms of our own institutions credibility in the world and how we would operate in that context. I think so all of those are you know non-trivial significant concerns right?
Paul – 00:24:28:
Major challenges yeah.
Daniella – 00:24:29:
Yes yeah. On the flip side, I will say that the level of engagement and mobilization in a more holistic sense around our democracy is hardening in many ways. We were just engaged in Ohio. There was a special election that was called that would have embraced the threshold for ballot initiatives from 50 to 60%, really undermining citizens' ability to weigh in on their own policy. And that was soundly defeated in a special election no one expected in the heat of August. And we saw business leaders mobilize. We saw many different groups mobilize in that election to say, look, this is just bad for democracy. It's bad for our state. It's bad for business, et cetera. And it was defeated 57 to 43%, even though it was called by the side who thought they were going to win and who lost. And we've seen that ballot initiatives have been a place where we've seen citizens really weigh in. Michigan in 2018 had objective redistricting ballot initiative that just came into effect in the 2022 election. And it's really transformed how the state legislature it's operating who gets elected, how people are participating, and create a lot of dynamism in that state. So we do see that, and just like day-to-day, I mean, the level of interest in my peers in understanding our system, and so it's concern, but it's engagement, right? And so I do get hope out of that, and I feel like there's just incredible people I get to work with every day that are really concerned about the system. But, you know, we have our work cut out for us. So we like, I think people are a little tired cause we've been. I'm kind of worrying about these issues for some time, but I think we have to keep at it. And I do see the path to a system that's more dynamic and responsive. I can't see that, how it can evolve. I'm guaranteed, but I can envision it.
Paul - 00:26:37:
Okay, well that is actually a great segue to what I wanted to ask you, which is you're a mom, you have young daughters, I'm a father and grandfather and I'm thinking about the future of how these people and all people and all families are going to evolve over the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years. So what is your vision if you had a magic wand and you could optimize American democracy or revitalize the US Democracy? What would be your top three priorities?
Daniella - 00:27:12:
I won't put them in order of, you know, I'll give three and maybe then I'll talk about order afterwards. So the first one is I do think there are genuinely systemic changes that can really make the system more effective and dynamic. And on my short list would be objective redistricting, to end gerrymandering, rank choice voting. I think there's also some really interesting proposals around expanding the House of Representatives, creating, designing the system in a way that creates more proportional representation type of flavors to it. So you can add more diversity in terms of who represents and maybe even open a door for more parties over the time, which are over time. But I think opening up the system, making it more competitive and dynamic, the kind of closed primary system and heavily gerrymandered districts combined. And really don't allow for robust democracy because you have the same people serving for very long periods of time and not representing diverse populations. So I think there's some real systemic changes to do. I think the second is making engagement in politics and policy a high status respected thing to do. As so to some extent, when you're at a place where people, and this is pre-Trump, pre-current, there's still a bit of a feeling that being a political leader is a, you know, the people who do that are either not impressive or corrupt.
Paul - 00:28:58:
They're out for themselves or whatever.
Daniella - 00:29:00:
Yeah, or just, you know, it's, it's not an aspirational thing to do. And that's just, that doesn't mean there aren't some amazing people end up doing it. And I think we have, you know, people go against all of that, those stereotypes. But if the overriding perception is that being a political leader is neither, is both some combination of craven and corrupt and not impressive, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so I think there's evolution there. I think we've seen a lot, you know, we see things like run for something, people being mobilized, running for local office, national office, we have the seeds of that, but it really is a sea change in culture to it be really respected. To serve in a political office while demanding really high expectations of our political leaders, right? You know, if that's going to be part of it, then you really have to be willing to throw people out who don't meet those expectations. So that's the second thing that I would say is really heart of that vision of the future. And then finally, I would say, pursuing policies that are both thoughtful and feasible but transformative which seems kind of inconsistent But I find there's a lot of lack of creativity often and thinking about how we can make policies to address our biggest challenges like climate change, like creating more opportunity. And I think... I don't think it has to be inconsistent to be kind of innovative and ambitious with also having and understanding of what can really get done. And I think that was actually in PEPFAR and HIV, AIDS, that was a really interesting thing about getting that program done. It was ambitious. It was saying, you know, we want billions of dollars of American resources to go to solve the AIDS crisis. And it, you know. But there was a path. To do that. And sometimes my frustration is that those who want to have ambitious policy have interesting ideas, but there's just like no path. You know what I mean? It's like bold without any path, implementable path or it's boring and implementable. And I feel like there is something there. So we need to have a lot of dynamism on how we kind of make policy and do things in innovative ways, paired with great talent and systems that incentivize the right behavior. And then everything will be fine.
Paul - 00:31:50:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are great. That's a great agenda of systemic reform and these other elements, the culture of political leaders being respected and it's a career path for the best and brightest in our country. And then creating transformational policies that actually can get done. I think that was your three point agenda that you defined.
Daniella - 00:32:17:
Thank you for distilling that into.
Paul - 00:32:21:
We could spend another hour going into each of those, but we wanted to take what everyone's appetite about what's possible. I think that was a great sharing that you did. I always appreciate your thinking and your innovation. I want to go back to one thing that you said. You said that when I asked you about the state of our democracy now, you said, well, some days I think this, some days I think that. So I really wanted to ask you a personal question. Like sometimes I'll speak for myself. I get really despairing and hopeless and I'm just like, whatever. There's nothing I can do. And then I've had to find out that revolutionary optimism is a cure for me when I'm despairing. I can take it. I can be committed to something. I can take a stand. So I wanted to ask you, what do you do when you're feeling hopeless and despairing? Or do you ever feel that way? And if you do, how do you personally transition back to that optimistic Daniella?
Daniella - 00:33:27:
No, I do. I do have despairs sometimes. I think I felt it most significantly leading up to the 2022 election. Because we did have quite a number of election deniers on the ballot, including for in races for governor and secretary of state. And those we knew would be the consequential decision makers in a 2024 election. So if you had people who had ran on delegitimizing the system, overseeing the system, it was incredibly dangerous. And so I... And gaming out, you know, how that would play out if the outcomes were bad. That was really very worrying to me. And I did have that feeling in the lead up to the 2022 election that we were really kind of at a big risk moment and one that maybe wasn't as obvious as a presidential election, you know, had become very obvious when you looked one level below that. Obviously that election deniers almost uniformly lost at those highest levels of government and of governor and secretary of state. I was very heartened by that. Really heartened by that because that was across many six different states in different contexts with different types of candidates. So I thought that was really encouraging and we had been actively engaged in that. But, you know, I think it's still, there's, it can be daunting when you take all of those issues and climate change and everything else. And I think a basic element is just getting to work on doing. Bringing what you can bring to the table on that. And that's sometimes that's like, sounds like avoidance, but it's also kind of how I've often seen my role is to be a doer and to just do what I can and bring my networks to bear in problem solving. Right. So just kind of jump into problem solving mode, knowing that no matter what, it is no single effort or individual or group that transforms all of this. So being willing to accept that you're going to work really hard and you're going to have your pieces and you won't always know what the direct line was between what you did and where it came out. But that that's like the nature of citizenship of in our work. So I think that really helps. And I think the thing that ultimately, of course, is so fundamental to me is having two daughters who are amazing who are going to grow up and the world that we're creating and our obligation to our children and our fellow Americans and the global community is really high, especially for those of us who've had the privilege of seeing lots of different pieces of the picture, right? I having worked in different contexts and different sectors and with different leaders, I think, I do feel like I have an ability to connect dots in a way that I want to use for this purpose. Yeah, so.
Paul - 00:36:49:
Woohoo! Really the problem solving. Well thank you so much. You know, I really appreciate that. And you know, you're the kind of person that took citizenship seriously. And when you saw that you had an opportunity to engage. To innovate, to be entrepreneurial and to create this business leaders movement. I really see it as a movement of business leaders who are principled in their commitment to strengthening our democracy. That's extraordinary. That's an extraordinary contribution. So you could have easily tuned out, right? You could have said, Oh, I'm going to go to something else and you didn't. So thank you for that. And thank you for being on the podcast and thanks for all you do in the world. Really appreciate you.
Daniella - 00:37:32:
Thanks and thanks for all you do, Paul.