Navigating the Issues with Carol Cone
About This Episode
In the face of global challenges and societal shifts, Carrie sits down with Carol Cone, a pioneer in social purpose, to explore the critical role of courageous leadership in navigating the complexities in the year ahead.
The imperative for companies to adopt a holistic approach that integrates business strategy with social impact initiatives is at the forefront. For Cone, that comes in the form of the "power of and" – the ability to simultaneously pursue short-term value while investing in long-term sustainability. It’s an example of cognitive dissonance, sure, but with examples like Eli Lilly's commitment to affordable insulin and Macy's alignment with diverse suppliers, it’s clear: the approach can work.
Carrie and Carol delve into the rapidly evolving storm of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI holds immense promise for augmenting human capabilities, what should we be concerned with when it comes to the potential for deep fakes and the need for ethical guidelines in this space? What happens when organizations approach the tools with training and understanding rather than fear?
Climate change remains a pressing issue, and Carol highlights the growing number of companies investing in sustainability. She cites IBM's Sustainability Accelerator as an example of how large organizations are leveraging their resources to support innovative climate solutions. At a smaller scale, she emphasizes the need for collaboration between businesses and non-profits to address supply chain issues and promote social justice.
As the demand for skilled labor grows, Carol discusses the importance of new skills development. She applauds IBM's commitment to "new collar jobs" and their recognition that college degrees are not the only pathway to successful careers. Organizations like Per Scholas are bridging the gap by providing certification programs and job placement assistance at scale.
At a time of growing polarization, this week’s conversation is a reminder that complex challenges require nuanced solutions. By spotlighting leaders who hold long and short-term needs in careful balance, Carrie and Carol offer hope in the power of business to drive social progress when rooted in purpose. With care and conviction, they compel us to expand our perspectives, collaborate across sectors, and activate our highest values in service of the greater good. Our great thanks to Carol Cone for joining us this week.
Links & Notes
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Speaker 1:
Breaking news.
Breaking news.
It's the year of the chatbot.
The latest set back for Climate Act.
The latest Supreme Court ruling.
The court is set to redefine.
In the latest Supreme Court ruling, the court is set to redefine.
Carrie Fox:
Hi, friend, and welcome to this ninth season of the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B Corporation. I've previewed in the lead up to this season, we find ourselves in a critical year, and among some complicated times. Presidential elections will take place here in the US, and in 50+ other countries around the world. Just as global wars are raging, AI is on the rise, and DEI is under attack. Public health, environmental, and economic concerns are all heightened, meaning the decisions we make this year will be consequential ones.
Now to navigate these times, we need courageous and intentional leaders, and I'm counting on you, my friend, to be among them. But I get it, being a courageous leader in this time, well, that's even more complicated than in years past. In this March-April issue of the Harvard Business Review, new research indicates that people across the globe are demanding that companies address societal issues of the day, and yet many consumers rate companies' performance on the issues quite low. Businesses feel they're doing all they can and consumers are left wanting more. So where in the world does that leave us?
Well, today, thankfully in the hands of Carol Cone, a pioneer in social purpose who is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost thinkers and leaders on social impact. As the founder of the Purpose Collaborative and Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, she has built global movements, won hundreds of awards, and most importantly, raised billions of dollars for critical causes, all while guiding leaders to be purposeful in their decisions and actions. Carol was with us in the early days of this show, having been a guest on season two in what now feels like the infancy of this show. But lucky for us, she's back, and we've got a great show ahead. So let's get to it. Carol, my goodness, I am so glad you're here. Tell me, where is your head and your heart as you are coming into this year?
Carol Cone:
First, thank you Carrie for that amazing introduction. I am honored, and I'm blushing if anybody could see me, so that was very, very kind. Where we stand is that leadership, and it's prescient leadership, leadership gets that the company must holistically support all of its stakeholders and that the company has provide. And this is the challenge, the immediate short-term value, midterm, and then long-term and getting involved in the environment and society is the path to long-term stakeholder value. The challenge that companies have, in public companies for sure, is what Paul Polman stated when he was at Unilever and he was brilliant at the helm and he is my hero. I had the opportunity to have him on my podcast, Purpose 360. It's a great podcast. I think it's an evergreen, so I hope that your listeners will listen to that. But Paul Polman made this incredible comment and he said to the street, "If you don't like me, then don't buy me, don't hold shares." And he basically said at the time, he was not going to report quarterly.
The quarterly earnings is such a challenge for companies, because the work that we do in the environment and social issues and such, DE&I, it's long term, you really can't see a spike in three months. So that's the challenge for leaders today. But I'd love to talk about the JUST 100, and for those of your listeners who don't know JUST Capital, you got to follow them. Their CEO, Martin Whittaker, he's frequently on my show. He is fabulous. The JUST 100 is a quantified analysis of what companies are doing to be just how those elements are determined is by surveys with the public. They've done almost 200,000 surveys over 10 years. They just had, having their 10th anniversary in 2024. It's about fair wages, and treating people, parental leave, maternity leave, it's about treating the environment well.
It's holistically approaching. A lot of it's focused on workers and a fair wage and pay equity and such, but companies then, because of the public data that they report that they get ranked, it is a spot that CEOs want to be top 10. And this year, HPE was number one. Prescient leadership who understand they have to take a holistic approach, short-term, midterm, and long-term, and that they need to bake their investments, their investments in the environment, in society to grow their businesses, to perform better. It is not a one-off, it is not siloed. It is integrated.
Carrie Fox:
Okay, so this is what I have to share, that this is what I call the Carol Cone deep breath, because so many people can come into this conversation saying, "This is unprecedented times. How are we going to navigate through this? What do we do?" And they feel frozen. And what you just so beautifully did is say, "Look, there are plenty of examples of companies who are doing it and navigating in it. We can learn from them and head over to the JUST 100 to see what they are doing." I mean, there are so many examples of companies navigating will through this time.
Carol Cone:
There are great examples and I have to give you just, this is an interesting, I love The Wall Street Journal. I also love, by the way, Alan Murray's newsletter every day, the CEO Daily. Fortune does an amazing job, they also have a great podcast called Leadership Tax, and Alan does a deep dive and he really talks to great leaders. In The Wall Street Journal, there was a headline and it said, "Eli Lilly should replace Tesla in the Magnificent Seven." And that's extraordinary because a Magnificent Seven, if you are an investor, it's just all the tech companies that are killing it, especially in AI. It was extraordinary because I just did an interview with Jim Greffet, who is their head of ESG strategy at Eli Lilly. I asked him if I could, because we weren't talking about their weight loss drugs, we were talking about how they approached DE&I, ESG in Eli Lilly.
And it was extraordinary because before the Biden administration said, "You've got to lower the cost of insulin," they lowered the cost of insulin. They were about six to nine months ahead of time that they were going to do a $35 insulin cost or less. And so Lilly just, and they're going to be almost 150 years old. They are about bringing medicines to the market to truly help people have better lives. They're doing amazing things in DE&I mean they have conferences and they have this uplevel conference, and they bring their people offsite. They're training them, and they're working with them. I mean they're doing, they have $100 million commitment to the environment to hit their 2030 goals. I mean, this is an old line company, but here's what Jim Greffet said, which I thought was wonderful.
He said, "Because medicines take a new medicine could take 10 years or more to get to market, we have a very long-term view and we take that long-term view and we put it into our view of ESG." So these are investments for the long time, these are not short term. The other thing that's amazing about Jim Greffet, and I met him actually at a Fortune conference, was that his 20 years at Lilly, he was in finance. He's a finance guy, and only in the last four years did they give him this job, so they're saying ES&G must also be analyzed and measured and the data reported. So it's a really interesting role for someone to evolve into that.
I want to talk a little bit about the roles of people in these leadership positions in ESG, whatever you want to call it in companies because you've got Justina Nixon-Saintil, and she is at IBM, and her background is an engineer. And then you have people like Geralyn Ritter who went from Merck to Organon, and she's deeply leading public affairs. And so leadership in companies are saying, "I'm not just going to take," there's some great, great people who have come up totally through sustainability, a little less in social impact, but I'm taking people who are broad thinkers and they're across our organizations to lead this DE&I, ESG, and such because this must be integrated into the company, it needs to perform as business strategy.
Carrie Fox:
Let me pause so quickly because this point is so important. Thinking about the long game, navigating through some of these issues of the day, whereas so many of us have been conditioned to respond immediately. Whether that's how fast technology grows, or that the fact that most people can only hold their attention on something for 15 seconds, that the way the world works now is rapid turn, whereas what we know, the way that companies can work best is for the long term thinking really far out beyond the today.
Carol Cone:
What you just said is my, it's one of my core tenets. It's the power of and. When we're talking to leaders and they're going, "Well, I need the short term, but I have to do the long term." I said, "You need to hold them both in your brain at the same time." It's the power of and. It's the power of business strategy, and significant social impact, and how they work together. So for example, Lilly has, they've got manufacturing in Ireland. They have their largest solar farm, I think in Ireland on top of that plant, so they're saving money obviously in their electricity costs, but they're also learning for all their other locations in over 100 countries around the globe, how they can apply something that is great for the environment to their business and save money to the power of and.
Carrie Fox:
I love that. Speaking of Lilly, by the way, have you seen their new ad campaign about Alzheimer's?
Carol Cone:
No, I haven't.
Carrie Fox:
It is just gorgeous and compelling and gets right to the heart of the issue. I'll link it in this article, but it speaks to that idea that they may be 100+ year old company, but they are thinking so intentionally now in real term about how people can respond to issues like Alzheimer's and the role they are playing in the solution.
Carol Cone:
Right, absolutely.
Carrie Fox:
Your story also makes me think about, do you remember Larry Merlo who was the executive for CVS for many years? He was the one.
Carol Cone:
He was great.
Carrie Fox:
He's incredible.
Carol Cone:
Heart of gold.
Carrie Fox:
I remember the day that he announced that CVS would be getting rid of all cigarettes and tobacco products in their stores, and that he went on CBS This Morning and there was an exclusive story where he talked about and addressed his stakeholders head on and said he understood that this was billions of dollars that they were going to be setting aside in their business, but that the long-term strategy would far outweigh any dollars that were coming in the door in the near term, and how right he was. But what a risk he had to take to be able to get a company, he wanted to position that company as did the executives, as a healthcare company. You can't be a healthcare company and sell cigarettes.
Carol Cone:
And it's shocking when you go into Walgreens. I mean, I'm a CVS person, I have their card. They're the only coupons that I ever, ever look at because they have a lot of them. But you go into Walgreens and right behind the checkout counter are cigarettes. And it's like, "Whoa." It's a real cacophonous situation to the brain to anybody that follows that.
Carrie Fox:
Right. All right, so we're talking about the importance of navigating this year, thinking long-term versus short-term. You were just starting in on DEI, and how many companies are walking back commitments when there are plenty of good examples of organizations who are embedding DEI into their long-term strategies. Anything else you want to touch on that topic before I bring us to another?
Carol Cone:
Well, DE&I, I mean I love that the Public Private Strategies Institute did a survey and 82% of executives believe that diversity initiatives are critical for their business strategies. Yay, that's really good. I don't think that they're walking, the leading companies, JUST 100 companies, and by the way, there's 937 that they analyze, so it's not just 100. What's happening is that companies are very fearful of talking about DE&I and they're going to get whacked. There's a lot less conversation, but there's still the doing. There's the understanding that not only if you're selling consumer products, you have to sell to your markets.
If you look at very specifically, look at Macy's. Macy's reclaimed their social impact and they're calling it Mission Every One, and they truly are going to invest in Black and diverse supply chain and designers and bringing in top talent to their organization. And we were very fortunate to work with Macy's because they have a wonderful, they do tons of holiday checkout fundraising and such, and they needed a new partner for their holiday. And they asked us, we had about two months to do it, so this was a sprint and they said, find us a partner that will align with Mission Every One. Now Mission Every One was a social impact strategy, and was actually done by the folks at Raphael's, PMG, gosh, I'm having senior moments. Anyway, I will get Raph's firm.
But they wanted to align their giving, and their new business strategy. And so it took us a long, didn't take us a long time, took us really quickly, but we helped them choose because they had to be in 500 markets. And so boys, sorry. Big Brothers and Big Sisters was the right organization to align in everyone. Their CEO, Artis Stevens, he's phenomenal, and they have a great, great relationship. And the first year during holiday, they raised $4.8 million.
Carrie Fox:
Wow.
Carol Cone:
Had a lot of communication. But again, it's the alignment, it's the fitting together.
Carrie Fox:
Right. And it's the doing versus the communicating about the doing, do the work, worry less about how to communicate about the work, and said from communicators, but do the work.
Carol Cone:
That was a DE&I example of business strategy and social strategy coming together to align Macy's with their evolving customers, which are over 50% diverse, as well as their employees.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Okay, so much more, but this show, we're just touching on things, so unfortunately we're going to put a pause on that one. AI, I'm going to set up this one real quick. I was at a conference a few weeks ago and heard one of the leading experts in AI say last year was all about AI experimentation, this year is all about AI integration when a lot of companies are still feeling very concerned about the legal ramifications of integrating AI whole scale across an organization. I think about AI a few ways, and I want to get your take on this. One, I particularly prefer thinking about it as augmented intelligence versus artificial intelligence, making sure we're not replacing humans and instead augmenting and supporting the human performance.
But two, the role and the potential consequential role that AI will play in all of these elections happening this year, right? And how we make sure that we don't get lost in what becomes in how AI or the power of AI could have on how we understand and address the issues around us. Whether you want to take this and think about your take on AI in corporations, or broadly the role AI is playing, I'm curious to get your take.
Carol Cone:
Well, there's people that look at, it's a half glass full and empty situation. There is a tremendous amount of upside to augmenting the human capability and replacing repetitive work, and making people feel, as long as they're trained. Everyone says your job won't be replaced, if you're trained, because people need to know how to use it. I've asked my colleagues the purpose of collaborative, does AI have a soul? Because I'm very curious, does AI have a soul? People say, no, AI is not human. Albeit when you do a search and you want to say thank you, and I want to say thank you all the time. I use AI for creativity to start some thinking, but I still think the hallucination's in there, and there's a lot of generic responses in our kind of communications work. So it needs a lot of revision, revision. I think the big, big challenge for all of us is going to be the deepfakes. And so I think this election, because they had in New Hampshire the robocalls with President Biden's voice.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
And that was total deepfake.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
And so unfortunately, I do not think we're going to have the solution, the tool that checks things out for us, that is it real or is it a fake? That will come. I guarantee the company that, and I'm sure companies are working on it now, that you will, like you click, use Google or use ChatGPT, whatever. You will press on this tool, it'll be embedded in Microsoft, I'm sure in 365 [inaudible 00:19:21]. Some companies are demanding watermarks, especially on the creative side of AI. That's going to come, but I don't think it's going to come soon enough.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
It's not going to come for this fall. It's one thing to read the New York Post, but it's a whole nother thing to have it in your feed and you think it's real. It's very frightening.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah, it is. And how important training will be for employees to understand and start to learn how to use the tool, how to feed the tool so that we don't get caught in the deepfakes.
Carol Cone:
It's hard. I mean, if you're going to use it, the best practices, you have to give really good prompts, to be deep and directive and things like that. And so yes, you can use it. I think we're just going to go. But at Davos, for example, and I was listening to Alan Murray and he said, "Every single storefront and every single panel, AI, AI, AI, AI." It is the technology that people have said compared to the printing press, but it's just going to have a much greater impact on our lives, and then the lives of our children and our grandchildren.
Carrie Fox:
Right, so it's interesting, while we think that perhaps last year was the year of experimentation, I mean experimentation is an ending as we come into this year, there was a lot of testing and understanding and exploring how AI fits in any organization effectively, but that now is not the time to close your eyes to AI. You have to be thinking intentionally about how it will play out in your own organization and in your field.
Carol Cone:
The larger, larger companies, I mean, that's where I think smaller companies are at risk because large companies are pooling resources.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
And they're investing significantly.
Carrie Fox:
Right. All right. You choose, where do you want to go next? Climate, mental health, or another issue that's top of your mind?
Carol Cone:
Well, I think, okay, let's talk about climate.
Carrie Fox:
Okay.
Carol Cone:
Because every company, climate is no longer a nice to do, it is a have to do. Companies of all sizes are investing in climate, and they are setting goals and they are measuring. Again, to be in the JUST 100, you have to report. And so public companies are reporting, even private companies are reporting. But I love the innovation that is happening. When I had Justina on my podcast on Purpose 360, she was so proud to talk about the IBM Sustainability Accelerator. What they do is it's a massive global grants program and each year they have a theme. The recent, I think a year ago they had water as their theme, and the grants that they funded were extraordinary. So they were water quality in Brazil, they were the potential of flooding in the Appalachian region. They were forecasting conditions of weather in the Middle East and Africa. Model rainfall in Illinois. I mean, fascinating things.
It was $30 million by 2025. It's not only cash, but it's also the deep credibility and capability of IBM and all of their engineers. And truly there's a deep skilled, I don't think they even call it volunteerism. I think it is about working on these projects to one, help these societies and countries protect themselves, but also to have cross-fertilization of ideas, getting incredible innovations. That's just one small example of the innovation that big companies are bringing to climate. But then you're seeing companies are building new headquarters, and they all have solar panels on the roofs.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
And then also you're seeing there's some wonderful things happening in climate, for example, where you see really large not-for-profits like Save the Children, and they are working with partners on sourcing and supply chain issues. The supply chain of labor free chocolate with children. And so you're seeing it's not just the big Fortune 100s, it is actually not for profits too and the two coming together.
Carrie Fox:
That's an exciting what if for me, right? Because I remember being at a B Corp conference a few years ago, and someone was speaking about how at that time, there was a group of folks who were focused on social impact, and there were a group of folks who were focused on environmental impact, and it was as if we were two sides of the room. There was very little integration of someone realizing that you can do both. And what if that you just introduced, there is, one, small companies aren't immune from being able to have an impact on the environment, but when we question our pipelines, our vendors, our process, we start to uncover a lot of opportunities to in fact make an impact on environmental issues.
Carol Cone:
Absolutely. I want to talk about a small company that, again, they're examples of my podcast. I love your podcast, love my podcast, Purpose 360. Ultranauts and Ultranauts was founded by Rajesh Anandan. Back in the day, he was at Bain, and then I met him at UNICEF. He decided that neurodiverse, his whole company is about neurodiverse individuals and about creating incredible teams to companies because neurodiverse individuals, a lot of them are engineers or not. They see things and they can work much faster. He is working with the top companies in the world, providing this testing and assurance capability via his teams.
He's got over 100 people now, and giving them, some people, they can't talk. Some people, they're very autistic. It's just amazing what he has created in terms of this company that is advancing the work of the IBMs of the world, of the Goldman Sachs of the world. Extraordinary, so a small firm, loved the idea, deep intentionality, its purpose at its center. The other thing I want to talk about, which is nothing related to what you're talking about here, but I think it's really important as a theme and a trend is new skills development. And again, IBM calls these new collar jobs. I heard the other day, which was very surprising, that 61% of the US population doesn't go to college. I thought it was 24%.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
There is this huge need for skilled labor. This was also front page, Wall Street Journal, that the college degree, the four-year college degree is being dropped. Ginni Rometty, when she was the CEO of IBM, she was very, very proud of their evolution to change the job descriptions, to bring in people that are being trained in different ways, that don't have a college degree, but then can fulfill jobs and really grow and have a great career. I say that that is one of my predictions for not just the coming year, but the coming years.
Carrie Fox:
We will later on in this season have the CEO of Per Scholas on the show. And if you're not familiar with Per Scholas, it's a nonprofit organization based in New York City now all over the country that does certification programs for individuals who are looking to get certified in a number of different tech fields and then places them in jobs, whether that be in Silicon Valley or otherwise, in startups where we know that there are the gaps that exist, and how do you train fast enough for a set of skills that is changing faster than a four-year degree can allow for, right?
Carol Cone:
IBM has their SkillsBuild initiative.
Carrie Fox:
Yes. And I think actually IBM and Per Scholas work together on this, that you've got to find a way to close the gap faster.
Carol Cone:
Absolutely. They have a commitment of investing $30 million by 2030, and they're constantly training and they have certificate programs. It's so prescient that they understand that you don't have to have this advanced engineering degree.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Carol Cone:
To truly have a career, a really good career, and that's very, very rewarding. IBM started way back when with P-TECH, and they were teaching in high schools and such, and that became the bellwether. Stan Litow, who led that program, genius, wonderful guy. He's gone to now teaching in a lot of universities. But P-TECH became the gold standard in schools to truly develop the tech skills for people couldn't afford it really.
Carrie Fox:
Right. So another great example of how companies are thinking about DEI in action is they are thinking broader then the four-year degree and what that means entering into the workforce, and other pathways to enter into the workforce. That brings some new skills too. We're coming to the end. One more topic, I'm curious if there is one top of your mind before I wrap us up.
Carol Cone:
I talked about getting these jobs, because I am constantly asked, I get so many requests on LinkedIn, "Can you please give me advice? I want to have a career in social impact or sustainability, how do I get this job?" And so I think that the first thing I would say is that there's not a direct line to get these jobs that you saw as Jim Greffet had a finance job, and you saw that Justina Nixon-Saintil, she had an engineering degree. What I say is that you really need to be, you have to be a self-learner in addition to getting your advanced degree. There's so much information out there. You need to be, I always say, be a sponge. Be a sponge, be a sponge, and just constantly learn. And also, I always say in your twenties, you can have different elements of this career.
I do see that in these jobs, and there's some big consolidated jobs now where it includes capabilities, not only in sustainability and reporting and really understanding the background, the science, and the metrics, but it's also having a public affairs background, because the intersection of a company can't stand alone in society. And if you look at AI and I guess the reporting in Alan Murray's column today about check out what's going on in Brussels, and then also the green reporting and the standards in Europe, that is then coming over to the US. It's a global world in terms of the work that we do and the skill sets that you need. If you really want the top job needs to be diverse and advanced skills as well, and then you need to stick with it and be a sponge.
Carrie Fox:
Right, so now is not the time to be narrow in your focus. Now's the time to look wide up and around to understand what's happening around you and the connections between that work.
Carol Cone:
Yeah.
Carrie Fox:
All right, Carol, we started out today really big and overwhelmed. We did what we knew we could count on you for, which is Carol Cone deep breath, and knowing that there is a lot of examples out there and leaders that we can learn from and model in this work. We took on some at a high level, some of the issues that we're going to face near head. The beauty of this episode is it's going to set the tone for the rest of the season. We're going to dig into these issues with experts in each of these respected fields. But I can't end this without asking you something, and it's going to be grounded in purpose, and I am curious what you think the biggest opportunity for purpose is in the year ahead.
Carol Cone:
Well, I say it's the activation and it's the activation across the enterprise. It's internal and it's external. Now, if you hold me to one audience that we have to have an impact on, I always start with employees, because employees are the engine of your organization. They're the heart engine, they're the economic engine, they're the energy engine. That it was so rewarding to me about five years ago, because I was talking about employees for decades and nobody listened to me. And then about five years ago, when it's about your knowledge, we're in a knowledge economy, it's not just a technology economy. Companies and leaders, and that's where the JUST 100 and JUST Capital, 50% of the justness of what a company needs to do is based on employees and fairness and wages and training and career development and such.
And the other thing, what's great about employees is that I asked Alan Murray when I had them on my podcast to talk about Tomorrow's Capitalist, which is a great book. I said, how do we get the messages out? Because especially today, a lot of companies are worried about talking about what they're doing because they're going to get whacked. Whacked in the nose, I always said the newspaper on the dog's nose. I don't do that, not with my dog, I always pat my dog. He said, "Your employees. Share your information with your employees. They all have social networks." And you think of some companies and our clients have 10,000 employees, they could have 50,000 employees that those employees want to know what you're doing. I was very pleasantly surprised that when I talked to my guests after the fact and they said, "You know, the best listeners for my podcast were our employees because they didn't hear about the more casual nature of a conversation." So I say employees are number one, two, and three as your key audience.
And then I'm going to end on one thing, which is the whole controversy on what the heck do you call this thing? Is it corporate responsibility? Is it corporate social responsibility? Is it ESG? Is it, because some has said, you know what, because Larry Fink's no longer calling it, he's not even really pushing a lot about purpose. And so some people call it, let's call it responsible business. Well, I will say that's not the term I like. Now, I'm only one person with a podcast and with lots of clients and great friends, and our network of the Purpose Collaborative, which is over 44 purpose firms around the globe coming together with extraordinary people to learn and to share. When I was talking to Martin Whittaker, I think here's the name of what this is, it's just business.
Carrie Fox:
Oh, there we go.
Carol Cone:
I think just business, and not because it's JUST Capital, because I think just is a... It's a more generous word than responsible business. I still think responsible business gets you into the woke capitalism controversy. I think just business is great. That's the term I'm going to be promoting here on in.
Carrie Fox:
Hey, and I'll always love a double meaning. So it is, I mean, it is the new norm of business, just business, and I love the deeper meaning of it too. Well, as always, Carol, you are brilliant. Thank you for setting the grounding for the year, but also the inspiration for the year. Thanks for letting me throw some big questions at you, and giving us the guidance on where we go from here. I appreciate you.
Carol Cone:
Oh, well, I appreciate you too. Dare I say it's a mutual adoration society, and everyone should listen to your podcast, they should listen to ours, and be a sponge because there's so much to learn and so much to be inspired by. Thank you so much, Carrie.
Carrie Fox:
That sounds like a plan. We'll have a link to your show in our show notes, and thanks everyone for listening.
That brings us to the end of this episode of Mission Forward. Thanks for tuning in today. If you are stewing on what we discussed here today, or if you heard something that's going to stick with you, drop me a line at carrie@mission.partners and let me know what's got you thinking. If you have thoughts for where we should go in future shows, I would love to hear that too. Mission Forward is produced with the support of Sadie Lockhart in association with the True Story team. Engineering by Pete Wright. If your podcast app allows for ratings and reviews, I hope you will consider doing just that for this show. But the best thing you can do to support Mission Forward is simply to share the show with a friend or colleague. Thanks for your support, and we'll see you next time.
