Latest / Women Disrupting Tech / Building Inclusion Into Capitalism with James Felton Keith | Ep. 105

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Building Inclusion Into Capitalism with James Felton Keith | Ep. 105 · Women Disrupting Tech

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That's a market. So yes, I think the market, if
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we incentivize it to be, I think capitalism is evolving itself
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into what I like to call inclusion ISM.
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It is just happening because of that inherent demand for
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connectivity. Yeah, everybody has been talking
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about connectivity for the past 5000 years, and we've now baked
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it in to the mechanics of how we put value on the cluster of
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human lives. Welcome to Women Disrupting
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Tech. My name is Derek Lucas, and on
0:44
this podcast, I give the women who work in tech the platform
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they need to inspire and empower each other.
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Join me on a journey into the world of entrepreneurship,
0:54
funding biases, and role models to discover the strategies for
0:59
success in the tech industry. In other words, how women can
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disrupt tech. Are you ready to listen?
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Hey, welcome back to Women Disrupting Tech and thank you
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for tuning into episode 105. Let's talk about value because
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in the end, that is what this episode is about, discovering
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how you can be of value to others and putting a price on
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it. My guest in this episode, Women
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Disrupting Tech is James Felton. Keith James Felton Keefe is an
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award-winning engineer and economist turned labour leader
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who was also the first black LGBTQ person to run for federal
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office in America back in 2017. James is also the CEO of
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Inclusion Score and this company uses the global ISO standard for
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diversity, equity and inclusion to build inclusion into
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capitalism. How?
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By pricing it through insurance premiums.
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In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, James and I
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talk about how his personal journey shaped his work at
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Inclusion Score, why companies are already paying for lack of
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inclusion, spoiler data is already out there, and what it
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takes to make DEI measurable and auditable and why that's a long
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term game. What makes this episode special
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to me is that I've long believed that financial incentives can
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support proper implementation of inclusion in our way of doing
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business. So I found it magical that there
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is a company that makes inclusion measurable and
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literally puts a price on it. So when you're ready to listen
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and learn how we can build inclusion into capitalism,
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please welcome to women disrupting tech, James Felton
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Keefe. Good morning, James, good to
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have you on women disrupting tech.
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Welcome. Question I always ask at the
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start is how you got into your current position and floor is
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yours. Wow, how I got into my current
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position? Well, I started the company, I
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think after I finished running for Congress in 2020.
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I got really sick with COVID. And then I was healthy again by
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June. And I realized my political
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ambitions were shot by the pandemic and I was trying to
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figure out what work I could do that both was rooted in, you
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know, advocating for equity and, and inclusion, but also, you
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know, be able to afford me, you know, this New York lifestyle
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because the rent is very, very high in New York.
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So I, you know, I went back to my my corporate roots.
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I used to work in insurance for years before I got into politics
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and policy. And I saw a rising rate of
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grievances from employees at companies across the globe and
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lawsuits really around retaliation and discrimination.
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And I just thought if we could tie a better auditing process or
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an insurance, we call it loss prevention process, to the
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professional and employment and corporate liability space, then
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we could disincentivize bad actors in organizations of all
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sorts, right? And so as an economist, I'm
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always thinking about the incentives, the systems that we
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can build to disincentivize I'll intent or even not I'll intent,
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but just, you know, inappropriate activity in
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organizations sometimes that people aren't aware of.
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And so I started inclusion score as an insurance company to both
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distribute and deploy the new international standard for
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diversity, equity and inclusion and tied to insurance premiums.
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I just happened to be aware of the coming of a new
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international standard for diversity, equity, inclusion and
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belonging. And I happen to have this
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background in insurance and, and a lot of new friends after
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running for office. So I thought, you know, I could
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lobby them and I could call my insurance friends and see if I
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could tie this audit to both regulators that I lobby and
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insurance carriers that I want to fortify the price of doing
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business. So I mean, that's how I got to
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this work. In doing that I, I started the
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company. We're a venture backed startup.
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So we raised some money from tech stars and some other
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venture capital firms. So my work at this point is
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really a combination of maybe 20 years of corporate stuff,
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academic stuff and political stuff.
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It's It would take forever to explain how what the last 20
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years looked like, but I think that's the shortest version of
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how I got here. OK, so so how did your personal
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experience tie into this? Well, I mean my personal
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experience from the time that I was a kid, I grew up in in
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Detroit, MI For anyone not familiar people from Michigan
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always use the hand where the hand looking place in the middle
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of the US Yeah. Anyway, I ran away to New York
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maybe 20 years ago. But but now, you know, you grew
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up poor, black, queer, constantly judging or wondering
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if I had any real tangible value in the world.
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And those questions or the lack of seeing myself either through
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the media or elsewhere as having tangible value in the world, you
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know, from a corporate standpoint, from a political
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standpoint, constantly incentivize me to raise these
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questions about if and how I might be valuable.
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And so, you know, that personal experience has really driven all
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of my work throughout, you know, the past 25 years or just really
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my, you know, 45 or so years. Yeah.
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I mean, that's it's always rooted in that I think, you
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know, people, people do what they can per who they are.
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Think if if I build better systems, I think becoming a
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professional, becoming a mechanical engineer, becoming a
8:05
macro economist has really rooted me and building better
8:08
systems. I think, you know, bad systems
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can beat good people all day. Everyone has, I assume, good
8:15
intentions, but systems just don't work.
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And so I've spent the past 25 years trying to build better
8:23
systems to help more people engage in the normal economy and
8:28
enhance their quality of life. But I'm really always doing it
8:31
for that 10 year old little boy in Detroit, Yeah.
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That's powerful motivator, I would say.
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Yeah, you know, sure. But but looking back, if if
8:44
you're that 10 year old Michigan boy from Detroit would look at
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you now, Would he be proud I. Don't know.
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I don't know if if yet. You know, it's it's hard with
8:57
the way media works right now to to assess whether you've been a
9:01
success or not. You know, just because of how
9:05
things are are so far blown up. You know, you just go, if you're
9:09
not Nelson Mandela, did you did you do well?
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Yeah. I haven't been to jail.
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I have not done, you know, what Nelson Mandela did.
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So I think that little boy would be, it's hard to remember.
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I think he would be. I think he would think I was on
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the right path. I think he would think I was
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just, you know, doing, doing my duty.
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I don't know how impressed he would be.
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He just go, this is what you were supposed to be doing
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anyway. I've always kind of lived my
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life, even when I think about my parents and my grandparents
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thinking like these are things you should be doing, you know,
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for me, you had me, you brought me here.
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I am here. Do work for me, you know, try to
9:54
enhance my quality of life because I'm here.
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So I don't know, you know, I just I just do the work.
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I think that kid would, you know, think I'm on a path.
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My grandparents were a bit activist, or at least my
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grandmother was. And so I think by the age of 10,
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I already had this sense of, of duty.
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So I think this is just what I'm supposed to be doing anyway.
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I'm think I'm kind of honoring her doing, you know, doing my
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job. I don't know if that's a good
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answer, but yeah, I don't know if he would be impressed.
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OK, let me let me put it this way, You, you are the first
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person that I talked to in 100 plus episodes where he's found a
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way to put a price on DEI. Sure.
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You know, because. Everyone here in in the
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Netherlands is talking about, yeah, we need to collect data.
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Oh, wait a minute, they're CDPR. We can't collect data.
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Oh, so how do we then do this? And so we're still sort of
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running around in circles and you find a way to translate,
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let's say a systemic concept into economics and really put a,
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well, as I call it, put a, put a price on, on impositive or a
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negative sense on good implementation of the EI.
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So I can imagine that that 10 year old boy would be thinking,
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well, he's yeah, he's on a good path, but he's not already done
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a good, a lot of good work. You know, you're right.
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I'm, you know, I'm, I'm bad at reflecting and, you know, in
11:38
general and, and maybe I might be too hard on myself and what,
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and what is actually available to be accomplished.
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But I also just think when I put these skill sets together, the
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engineer version of me, the economist version of me, you
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know, I really got to, to economics because of my sort of
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fascination with power. I think in and I, you know, I
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mean that in kind of an intangible way, but engineers,
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they engage power in a tangible way.
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Like we, we look at energy, we look at either mechanical,
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chemical, electrical, you know, energy proliferate, we look at
12:14
friction. And, but in the, in my mid 20s,
12:18
in the mid 2000s, as I was looking to go to grad school, I
12:21
had a lot of, you know, political interactions and
12:24
mentors asking me what I thought about, you know, power, people
12:28
who have power, people who have none, people who are able to
12:30
distribute it to them. And so I was still thinking
12:34
about these sort of energy and, and power scenarios, but from a,
12:37
a value of more intangible phenomena standpoint.
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And I was like, well, if you can, if we can better
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distribute, if we can have economists track value in the
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way engineers track energy, then we'd be in a good place to
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identify gaps and better distribute that.
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And so when I think about putting a price on a lack of
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inclusivity, whether people think they can may or may not
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collect data per the GDPR in Europe, in Holland, and you
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know, the broader, what is it 2827 countries now minus the UK,
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regardless of what they think, you know, the data is already
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out there. Number one, with regards to the
13:16
price, I just think sometimes we are available in our generation
13:21
to inherit new opportunities. And so being my age in my
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profession, I think, I hope I could be wrong about this, but I
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hope there would be somebody else if I weren't available to
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go. You know what, I think we can
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put a price on this because of the rising insurance premiums.
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For instance, I don't need to collect data on everyone in your
13:46
country to know what the social risk is because Swiss Re, which
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is not an American company, Swiss Reeds Reinsurance
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Institute, they track an index called the social inflation
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rate. The social inflation rate, for
14:00
anyone who is not familiar, is the rate of litigation globally
14:04
above the regular rate of inflation.
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So a normal social inflation rate should be about three, 3
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1/2%. Right now it's 10.
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So that suggests that people don't like each other in the
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workplace and the market for employment practice liability,
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for instance, should be 3 times as big.
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Now we have to adjust the price of those insurance products and
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the distribution of those insurance products somewhere
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around plus or minus a few percentage points three times in
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order to adequately disincentivize social anxiety.
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And again, you know, one reason that at least the United States
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of America is a good test case for what social angst is, is we
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will allow courts to review dozens and dozens or thousands
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and thousands of lawsuits to have a good understanding of
15:02
what we're actually arguing about.
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Retaliation, discrimination, you name it, what we see in every
15:08
country. And the reason Swiss Re and the
15:11
other big reinsurers like Score in France or Munich Re in
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Germany, or you name it, why they're tracking these numbers
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is they set the price everywhere.
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So even though when people think about data in GDPR in Europe and
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they're thinking we can't collect data on enough people,
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it doesn't matter. We already know the price
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whether you can collect demographic data or not.
15:33
We know how expensive it is for you to exist because you don't
15:37
like your neighbor. And I'm not just talking about
15:40
like you in particular, but a lot of us, we live in these
15:43
cities and we don't know everyone in these cities.
15:46
We don't get along. That's OK, as long as we're
15:49
available to be cordial, respectful, and professional at
15:53
work to get the job done, and then we can go back to whatever
15:56
our most comfortable silos are. I'm never suggesting that
16:00
everyone needs to give everyone else a warm hug, but there's a
16:04
price for a punch versus a hug. Oh, so yeah, we already know the
16:09
price. It, it doesn't matter what data
16:11
people are collecting and all the data that we're trying to
16:14
protect from a privacy standpoint, part of GDPR is per
16:19
my colleagues, is already on the dark web anyway, like I, I can't
16:23
find anybody right now. It's we already have all the
16:25
data. Yeah.
16:26
And it's and as you said, it's already being priced by Munich
16:29
Re, Swiss Re and all the other global reinsurance companies.
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And just just for context of the listeners who are not familiar
16:37
with the insurance industry. So usually you have your
16:42
insurance company that you deal with and they reinsure a whole
16:47
bucket of risks that are similar with parties like Swiss Re or
16:52
Munich Re or other reinsurance companies.
16:57
I think there's one from Japan which slipped my mind, yeah.
17:00
There's one everywhere. There's a million of them.
17:01
Yeah, there's one everywhere. And but though, and Lloyds of
17:05
London is perhaps the best known reinsurance company most Yeah.
17:13
And they they actually put risks in buckets and then they buy
17:18
policy there. Exactly.
17:20
So that they don't, the insurance companies don't have
17:23
to pay you the full amount out of pocket, but they can actually
17:27
recover some from the reinsurance companies.
17:31
That's that's the short of it. They're trying to create a
17:35
cultural buoyancy, right? The way I would communicate what
17:39
reinsurance is for anyone not familiar, it's insurance for
17:42
insurance companies. But the best way to look at it
17:45
is kind of like the the Fed rate.
17:50
It's the, it's the price with which an insurance carrier like
17:55
a Zurich or a Chubb can distribute the paper, the actual
18:01
insurance contract. And that price like this 10%
18:05
social inflation rate that I've mentioned, it has pervasive
18:10
impact on certain types of insurance that corporations buy
18:16
and like closely monitor it. Oh, like directors and officers
18:22
insurance. It usually gets triggered when
18:24
someone sues the boss or the boss messes up.
18:26
Even if you're in a place that doesn't have a lot of
18:29
litigation, let's say they're not suing.
18:30
Let's say you're in France and you run a company in Marseille
18:34
and you cannot, you fail to meet their disability regulations and
18:39
hire people with mobility issues, like people in
18:43
wheelchairs. They'll let you go by with that,
18:47
but they will fine you. So even when people go, we don't
18:50
pay insurance. That fine is an insurance price.
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So all of these penalties, I think one big issue is we never
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talk about the insurance industry as being the biggest,
19:02
oldest industry on the planet. It is.
19:04
It's bigger than banking, it's bigger than finance, it's older
19:07
than finance. And without risk capital at the
19:10
floor of all of our economies, there would be no capital
19:13
markets, currency markets, bond markets, equity markets, you
19:17
name it. They're all built on top of this
19:20
initial agreement that we won't burn this place down tomorrow.
19:25
And that's ultimately what we all want.
19:28
You know, in the past few 100 years of human history, we've
19:31
seen, you know, relative peace. I know there are wars happening
19:35
here and there, but it's been relatively peaceful.
19:38
We're sitting here doing podcasts and not worried about
19:42
axe flying by our head. At least I'm not worried right
19:45
now. We'll see.
19:46
And let's keep it that way for for, yes, at least for the next
19:50
foreseeable period. I need a couple of decades and
19:53
then I'm. I just need to.
19:54
Yeah. But yeah.
19:56
So we, we try to incentivize peace and, you know, capital,
20:03
risk capital in particular, risk capital is just another code for
20:06
insurance. It tames the beast.
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Because there is a certain level of miscommunication across every
20:13
city, every company, every locale where, you know, we don't
20:18
always know each other, we don't always understand each other.
20:21
Even people living in the same house have communications
20:25
issues. And so we're going to encounter
20:27
those. But how we say what we mean to
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say and work more corrupt cooperatively in our
20:35
organizations, in our industries, in our economies has
20:39
an actual price. And so, yeah, back to your
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earlier question, I just think that this was this was one of my
20:49
main problems. But, you know, we happen to be
20:51
able to use, you know, economics to to solve it.
20:54
Most places where I go, I'm usually talking about lawyers.
20:57
So I think people think that I'm a lawyer.
20:59
But in my opinion, like the lawyers are just the tools that
21:02
we use, we can move them around a chess board.
21:05
Like the economics is still the incentive for them to do their
21:09
thing and argue for and advocate for human rights again across
21:16
every country. So yeah, that that is how we
21:20
incentivize DEI. And yeah, the actual price of a
21:25
lack of inclusivity it whatever DEI might mean, a lack of
21:30
workforce resilience, a lack of operational excellence.
21:35
Forget the language, DENI. The price of that, the price for
21:39
a lack of that is your insurance policy.
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Everyone should be aware of that because we always pay the bill.
21:46
If your CFO went to school anywhere, they're paying
21:51
grievances with insurance, they're never paying it with
21:54
petty cash or, you know, a credit card out of pocket.
21:59
If there's, if they're wise, you know, they may be insane and
22:03
they may just go, I'll pay it with cash, but that's crazy.
22:08
OK. So I think we touched already on
22:15
a standard that is out there that I didn't know until we we
22:21
started talking, which is an ISO standard.
22:26
Yeah, which particularly deals with how DEI is built into the
22:34
into companies, into systems. Can you can you tell a bit more
22:37
about this? Yeah.
22:39
So the the ISO standard is ISO 30415.
22:45
It took about 10 years to build from around I would say 2011 to
22:51
2021, which again goes back to your earlier question after I
22:55
finished running for office, like what do I do?
22:57
How do I, how do I build this company?
23:00
I just happen to have unique knowledge of this standard
23:03
because I was on one of the advisory boards.
23:06
And for anyone not familiar with the ISO, just to give you a
23:08
little background, the ISO has formally existed.
23:13
There are a few older European organizations that cater into
23:16
it, like AFNOR in France that are 100 years old.
23:18
But the International Organization for Standards or
23:22
the ISO or ISO as we call it for short, has been around for about
23:26
78 years and they've written about 25,000 standards.
23:31
Everything that we do well as a species across international and
23:36
language borders and barriers has been arguably a standard at
23:41
the ISO. So the textiles in your shirt
23:44
and my shirt is based on the ISO standard.
23:48
The fuel in our vehicle is based on the ISO standard.
23:51
The water flow rate in your building is an ISO standard.
23:55
But also more recently manufacturing and quality
24:00
control standards are ISO standard.
24:01
Cybersecurity and how we help companies comply with the
24:06
General Data Protection Regulation are an ISO standard.
24:10
And if we take that, the last one that I mentioned, the
24:14
cybersecurity standard, what we did about 10 years ago,
24:18
especially in America after you're published the GDPR,
24:24
banking states like New York State created a cyber regulation
24:28
where they use the ISO 27,001 standard to audit all companies
24:35
and cyber resilience because they were taking on too much
24:39
risks, getting hacked and getting sued or again, around
24:44
data and privacy rights, but also just ransomware attacks,
24:47
etcetera. And so this particular standard
24:50
for cyber, and I'm going to tie this into DEI, was leveraged to
24:55
create basic infrastructure that all companies should have to
24:59
show that they're a good risk. Because what was happening is
25:02
companies were getting hacked and they would just call Zurich
25:05
and say, give me more insurance. Yeah, but Zurich says I'm not
25:08
going to keep insuring you whether you keep having the same
25:10
problem over and over again. So you need a firewall
25:13
penetration test. You need to bring your own
25:16
device policy. You need to train your employees
25:19
on how to recognize a phishing e-mail.
25:21
If you can't do at least those three things, you're a bad risk.
25:25
It's like wanting a driver's license but not taking a
25:28
driver's test. That's an insurance call.
25:31
We don't trust you as a good driver.
25:34
It's why in the United States will lower your insurance
25:36
premiums for driving cars when you're 25 because we don't trust
25:40
people between 24 and 16 years old.
25:42
Yeah, and I crashed a car at 16. You could not trust me at 16.
25:47
I'm very cautious now. I don't like my 84 year old
25:51
father-in-law driving without me because he rides the brake too
25:54
heavy. So again, trust and, and, and
25:58
risk is a bell curve anyway. So when if I take that cyber
26:03
standard and what we did for fortifying companies from a
26:09
technology management standpoint and I move forward from from
26:13
2017 to 2021, we're doing the same thing for people management
26:19
that we used to do for technology management.
26:22
We think that there are certain infrastructure that complex
26:27
organizations need to have in order to mitigate risks of
26:31
people saying I am in grieved with regards to being retaliated
26:35
against or discriminated against period.
26:39
And some of those infrastructural things are baked
26:44
right into the standards. So the ISO standard for DEI is
26:49
what we would call a functional standard.
26:52
It assesses the function of a business.
26:54
So it's not a what people normally think about with DI.
26:57
It's not about quotas or demographic data.
27:01
First things first, they would like you to have is an
27:04
onboarding structure for new employees that come because
27:07
everyone at your company, you may say, oh, they all look the
27:10
same, they're all white men. Well, you know, they people from
27:13
Holland are different from the people from the UK who are
27:16
immigrating here. The people with red hair versus
27:18
the blonde hair versus the brunette hair, they may need
27:21
different things, they may need different health care resources.
27:23
They may different, you know, everyone who may seem like the
27:27
same person is not necessarily a case.
27:29
So compensating to have that onboarding infrastructure.
27:32
Secondarily, they need to have what we call feedback mechanisms
27:36
so that they can see whistleblowing when it happens
27:39
and mitigate that risk, or else Lloyd's of London will say
27:43
you're a higher risk, or Swiss Re or score in France or Munich
27:47
Re in Germany. So to give the parameters of the
27:51
standard, there are four big categories that this functional
27:55
standard works in. The first is governance, thus
27:57
things you do with your executives.
27:59
The second is human resources, obviously things you do with
28:02
your employees. But the third is product
28:05
delivery, whether your product is a service or something more
28:09
tangible. So whether you're delivering the
28:12
service of consulting or whether you make your automobiles, this
28:17
standard examines how you push inclusive practices into that.
28:22
And last but not least is your supply chain.
28:26
So supplier diversity procurement is what it's called
28:28
at most companies. It's not only just direct
28:31
suppliers. The standard also accounts for
28:33
what it calls other organizational stakeholders.
28:36
So these may be partners, peers that may affect your
28:40
reputational risk. Let's say you're, you're, you
28:44
know, soccer team and you know, there's a company advertising in
28:51
your stadium and they're a part of, they're not necessarily a
28:54
supplier, but they could impact your reputational risk depending
28:58
on who they are, what they represent, etcetera.
29:01
You want to be able to factor all those things in.
29:03
So those are the four big categories.
29:06
They extrapolate out into 32 domains and those 32 domains
29:09
extrapolate out into 171, what we call elements.
29:13
And those are essentially questions that we can translate
29:17
into different types of insurance risks.
29:20
So based on your answers to these questions, we can score
29:24
your maturity in those four categories, meaning your
29:29
maturity is infrastructure that you have similar to the cyber
29:33
reference I made, so that again a Lloyd's of London or Zurich or
29:36
you name it can say, OK, they're better than their peers.
29:41
This is the best hospital I've seen, the best hospitality
29:44
company I've seen, the best manufacturing company I've seen,
29:47
and everyone else is a laggard. And that audit based on the
29:52
function of your company, not demographic data is what
29:58
incentivizes us to make a better evaluation of your price and how
30:03
you engage people no matter where they come from that work
30:07
at your company. So that's how this.
30:11
How how inclusion score works? Yeah, that's exactly an
30:15
inclusion score. An inclusion score is
30:16
essentially A maturity score based on the ISO standard that
30:22
can be communicated to an insurance carrier and.
30:27
And then the higher the maturity, the lower your
30:31
premium. Exactly, exactly.
30:34
The better you if you can parallel park, the better driver
30:37
you are, the better insurance premium, the better insurance
30:40
premium you have and that is. That is, the risk of losses is
30:44
lower. Exactly right.
30:46
Like we think, you know, in the United States, we see companies
30:49
that with unions are lower risk because they have a feedback,
30:53
they have a buffer to let's say you have an aggrieved employee.
30:57
Let's say the biggest use case is women, because women in the
30:59
workforce, they're 50 or more percent of the population here
31:04
in the United States. They're more educated than
31:06
people who look like me and but they're underpaid.
31:11
And so their grievances are, are more normalized or at a higher
31:16
volume than say, you know, ethnic minorities or disability
31:20
or neurodivergence or age. All of these 27 protected
31:23
classes are in. But the women category is the
31:26
big one, obviously. Let's say you have a woman in
31:31
grieves at A at a company. And we just saw a case like this
31:35
where this young woman was interning at a company and she
31:41
did a good internship. At the end, her male supervisor
31:45
said, look, you, you did so good, such a good job.
31:49
We'd love you to come in and work here full time after you
31:52
graduate from. She was getting her MBA and say,
31:55
look, if you were a man, we would have offered you 50% more.
31:59
That's illegal. Yeah.
32:02
And it's illegal everywhere. It's illegal there and it's
32:04
illegal here and it will be settled in two different ways in
32:08
the EU versus the US. It'd probably be a lawsuit here.
32:11
It'd be a fine over there. But both are an insurance
32:15
premium price. So yeah, we want infrastructure,
32:18
like to manage that, where when that woman blows the whistle and
32:22
says I was offended and this was illegal, if there's
32:27
infrastructure, say OK, we're sorry that this happened.
32:32
Would you be willing to work with us through this employee
32:35
resource group, through this affinity group, through this
32:37
feedback mechanism so that doesn't happen to the next
32:39
person? Instead of going to the next
32:43
company, slapping us with a lawsuit and going on about your
32:45
business, like we'll, you know, take two weeks off, You know,
32:50
here's a couple of grand, but that's better than here's the
32:55
annual salary and damages because you're emotionally
32:58
distraught. We'd love for you to work with
33:00
us on this problem as we gradually get better.
33:04
And for the most part, anyone who's been working for more than
33:08
a day, any 25 year old or older understands that the world isn't
33:13
changing tomorrow, but they absolutely want that change and
33:17
they're available to work on it instead of the company that has
33:21
no infrastructure just goes, we're going to get sued.
33:24
So an insurance carrier just pay them and then the Lloyds market
33:29
will go well, no, no, Beasley, we'll, we'll pay it once.
33:34
And, and I'll give you this example.
33:36
Any company that has a claim right now, and this is what
33:39
Swiss Re is, they're looking at the number of claims or
33:43
suggested claims even for because some companies won't
33:46
file a claim. It's just like when people crash
33:48
their car, but they won't take it to the auto shop, they'll
33:51
take it to their friend, pay in cash so they don't have to file
33:54
a claim. We still see the payment.
33:58
We track the payments at the mechanic.
34:00
So it doesn't matter if you don't file a claim.
34:03
We get in general where the claims would be in your area.
34:06
We still see that they're angry people even if you don't go to
34:10
court. So we're tracking everything and
34:13
there's data there and it doesn't need to be personal data
34:17
for us to track it. So anyway, when that happens,
34:22
your premium usually double s if you have a claim, double yes, if
34:27
you don't have a claim. They're going up at a rate of
34:30
about 20% a year. And the reason Swiss Re and
34:34
other reinsurers are ringing the bell around this issue is
34:40
because it's unsustainable, just like cybersecurity was in 2013,
34:43
1415, and then we came out with all these regulations around
34:47
1617. Yeah.
34:49
So is is this then? Is DEI then something that will
34:55
be enforced through the financial services system?
35:00
Place, I think everything, the only real incentive we ever have
35:04
against sort of, you know, what we see happening here in the
35:08
United States is to show the CEO's that meet in Davos at the
35:13
World Economic Forum that it is just absolutely too expensive to
35:18
unconnect the world, you know, to be overly philosophical.
35:22
If I read all the old books from Western philosophy, Eastern
35:26
philosophy, every religion, and I did this in a book I published
35:31
back in 2012, we ran a series of word clouds to see what synonym
35:36
rises to the top. And everyone, every preacher,
35:39
whether they're Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you
35:45
name it, they were all talking about connectivity.
35:47
It is apparently the meaning of life and the oldest wisdom that
35:51
we have as we exist in this interconnected world.
35:53
And we see people migrating, whether it's through climate
35:57
migration or just in general, whether they're moving to
36:00
Holland or they're moving to Harlem.
36:02
I live in Harlem, which is Uptown Manhattan, trying to find
36:07
another word with, AH. No matter where they're moving,
36:11
people are coming together and connecting and they create more
36:14
economic activity and they create more friction.
36:16
They create more transactions or energy proliferates.
36:20
I like to use that analogy that, you know, friction is energy
36:24
proliferation, but transactions is what gross domestic product
36:28
is. For instance.
36:28
When we see economic friction scale, it's because we're
36:33
bumping up against each other and we realize, oh, you need
36:35
something different than what I need, You buy this shirt, I buy
36:38
that shirt. The market expands.
36:41
We want to see that happen at least everyone at the World
36:45
Economic Forum, everyone at the United Nations, everyone and all
36:48
of the everyone at the EU. We want to see more of that
36:51
activity, and the more conservative leaders try to
36:56
decouple us. Our best defense is for the
36:59
financial sector to say, look, we can't afford it.
37:03
You can decouple if you like, but we'll all be poorer and in
37:07
more danger if we do decouple from each other.
37:11
Anything other than people coming together.
37:14
And doing that not just philosophically but mechanically
37:17
through finance and insurance is antithetical to human existence.
37:24
So yes, I think we'll see DEI enforced as a proxy of finance.
37:29
It may not be the sexiest, loudest conversation, but I'll
37:34
say this. I was just sitting with the COO
37:37
of a large multinational insurance carrier and all he
37:42
could do, he was literally like salivating because all he could
37:45
think of was oh, this market should be 3 times as high.
37:49
So he didn't. I.
37:50
I don't even know if he's a moral actor, but what he thinks
37:55
is I am leaving about $7 billion on the table if the market
38:00
grows. For instance, the employment
38:02
practice liability market globally is about 7 billion.
38:06
The 10% Swiss Reed number suggested should be 21 billion,
38:11
right? So if you're a really big
38:14
company, you think, well, at least one of those billions is
38:16
mine. That's what he's thinking.
38:20
He's not going, oh, you know, we shouldn't tell that woman that
38:24
if she was a man, she should get double.
38:26
He doesn't know any better. He needs some training, which is
38:29
a part of the market. That is a separate revenue
38:32
stream, separate from that 21 billion, right.
38:35
So he's thinking, there's a billion for me in premiums,
38:39
there's another billion in training as we morph society
38:45
into whatever the new version of it will be.
38:47
Right. Which way all of your previous
38:49
guests, you know, benefit because they're interacting in
38:53
these spaces, right? That's a market.
38:57
So yes, I think the market, if we incentivize it to be, Yeah.
39:02
I think capitalism is evolving itself into what I like to call
39:05
inclusionism. It is just happening because of
39:08
that inherent demand for connectivity.
39:12
Everybody has been talking about connectivity for the past 5000
39:16
years, and we've now baked it in to the mechanics of how we put
39:22
value on the cluster of human lives.
39:26
So. So that's the good part about
39:28
storytelling we've done in over the past 5000 years.
39:31
And yes. Yes.
39:33
That it's all about communication and connectivity.
39:38
Hence why we're here. Yes.
39:40
This matters more than anything else, right?
39:42
Because if we weren't able to tell a story, like I tell this
39:45
story everywhere. I was just in Chicago last week
39:47
telling this story, and people are like, I never thought about
39:51
it like that. And they all work in insurance.
39:53
Like, yeah, because the story matters.
39:55
The the the preacher, the professor, the whomever.
40:00
Telling the story to make it all make sense is more powerful,
40:03
more dynamic. You doing this podcast is
40:06
arguably more important than just underwriting insurance.
40:10
But to do both would would be very, you know, dynamic.
40:15
And we need more people doing doing both.
40:18
This isn't just a market that I want to gobble up.
40:21
I couldn't do it if I wanted to on my own just because the world
40:25
is too expansive. So we just try to encourage more
40:30
people who are in professional liability to, you know, go this
40:35
route because it's not only a revenue opportunity, but it's a
40:42
moral imperative. And one more thing I'll say
40:44
about the correlation between this and cyber, because we just
40:48
put out a, a iPad on it in Forbes, because we have a new
40:52
state constitution here in the state of New York that is
40:55
getting ready to be enforced. It has an equal rights amendment
40:58
which enshrines DEI separate from what Trump is doing in in
41:03
DC. And what we referenced is the
41:07
New York State cyber Reg when they realized cyber was becoming
41:11
too risky. And I think this would be
41:13
interesting financially for all of your listeners is in 2010 the
41:22
cyber security insurance market was only 600 thousand U.S.
41:26
dollars tiny like. Non existent virtually.
41:30
Right. But in 10 years by 20/20 it was
41:33
10 billion and that's the change.
41:35
And so I think we'll see the same when we think about
41:38
employment liability, it's going to likely grow by three or four.
41:43
XI don't know that it'll be, you know, as drastic as cyber
41:48
because it already existed. But to to grow from 7 billion to
41:53
somewhere around 35 or so billion in 10 years means
41:58
there's a huge cultural shift in how we've tried to integrate
42:02
people and and we actually see that per migration patterns
42:06
across the globe. So it's coming whether we want
42:10
it or not. And the financial engineers of
42:13
the world have to be prepared to price it in and communicate it
42:19
to every other type of company everywhere you know.
42:24
Yeah, that's, that's that's where I actually want to to go.
42:29
So I think there's a huge business case for insurance
42:33
companies to to start tackling this.
42:37
But let's say I'm a leader in an organization and I think the is
42:44
either too important or too financially risky and I want to
42:49
get started buying with the ISO standard.
42:52
Where do I start? How can I get started with this?
42:56
I think you so I'd chair the the first, you know, certifying body
43:01
in the standard, but there are a few others actually, you know,
43:05
companies in Nordic countries like like DMV etcetera.
43:08
But I would go to the, we got the diverse inclusion service
43:12
management forum or if anyone just googles ISO 30415, DIS
43:18
m.com, that's a lot. That's a mouthful.
43:20
We're aware. But I think you start with an
43:23
audit so that you can plan what your five year strategy is
43:28
because no one's going to do everything that they need to do
43:32
in six months or three months or and that's usually that's where
43:35
we were previously before the pandemic.
43:37
Everyone's like, I want to fix everything.
43:39
Today's we won't do that. This has to be a gradual
43:43
strategy. Again, just like cyber or IT or
43:47
manufacturing, you go, we got a 10 year plan to get people
43:52
familiar with both the risks that we're taking on by not
43:57
being deliberately inclusive and the financial impact of that.
44:02
And what I would say I, I publish a, a dumb equation about
44:06
how executives or directors can make assumptions about this
44:12
risk. And it's the price of your
44:14
insurance premiums plus the price of those ad hoc programs
44:20
that you may be doing now that don't actually work if they're
44:22
not justified. I met a company that with the
44:26
CEO his his kid came out as gay and he called me and said
44:31
because I used to run the LGBT Chamber of Commerce over here
44:34
and I started some over there and Scandinavian gay and lesbian
44:38
Chamber of Commerce. I think I did there first event.
44:43
It was in Sweden though good to end and Malmo.
44:46
But anyway. And I was like, look, I, I love
44:49
that you care about your kid and you want to do something, but
44:52
this may not be the best use case because you don't have an
44:54
employee resource group that identifies that way.
44:57
When you do have other groups, you have disabled groups, you
45:00
have women's groups, you get bigger bang for your buck there
45:04
and you can nurture and see if you can even build an LGBT
45:08
identifying group in your company and then execute
45:12
something. So sometimes CE OS are, you
45:15
know, just as silly as the rest of us.
45:17
They see something on the news and they all want to change the
45:19
world tomorrow. It's like you can't do that.
45:21
You can't do that tomorrow. I've heard somebody after the
45:25
George Floyd murder here in, in the United States go, oh, we
45:28
need to hire more Black people that work with us.
45:31
But they were in, they were in Canada on the far West Coast.
45:36
And I was like, I, I love this sentiment, but no, Black people
45:39
don't even live there. You don't need to do that.
45:42
Like you don't need to call me with that.
45:45
So my point is, it's the price of your premiums plus the price
45:48
of those ad hoc programs that may not work out for you, plus
45:52
the price of at least one human resources position.
45:55
We look at those people as risk managers.
45:59
So if they're chasing the crisis that you have created, you know
46:04
that that's an extra expense. So let's say that's 60, so €1000
46:10
for the HR person, another 20 to €40,000 in ad hoc programming.
46:18
Plus let's say you got a company with 500 employees, another
46:22
250,000 and premiums and we Add all those up, you're looking at
46:31
about 300, you know, 350K of risk.
46:37
And that can justify you saying I'm going to spend 30 to 35 in
46:42
the next calendar year to build my base.
46:45
So we have a actionable program that we can use and communicate
46:49
across every border via the ISO. I'm not just going to hire
46:53
somebody to be creative because we don't know what we're doing.
46:56
I'm an accountant, you're a lawyer, she's an engineer.
47:00
We know how to do those things. We don't know how to do this
47:02
thing. That's what the ISO is for.
47:04
So I would say they can get started by, I mean, they can
47:07
certainly call us at, at inclusion score.
47:09
We're in 32 countries and you start with an assessment and you
47:13
start with the expectations that it's going to take a while, but
47:16
this is a long term game because people are what drives any of
47:22
our companies around. There are customers and there
47:25
are employees we can't expect or we can just change it overnight,
47:29
it won't work. No, especially in the supplier
47:33
part. That's going to be difficult and
47:37
and even the cultural change just takes time.
47:41
Especially for the large ones. I would say one thing that's
47:43
driving mid sized companies to use the standard, especially in
47:49
like the UK and Canada is those that have one big client.
47:55
And so that big client is telling their supply chain you
47:58
need to try to catch up. And they know it's going to take
48:01
time. But that's really what what
48:04
drives the market. They're looking at who's in
48:06
their supply chain. They want to be able to
48:08
communicate to their consumers the ethical regard in which they
48:13
produce their products and services.
48:16
So it's a big driver separately from the government regulations.
48:21
So, yeah, I mean, it's it's a new world.
48:25
But we we have we do have a rigid understanding of what good
48:34
people management is at this point.
48:36
Like we know we have a lot of data.
48:38
It's not like we don't know these things.
48:41
And one more thing specific to what I mentioned earlier with
48:45
maturity, when I say maturity model, everyone can Google this
48:49
if they Google CMMI for capability maturity model
48:53
integration. It's a old methodology that is
48:57
applied to the ISO standard, which is essentially a step by
49:01
step tiered system where we understand what I mean when I
49:06
say infrastructure, like what the levels of infrastructure are
49:09
and who's more mature or who's more sophisticated.
49:13
So none of this stuff is new. We're just compounding old best
49:16
practices because we've been doing this for 78 years to
49:21
understand what the risks are. Yeah.
49:23
OK, so the first step is to do an audit.
49:27
I would do an audit first. And also to make sure that
49:31
everyone understand that this is going to be, as one of my
49:36
previous guests called it, a marathon and all the Sprint.
49:39
Yes, it will be a marathon. Yeah, because a lot of people
49:42
will come and go. Well, we didn't change the world
49:45
in 24 months. And it's like that's not our
49:47
objective. It's not even, it shouldn't even
49:49
be companies objective. I deal with people all the time
49:51
and they talk about justice and morals.
49:53
And in most countries there are actual justice systems.
49:56
So I don't think for for profit companies, for profit companies
49:59
should be allowed to screw up. They may mess up and break the
50:03
law. The actual justice system will
50:06
work on them. It's not your job to do that or
50:09
it's not our job to tell companies what they should look
50:12
like. The purpose of the standard in
50:15
that audit is for companies to leverage it to understand who
50:19
they actually are. It's about self actualization.
50:21
As Ceoi should not assume who the people are in my company.
50:25
I'll build places for them to tell me who they are and for
50:29
instance for that CEO with the kid who wants to join the LGBT
50:32
chamber. If the people at my company
50:34
don't tell me that they are LGBT and or care about this, if
50:38
they're not willing to identify, then I need to focus on the
50:42
market isn't telling me to focus on that.
50:45
I may need to focus on the Asian women that work for me or the
50:48
disabled people that work for me or certain age groups that work
50:52
for me, which are all adequate priorities.
50:56
So. So what I'm hearing you say is
50:59
also to, to look for quote UN quote market signals.
51:03
So what you're really looking at what your employees are telling
51:07
you. So if if let's say your
51:10
employees, your Hispanic employees are telling you, well,
51:15
we feel slightly undervalued compared to and we get less
51:19
promotions etcetera. That's maybe a better place to
51:23
start if you do the inventory. Yeah, because they're, they may
51:27
be the ones, even if it's not valid or real, if they feel that
51:31
way, they may bring those grievances to the forefront,
51:34
which creates the insurance risk, right.
51:36
So once they tell you there may be a problem, here you go.
51:39
I'm going to build more infrastructure there.
51:40
So you're absolutely right. But the standard in those,
51:45
there's a domain 7 called inclusive culture.
51:47
That's where the employee resource groups exist.
51:49
And it's not an HR, it's separate because these are
51:52
external advisory boards. Building those will help those
51:56
people coalesce in a group to tell you how they feel within
52:00
you rigidly are identifying that risk.
52:05
And so an audit will help you do that.
52:08
It will help you build that infrastructure if your company
52:10
doesn't already have it. We know how to build that
52:13
infrastructure. age-old methodologies.
52:16
You don't have to be creative and build something from scratch
52:20
that doesn't work. Yeah.
52:23
And you and you go from there. And again, it covers those three
52:28
big price categories, premiums, ad hoc programs and and any
52:35
troubleshooters, HR people that you have chasing it it down.
52:40
So yeah, you build the base first, manage people's expert.
52:44
Every executive should say this is going to be a marathon.
52:47
I like what your previous guest is saying and and you go from
52:52
there and I think what you'll what people will find is that
52:56
this work satisfies a lot of ingrieved employees to let them
53:00
know. I think most people who've had a
53:02
job for a while, they respect that there is a plan more than
53:08
you just going, we're going to do everything.
53:09
Right now. They're like, they're just
53:11
saying anything. In any other profession, there's
53:15
a plan. Yeah.
53:17
So we need that. We need, we need the plan.
53:20
And, and it's a good it actually, this is, I think, a
53:23
bad word, but it, it pacifies a lot of the anxiety from some of
53:28
those folks when they go. I don't love it here, but I at
53:32
least know that there's a plan. Yeah, and at least they are
53:35
being hurt. Expected as as as, which is
53:40
basic human dignity. As also.
53:42
Part of the connection to be honest, that you actually listen
53:47
to people and then they to your point, they can indeed not
53:54
expect you to change it overnight but.
53:57
They're willing to bear with you.
53:58
They're willing to work with you.
53:59
You know it's. And it's even an invitation I
54:02
think also to them to say, hey listen, I need some help with
54:06
this. Yeah, they're also great ways to
54:09
identify your next generational leadership, right, These
54:14
advisory boards or focus groups. So everyone calls them something
54:18
different, but they are great ways to better identify and
54:23
nurture your talent and even understand talent that you may
54:26
not understand culturally. And then over time you go, OK, I
54:30
get what they mean, how they work, and now I can help promote
54:34
them through, even though they normally do things differently
54:37
than I would. It again creates a playing field
54:42
for understanding. But it's just like any
54:44
relationship. It's, you know, when people ask
54:47
what makes this or that relationship work, you know,
54:49
everything's cliche. You go, you know, it's
54:51
communications, how you stay married, etcetera.
54:55
And it's not sexy when you say it.
54:58
It's no secret. It's like we talk.
55:01
We talk until we understand. And we normally don't start from
55:06
understanding, but we talk. It's it's as old as time.
55:11
Yeah, it really is. So I want to talk a bit about
55:14
future. So let's say that inclusion
55:20
score becomes a giant hit in the next in 10 years from now.
55:26
What? What does the future look like
55:29
for you then? Probably moving away and letting
55:35
one of my, you know, colleagues run it.
55:38
But I think if inclusion scores is a juggernaut in the, you
55:42
know, professionalization of DEI space, you know, with insurance
55:47
to boot. I think my, my greatest goal
55:52
with this company would be to, you know, as you know, in my, my
55:57
other career, I'm a bit of a data geek.
56:00
And I think that the way our technology works is I have a
56:03
system in place to understand how people's input impacts the
56:08
broader productivity of our company.
56:10
And so I want to relinquish my equity stake in the company,
56:15
which is large at this point. But we're, you know, we're still
56:18
a startup to pay out a productivity dividend to
56:21
everyone who interacts with us. I want to be able to set a
56:24
precedent around equity for CEO's to be able to better
56:29
distribute value to people who make their companies valuable.
56:33
I think that right now we're in this loop of winner take all
56:39
economics and I think we can do a better job.
56:44
I'm not saying that the boss isn't worth, you know, 4 or 510
56:48
times what their employees are worth, but you're not worth 1000
56:52
times right now. We really don't have a financial
56:57
model to better distribute value to people.
57:00
So I think you know what we have designed in a inclusion score is
57:03
a stakeholdership class separately from shareholders who
57:06
have invested in the company to pay out a data dividend for
57:12
people who who play on it. And I'll give you an example, if
57:15
we're getting a client at a large city like Copenhagen or
57:19
Atlanta, it makes us more valuable to, you know, a Detroit
57:24
or Toronto or Johannesburg because they're like, Oh well,
57:27
Copenhagen in Atlanta are doing it.
57:30
And it changes our price point and our value.
57:32
But there are people in those organizations feeding us input
57:36
that gradually increase both the value of our tech and the
57:40
changes in these insurance premiums.
57:42
And I can run some really minor math to identify how we
57:47
distribute value back to them. I think every company should be
57:50
working like that again, and I'm not.
57:55
It's not egalitarian per SE, but it is more on the level of
58:00
equity. I think that CE OS overvalue
58:04
themselves and their capabilities.
58:06
You know, when people come to me, or even when you ask me the
58:08
earlier question about would the little boy be impressed?
58:11
I just think that what I do is within my capable wheelhouse and
58:17
a lot of people may go, well, I'm impressed with what you're
58:19
doing, but I'm like, but this is just what I do.
58:22
And so it shouldn't be overvalued.
58:23
I shouldn't be worth 1000 times what my stakeholders or
58:27
employees are just because this is my skill set.
58:31
I have no life, I have no kids and I just work all day.
58:34
But I'm, I'm fine to do it. You know, for people who are
58:37
other things, they should be indemnified for what they do
58:40
well as well. So that's why I would love to be
58:45
in 10 years. OK, so so.
58:47
I have a question about about leadership and about the fact
58:51
that CE OS get a really are really valued at A at 1000 times
58:59
a regular employee. Does that also feed into the
59:02
expectation that bosses will solve any problem for me?
59:07
So that does that also increase sort of feeling of dependency
59:12
instead of if you make the difference less big, maybe four
59:18
or five times that people start to think, hey, but I have
59:22
influence. Yes.
59:24
I and I get paid. Yes, I think bringing equity
59:29
somewhere closer to where it actually should be versus where
59:33
it is it, it creates again, more codependence on each other,
59:38
which we want. We want that web of that.
59:40
But it also dilutes the sense of elitism.
59:44
Like there are people that I know right here in, in
59:47
Manhattan, in New York City, who, who truly believe that they
59:52
have earned the Centi millions or billions that they have.
59:58
And I've come across, you know, quite a few billionaires here.
1:00:02
It's not uncommon, at least here in this city.
1:00:05
In a lot of, you know, the big cities, London, Paris, etcetera,
1:00:09
their general understanding of where everyone else is, is as
1:00:15
though they are ignorant and lowly.
1:00:18
I mean, we're all ignorant about something.
1:00:21
But their general sense is that these people, I think as they
1:00:24
grow in their wealth accumulation, they start to
1:00:27
develop this disdain for everyday people.
1:00:30
And again, it's antithetical to those old storytellers, to those
1:00:34
meanings of life. So I think your question is spot
1:00:37
on. And I think as we lower their
1:00:41
take home equity versus everyone else's, it it better
1:00:45
incentivizes cooperation and inclusion in the organization
1:00:49
and the idea in your right that people that they have an ally in
1:00:55
the executive suite because right now people feel like those
1:00:58
folks are unaddressable. Yeah, they're from another
1:01:02
planet. Almost.
1:01:03
They're from another planet. They go to space.
1:01:05
They don't they, they're not normal people.
1:01:07
And you see people even I have to do a lot of work when I'm
1:01:10
around and I'm in a suit and I'm out meeting people or shaking
1:01:14
hands and people. They treat you away like you're
1:01:17
exalted and you're like, no, I'm, you know, I had to brush my
1:01:20
teeth just like you today. I don't wake up.
1:01:23
It's not, it's not that great when I roll over, but I'm I'm
1:01:27
better by 9:00, you know what I mean?
1:01:30
But they just go like, oh, you, you're amazing.
1:01:33
It's like, no, no, no, I mean like I am.
1:01:35
I'm good. I'm good at what I do.
1:01:37
I'm looking good, yes, but I'm not wildly extraordinary.
1:01:42
I'm not Superman and not Hercules.
1:01:45
And so yes, we have to do that to normalize our interaction.
1:01:50
But right now, and it goes back to property and I know this is a
1:01:54
bit off topic, but when we talk about GDPR and data etcetera, I
1:01:58
think that we have a new class of property that we can
1:02:01
distribute. So if I clock people's input to
1:02:04
my company's productivity, I can give them per that data, that
1:02:09
tracking, I can offer them that as a piece of property.
1:02:15
And that is what I tie value to, to distribute them that value.
1:02:20
So they can say, look, I have property just like you have
1:02:22
property and we have some shared valuable value.
1:02:26
It is more valuable together than apart.
1:02:29
But I am certainly a piece of the equation.
1:02:31
I am 30%. If you are 70% or we're 5050 or
1:02:35
whatever it may be. But we need that to
1:02:38
disincentivize the abuse of power.
1:02:41
And abuse of power doesn't just happen at the macro nation state
1:02:46
space. It happens person by person,
1:02:48
cubicle by cubicle, organization by organization.
1:02:52
So yeah, I just want to disincentivize that.
1:02:54
If it doesn't change the world, it's fine.
1:02:57
But I just want to demonstrate that it is possible and that
1:03:00
ACEO doesn't have to take a pat on the back and go, I'm going to
1:03:03
take $100 million off the table here and go to some remote
1:03:08
island. It's ridiculous.
1:03:10
So another question about the future.
1:03:13
Let's imagine it's 2032 and at least tech has found has seen
1:03:19
the light and they're truly inclusive.
1:03:21
They are the highest on the in terms of maturity on the CMI
1:03:26
level. CMI level 5 I think it is.
1:03:29
Sure, sure. What has changed and what is the
1:03:35
what got us there? I think if that happens, but
1:03:41
2032, there may be some AI at play that is trying to make more
1:03:47
logical sense. But I honestly think, you know,
1:03:52
we're in for a tug of war with people who have accumulated a
1:03:59
lot of value and a lot of power. I use those words intentionally
1:04:06
to to be able to claw some back and distribute it to, you know,
1:04:11
its rightful owners. So I do think that around this
1:04:16
time in the 20 thirties, we'll have a good idea of what's
1:04:20
possible and how, again, equity should be distributed and how it
1:04:25
can foster a sense of belonging, how we can solve for belonging.
1:04:28
But I think that there will be a movement afoot.
1:04:31
And I think we see it right now with what's happening in America
1:04:35
and in other places where there is a conservative faction that
1:04:40
is absolutely terrified of the the differentiation and
1:04:46
onboarding of people across the globe.
1:04:48
And so I think that I think that we are going to have to weather
1:04:52
a storm of a wave of conservatism, if you will, in
1:04:58
the latter part of this decade on into the twenty 30s in order
1:05:02
to get to where we're going. But I don't think that we're
1:05:06
like at the end of it. I think we're at the beginning
1:05:08
of of a new era, mainly because women have been in the workforce
1:05:13
and have had bank accounts, at least in the United States of
1:05:16
America for the past 53 years. That's a radically new thing.
1:05:21
And. Voting rights are even maybe a
1:05:23
century bit over a century old. Everything a lot.
1:05:27
Of people forget how how much change we've seen in the last
1:05:30
century or so, and it doesn't come like easy.
1:05:34
Right, right. So I think I am optimistic about
1:05:39
about humanity. I think we're resilient.
1:05:41
You know, even if there was some terrible type of war, some
1:05:46
people will be here later. And I am confident that whether
1:05:49
it's over a short time or a long time, that they will realize our
1:05:55
potential to be connected and, and get along.
1:05:59
Number one. But #2 I just, I think that we
1:06:01
have to go through this conservative way because people,
1:06:05
the rate of change is increasing.
1:06:07
People don't like change management.
1:06:08
I learned that when I started working in change management
1:06:11
immediately. But but it's going to happen in
1:06:15
these past 100 years, you know, we've existed for 200,000 years.
1:06:19
And only in these past hundred 150 have things been radically
1:06:25
and rapidly transitioning. So, you know, and I hear people
1:06:30
talk about the good old, this is kind of a tangent.
1:06:33
I had this young man in one of my classes at the University of
1:06:35
Georgia and he, it's like, I think we're he's really young
1:06:38
and activist and say, I think we're at the end of an era.
1:06:42
These are bad times. And I was like, kid, you haven't
1:06:45
even been around long enough. We're at the beginning of
1:06:47
something new, especially in this country, because I was
1:06:52
like, look, we saw these two women, Hillary and Kamala, get
1:06:55
really close to the most powerful position in our country
1:06:58
twice. And everyone thinks because they
1:07:00
didn't get over the hump, it's a big failure.
1:07:02
But I'm like, the fact that they even got this close is a big
1:07:06
win. And it says a lot about the
1:07:09
corporate world because these are lawyers.
1:07:12
These are business women who came to their political
1:07:15
professions later. And we see it across the board,
1:07:19
every company I know that is run well, that has sort of an
1:07:24
ethical regard in that middle rung.
1:07:26
It's being executed and delivered by educated women.
1:07:31
So we're in a really new place and it, it shouldn't be
1:07:36
slighted. We, we need to remember our
1:07:38
history. We, we just got here.
1:07:41
We just got here. You know, my grandparents were
1:07:44
around during World War 2 like it's, and they're still here.
1:07:48
My grandmother is still here. So it's, it's not that far
1:07:51
removed from us, you know. How?
1:07:54
How do they look at you at the work you're doing?
1:07:58
They are impressed. They're not like that 10 year
1:08:01
old little boy. They they kind of act like those
1:08:05
other people where they sort of treat you like you're too good
1:08:11
to hang out with them. And I have to constantly bring
1:08:16
them back to reality and let them know that you know that my
1:08:21
breath also stinks. That you have to put on a clean
1:08:28
on the. Every morning, one one leg at a
1:08:30
time, right? So, yeah, I think they think
1:08:33
what I do is radical. I think a lot of their lives
1:08:38
have been guided and, you know, fear, especially when I think
1:08:41
about my mother and my grandmother.
1:08:44
But I think they're, they're excited to, to participate.
1:08:48
I work a lot with my mother, for instance.
1:08:51
She knows that, you know, something is possible.
1:08:55
She just doesn't know necessarily what it is.
1:08:57
But she expects me to go and figure it out.
1:08:59
She's like, I paid for you to be educated, so fix things.
1:09:05
So I really just work for her. I just work for her.
1:09:08
Yeah. I just.
1:09:09
We work for the old people. Yes.
1:09:12
That sounds like a great place to close.
1:09:16
James. Thanks very much for an amazing
1:09:18
conversation. Thank you.
1:09:21
If people want to learn more about you or about the inclusion
1:09:24
score or about the ISO standard, where would you like to send
1:09:28
them? Oh and please tell them about
1:09:30
this Jet GPT part which I think which I used by the way to prep
1:09:36
your. Questions.
1:09:37
Yeah, well, I would just go to inclusionscore.org.org.
1:09:43
Everything is there and it'll take you to all the other
1:09:45
places. But yes, we do have a new GPT
1:09:50
app called Inclusion score dot AI.
1:09:53
If you go to that site, you can build systems and ask questions
1:09:59
in the standard that cater to whatever you need.
1:10:03
For instance, we just published a new index.
1:10:06
We've been indexing the FTSE and the DAX and the S&P 500 in that
1:10:11
AI. But yeah, I would just go to
1:10:13
inclusionscoreoneword.org and all of our stuff is is there.
1:10:19
And yeah, we'd, we'd love to talk to everybody about the
1:10:24
price of exclusion. And the price of inclusion.
1:10:29
And the price of inclusion and the price of inclusion, yes.
1:10:32
How we bring that price of exclusion down through
1:10:36
deliberate equity and inclusion, Yeah.
1:10:39
Great. And people can connect with you
1:10:41
on LinkedIn I suppose. Yes, I may have to delete some
1:10:45
people only I'm at that 30,000 cap, but yes I would well.
1:10:50
They can follow. You add me on LinkedIn, follow
1:10:53
me, message me, but I'm everywhere.
1:10:54
I'm on, you know, I'm still on X even though it's crazy.
1:10:58
Facebook, if you go to jamesfeltonkeith.com, a lot of
1:11:02
my other stuff is there. You know the book tour that
1:11:06
we're currently doing and where we'll be speaking next, either
1:11:11
James Felton, keith.com or inclusionscore.org.
1:11:15
Connect with me everywhere. I'm, I, I respond.
1:11:17
I'm on all the social media platforms.
1:11:20
I'm a bit of a tech fanatic. I wake up and look at my phone.
1:11:24
I know it's probably bad but I do it anyway so.
1:11:28
We all have to do something. We have to do something.
1:11:31
It's my only sport. It's the only thing I can play
1:11:34
well is technology. So yeah, I'm here.
1:11:38
Great. We'll include those links in the
1:11:40
show notes. James Feltenke, thanks again for
1:11:44
an amazing conversation. Listeners, thank you very much
1:11:47
for listening. And until the next episode, keep
1:11:49
being awesome. Well, that's a wrap for episode
1:11:58
105 of Women Disrupting Tech with James Felton Keefe on
1:12:03
building inclusion into capitalism.
1:12:06
James and I hope that you found our conversation as empowering
1:12:10
and inspiring as we intended it to be.
1:12:12
And if you'd like to learn more about or connect with James and
1:12:17
or the inclusion score, please head over to the show notes for
1:12:21
a link. As usual, you can find the show
1:12:23
notes at Women Disrupting Tech dot Blog.
1:12:27
When you've enjoyed listening to this episode, please follow the
1:12:30
podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube.
1:12:34
Following Women Disrupting Tech is a great 0 cost way to support
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James and my older guest in making inclusion in Tech the new
1:12:41
normal by the end of 2032. You can also follow Women
1:12:45
Disrupting Tech on social media. On LinkedIn you can follow at
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1:12:57
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1:13:01
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1:13:05
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1:13:09
So don't forget to subscribe on Sub Stack for more women
1:13:13
Disrupting tech. Finally, if you want to connect
1:13:16
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1:13:20
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1:13:24
LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, simply search for
1:13:27
my name and you'll find me. With that, I wish you a
1:13:30
wonderful day. I hope to see you in the next
1:13:33
eisode and until then, Kee being awesome.