This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Over the next couple of hours, we're going to bring you some of the most important and informative conversations we've had this week on our daily radio show. And Jason, let's remind everybody it's week fourteen.
Working from home for many of us. Even as New York City, once the center of the pandemic in the US, it continued to reopen along with much of the New York metro area. Meanwhile, we saw other states this week around the US, we saw their virus numbers go up, and some of the headlines crossing the Bloomberg companies cutting workers.
Industries are still continuing to struggle with the economic shutdown, right, and not to mention roiling protests continuing across the country and a reckoning of sorts certainly on the front lines of corporate America. This is not just a societal problem. This isn't just people out marching in the streets. This is a real conversation that's happening inside boardrooms at companies. We know that we've talked to a lot of people about them. Yeah, and our conversations this week, we're really
full of stark realities. I felt like we continue to fight that health crisis. There are many millions out of work, and we're still trying to figure out, as you said, why racism persists in our world. And Carol, that was part of my conversation with TPG founding partner and co CEO Jim Coulter. We spent forty five minutes at a live event walking through what it is like to invest in a new era, and that new era is not only about coronavirus, of course, but it's also about a
new era of corporate responsibility and corporate accountability. Plus, we talked with Sports Illustrated executive editor and contributing correspondent for CBS sixty Minutes, John Worth, I'm a friend of the show. We talked with him Jason on how to westart sports in a pandemic Tennessee says pretty easy to do social distancing, which may explain why the U s t A said.
The US Open will happen as scheduled in late summer in New York, but it's going to be very different Yeah, we're not going to be there, most likely because no spectators. Plus another addition of Business Week Talks featuring our conversation with Hilton president and CEO Christmas set up right hospitality industry still reeling from the virus. First up, though, as we mentioned, our conversations this week really full of stark realities.
We continue, as we know, to be in the thick of that health crisis, and we're still trying to figure out why racism persists in our world. And we start there with our cover story on how quotas can help fix the glaring whiteness of America's c suites. We cut up with Rebecca Greenfield. She's in charge of diversity coverage here at Bloomberg News. Yeah, so, I think you mentioned the main problem, which is how few black leaders there are.
And this is not because they have There haven't been a lot of efforts to change the makeup of companies. There have been billions of dollars spent and decades of trying and companies saying it's in their best interest to do this, and both companies one person I quote said so, but it's so awesome. They look like plantations. Organizational chart looks like plantations and black folks are at the bottom. That was a close system I gave me and that's
the reality and it's and it hasn't changed. So what's what When left their own devices, companies aren't really able to move the needle. And it's it's because it's a very complicated and difficult problem to solve. So like I was wondering, if we need something more aggressive or more coercive, and quotas are very controversial, but they have been proven to work in that capacity, which is to get more representation.
They don't fix everything, they don't fix racism, but they do move the needle more than what companies they are doing. And we know, Rebecca, it has helped move the needle with women. Correct. Yeah, So there is this law that was passed in California UM a couple of years ago that where they required boards there to have at least one female director UM by last year and then they're upping that um depending on the size of the awards.
So there were there's a quota. They've been sued because like Jile engines, quotas are an illegal gray area, but it has touched all of these boards of pillow companies in California to add women. Um, and they were worried that they wouldn't be able to find qualified candidates. But at the end of the day they did to comply because if they didn't comply, they had to pay are thousand dollar fine. Well, and it's interesting, you know, Becky. You you also bring up the idea that even talking
about them maybe spur action. I mean, is that a reasonable argument? I mean, what do you think about that? Well, I would say that so far, a lot of the feedback I think, yeah, them gets a lot of people at set because they don't like them. I can tell you that from my Twitter mentions gonna turn for the
worst today. Um. But I think my my motivation for making this argument and writing this and thinking about this for a long time is that we do need things more radical if there's going to be real change, because there is a lot of you know, milion mouse or what I mean, very well meaning acting in the area and it doesn't doesn't do anything right. Um. I think it's also rethinking of what the front of action or
quotas are for. I think some people I told you said, we need to rethink it as this way of counteracting, well not as like this representation challenge, and that's reporter Rebecca Greenfield. As you mentioned at the top, she leads all the coverage. She has been unbelievably busy, took some
time to write this cover. It's the remarks in the magazine and takes quotas straight on and really sort of ways the benefits and the negatives of doing that, and makes some comparisons, some important comparisons to what companies have done when it comes to gender. But as she rightly points out, nothing gets people charged up like quotas. So certainly though something that's being discussed considering some of the inequalities that are out there. All Right, you're listening to
Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, one of our go to voices on the pandemic. We're talking about Dr William hazel Teen, he joins us on his new book, A Family Guide to COVID. This is Bloomberg Face is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Well, today we're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations we had on our daily Bloomberg Business Week
radio show this week. And the virus still front and center all the inequalities, all the challenges that come from trying to fight this disease. Carol right and Jason one of the voices that we always look forward to talking to about the virus. He understands the healthcare and biotech world so well. We caught up again with Dr William hazel Teen. He's a chairman and president of Access Health International.
It's a nonprofit think tank. It's mission is to improve access to high quality and affordable health care for people everywhere. His latest mission a new book. It's for families. It's called a Family Guide to COVID, and it's really to help everybody at all different ages talk about the virus. Well, I'm looking right now at what's happened in Florida, and
in many ways it was predictable. It was averaging about five hundred, between four and five hundred up to eight hundred cases sometimes for about a month and a half, and then starting in uh the end of May early June, he just started to rise. There were two thousand five cases uh and now there may be about two thousand
new cases. It's pretty serious. And what it means is that the precautions the people were taking were eased off about two weeks ago, and we're now seeing that as spikes and newly diagnosed confections, mostly because people are getting uh mild lil or seriously ill. And that's happening in many parts of the country. Some other parts, like New York City, it's still relatively calm. People in New York are really scared and they know it's important to keep
social distance. But even in New York, it's people are beginning to forget. And so, what have we learned about our initial response? Doctor haselteen that we can maybe put into practice now because there is this I think strong resistance on the part of both government leaders and just everyday people to go back to a full on shutdown. Yeah, I understand that it's uh, that's fully fully understandable and m what the way I look at is the following We paid a price, but we didn't get the benefit.
That's because we didn't do it right. We didn't really enforced contact racing and mandatory isolation, and people weren't particularly observant all all the people weren't observant about the precautions they were urged to take, so we never cleared the infection like a number of other countries did or reduce it down to a very manageable level of say a half a dozen, five six in the whole country. We just didn't do that, and so we we paid a price,
but we didn't get a benefit. The net result is we're now going to end up in a different situation, which is I call it back to the future. When I was born seventy five years ago, it was right on the cusp of the vaccine and antibiotic miracles. Before that time, people lived with the understanding that death could strike them at any moment. Even I remember polio, I remember being terrified a rheumatic fever. Those are things we
couldn't control. And in fact, we built America. We built the world in a world without vaccines and in the world without antibiotics. But you pay a price that we're beginning to understand, and that price is death is at your shoulder at all moments. And it seems that we're willing to adapt to that. We've adapted in the past, we'll adapt again. We have exiting the time at least for now, where we have a free ride and don't have to worry about dying of an infectious disease tomorrow. Wow. Okay, So,
so how do we do this? Because you know, you're right, you know, we're kind of in this interesting situation. And yes, history has shown us we can forge ahead and we can you know, build society. But there is a cost to it. So as we reopen, do we do it? You will pay the price? Yes, we do do it. I I happen to agree. We don't have any choice because Americans seem to be undisciplined and we don't have either the leadership, the governments or the government apparatus that
we need. We need leaders that are clear, consistent, credible, and compassionate. We need government governance that works, and we need a public health service very much like an army that has unitary command from the top to the bottom. When the president says it's up to the governors, he's right. He doesn't have a tool he can use like he can use the military abroad. We don't have that tool. When the governor say it's up to the municipalities in
the cities. I live in New York, and you can see the tension between the governor and the mayor, and the mayor might even in some places as the county leader may say it's up to the local authorities. We don't have unitary command in public health service. If there's a lesson we learned from this, we need unitary command to protect us internally as we do externally. Our biggest
threats in my lifetime have not come from abroad. They've come from diseases within our own country, whether it was HIV age or where there was a number of other diseases polio that I can remember. Right, those are the big threats, and we're not prepared for those like we are prepared for external threats. Right. That's Dr William Hasletine.
He's the chairman and president of Access Health International. And I do think Jason, when we finished our conversation with him during the week, we both were like, WHOA, We're still in the thick of it. That's exactly right. And I think he reminded us that this is affecting lots of different people and that depending on what age you are and depending on your perspective, you may have different questions.
He also reminded us that this is fast moving. Is so one of the things I really like about this book is it does exist in paper. You can get it but it also gives you access to a website because the questions and the answers they're always changing, right, And I also thought one of the takeaways and he says, we need kind of a huge public health service in place on the scale and operational level of the military if we really really want to get ahead of the virus.
And he says, we don't really have that in place. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, we go to the intersection of the two crises that we are constantly talking about, the health crisis and racial justice. We catch up with the CEO and co founder of Incredible Health. It's an important conversation. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio.
We're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations we had on our daily radio show throughout the week. We caught up with Dr Iman Abuse. We had spoken with her a few weeks back. Carol, she's the CEO and co founder of Incredible Health. Initially back in the day and back a few weeks ago, we had caught up about essentially how hospitals are being staffed. She has a new model to really match nurses into the healthcare system.
We wanted to talk to her about some different things, this time about diversity in healthcare and also her personal experience being a black founder. We did a pretty detailed nurse impact study and discovered that two percent of the nurses, only two percent of the nurses stelt at their hospitals
were very prepared. And what a lot of the hospitals have been have been spending their time doing in the last couple of months is getting a soft pile of personal protective equipment and also getting their infection control protocols in place so it's safer um for so it's safe for patients to come back. Right. This is a business
model question to some extent. I wonder it though, Why in an area that's so known for innovation and at least outwardly forward thinking, why this lesson hasn't been learned earlier around Silicon Valley. Yeah, I mean, look that the statistics are bad. You know, less than one percent to venture capital goes to black founders, even though we're starting over ten percent of the company's UM. I think there's
two challenges there. One is just making it actually making it a priority UM and believing that the problem is real. And then the first the second is, you know, the solutions are more around investors expanding their networks so they're more diverse and so they're able to source better deal flow that way. And then the second is like looking at the bias and that's that's going on in the actual diligence process. Honestly, it compares a lot to what
operators do as well when we're hiring. UM, when we're hiring and we're looking to hire a diverse team, we do have to look at our sourcing as well as the actual interview process itself to make sure we end up with a diverse team or in the case of investors, a diverse portfolio. Right, you need to have a focus, You have to have a concerted effort. You have to know that this is what you want to do right to get it done, absolutely, and I think that's probably
the biggest piece. It's missing making it a priority, having a gold hied to it, making someone accountable to it. Someone's performance evaluation is going to be tied to it, you know. And and once you do that UM, as a leader and especially as the CEO, then then change starts to happen internally, right, because that's what you know, We've had so many conversations and we wonder, so what's different this time around? This is not a new problem, right, Um,
it's been going on for a long time. Do you have hope that something changes dramatically in terms of diversity and you know, getting rid of racism in our society? I mean, this is the first time in my lifetime that I've seen non black communities heavily involved and engaged and enraged by the topic. And the media attention on it is also very high as well. So I'm hopeful that there will be some permanent changes. Um. That's you know, it's long past two, right, and so you know, back
to incredible health for for a minute. I mean, how does that play through your own business model? Because I believe the last time you were with us, you were talking about this issue of you know, diversity across the healthcare spectrum and especially dealing in this pandemic which has been ultimately very uh discriminating in its own way against you know, people of color, people from lower socioeconomic bounds. How are you seeing it play out in your business?
And and uh and through this crisis. Yeah. So Incredible Health out of Score is a software platform, and so there's a couple of ways where it plays out. First is that when it's when it comes to building the actual software itself. UM, we do have to keep in mind that we are building it for a very diverse population. Over twenty percent of nurses help identify as minorities, and so we do have to take things into accounts such
as UH features that remove bias and hiring UM. You know, like we remove the current locations for example of nurses because we noticed that employers were discriminating on based on simply based on location. Another thing we do is we provide salary calculators to all the nurses on our platform and career coaches. Because UM minorities are usually they don't negotiate as hard or not as aware of what their
salaries should be. And so we really do build features and products that make, you know, reduce the amount of
discrimination that's happening. And that's Dr Iman Abuse joining us from San Francisco, the co founder and the CEO of Incredible Health, and I really appreciated her candor Carol, her sharing her experience with us both as a person as a really well educated, successful person who still faces some of the systemic racism that is in Silicon Valley, but also she faces it on behalf of her company all the time and dealing with this question of diversity within
the health care system. Well, remember, she's one of a small number of venture backed female black founders in the health tech sector, so she is in a unique position to not only look at of course what's going on in the virus, but also racism in America and being a black corporate leader. She really, I feel like um gave us some great insight into all of that, and she also notes Jason that diversity isn't just a moral and human rights issue, it's also about building a better business.
So really gave us some wonderful perspective. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up my conversation with TPG founding partner co CEO Jim Culture. He usually talks about the year ahead in November, but we had to get a reboot bond that that's coming up. That's exactly what it was. This is bloombergs is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser
and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg radio. Well, today we're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations we had on our daily radio show this week and even beyond the radio show. Carol, you know, we always like to mix it up, we do. And Jason, you had
a great conversation this week. It's part of a Bloomberg Live virtual event called the Year Ahead Revisited, Investing in a New Era event, and you caught up with Jim Coulter because usually at the end of the year, right you talk about with him what's to come in the coming year. We'll here you did halfway through a reboot because this year is not turning out like everyone expected,
not at all. And I was very grateful to him for doing this because basically went to him a few weeks ago, and this was even before the killing of George Floyd and all the racial protests and all the racial reckoning and social reckoning that has ensued, and I said, look, the world is so different from what we talked about in November. Would you consider this reboot as you said?
And he was very gracious, and you know, was able to really get real with me and our massive audience on this to let them know how an investor, but also how a business leader is thinking about all these conversations. So twenty seven years ago, Jason, when we began building TPG, we realized, as well as building an investment firm, we were building a really interesting front row seat for the
world of business. So if you look inside our ecosystem today, over two companies across twenty nine different countries, twelve different sectors, more than a billion dollars of revenue, and we're in the boardroom of those companies watching the challenges they faced. In addition, we write almost ten thousand pages a year of things called investment memos. Think of them as research, and so we challenged ourselves to from time to time pick our head up from the individual investments and see
what the ecosystem is telling us about the world. We began sharing that privately with our investors, and somewhere along the way, I'm not quite sure how you did it, you convinced me to do this publicly, and here we are, And I have to say part of the inspiration for this was candidly me thinking about you and thinking what you must be going through in your own mind and
with your team. You know, it's also interesting for me to think about, and as we kick off this idea that even when you and I conceive this a couple of months ago, this this refresh, the world has become a very different place. And I would love for you to to set the table, if you can, by talking about these dual crises that that we're facing, you know, one that we've been in for a number of weeks, now number of months, but one that's a little more recent.
Let's start, if we can, on this question of racial justice, because I know it's something you've thought about, and I know that TPG is talking about and that you're talking to that huge uh sort of rolode start, not even Rolodex, but you know the partners that you have around the world. A lot has changed since were together in November. A number of the trends we're talking about, the rise of
subscription businesses, corporate responsibility are continuing apace. But clearly, when the history of the year is written, it will be about two issues that have shaped the first half of the year, and I think those two issues are likely to drive the year ahead. The coronavirus we're all beginning to build our understanding on, but much more recent is the racial justice movement, and quite frankly, Um, I hesitated
to talk about it today. It still feels early. It still feels like a moment that we're all dealing with the pain of the murders of Ray Schard, Brooks, Mond Aubrey, George, Floyd, Brinn and Taylor, and we're still in the middle of I think a societal and personal journey, particularly for people like you and I, Jason, who I had the privilege of growing up in a country as a white male. But I knew you'd ask your reporter, So let me just share a few early thoughts about where I think
we are and how it might shape the year ahead. Uh. There are many many words that we could use, but I think it it may be best just to start with pictures. Um, it feels different this time, thirty undred cities of protests, and if you go into these pictures, you see a racially the first group of people engaged in it. Only two years ago, fort of people were backing the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, seven out of ten white Americans say that racial injustice is a major
problem for the country. These protesters were not deterred by a global pandemic. They were not deterred by tear gas in Washington, tornadoes in Florida, and the depth and breadth of what we're seeing I think speaks well to how it will shape the world ahead. One of the pictures, quite frankly, the really impacted me was this is no longer just the US issue. It's an issue that has grabbed the global attention, both reflecting upon the US and
reflecting on broader issues within the world. So as I look at where we traveled so far and the world ahead, I think we're in the midst of a social and political revolution that's likely to be expressed in many ways. The question we also have to engage on as will
it be expressed in the business and investment world. And here I think I'm beginning to see a birth of a bit of optimism and a bit of action that I'm I have to say, I wasn't expecting to see as fast, and I'm gratified to see that it is moving. One of the cultural bell weathers I always looked to Jason are the sports, UH teams and Hollywood, and some time they give you a sense of how the world
is going to engage in an issue. And here the news is frankly, nothing short of gratifying and amazing the NFL, which was only that Colin Kaepertick took a knee. Think about what's happened since then, and in the immediate one, it's moved to the right side of this issue. The idea that NASCAR would ban the Confederate flag from its events is it was a distant thought not too long ago.
And one of the things I love if you look at the announcement here, Jason, the presence of the Confederate flag small C Confederate traditionally has been large c delegating not only the flag but the Confederacy to the place it belongs to go. And the Premier League, perhaps the most coveted advertising space and sports is Premier League Jersey. What's on there now? Black Lives Matter. So we're beginning to see the early signs of engagement through some of
the cultural icons of the world. But the question is isn't going to spread? And here again Cautious Green shoots three points I'd make. First of all, we have a little bit of an inside view of this because we own a company called ever five, which is the number one producer of software on everything from D and I training to ally ship UH to unconscious bias. They also produce software that is resetting the teaching of African America
in history. And when we look inside that company I was talking to see over the weekend, we are seeing a doubling and tripling of inquiries from companies. So companies are understanding they can't just speak externally about this. They need to get their own house in order. So first of all, we're seeing early evidence of companies changing their internal practices. Second, companies are stepping forward in a public way,
and they're stepping forward with their pocket book. UH. Fortune one hundred has already, according to Actio, has done a billion six of pledges led by Bank of America. And so we're seeing engagement at a level we haven't seen before. And the third area, and this is in some ways I think the most important is our business is really
going to change their business practices to reflect this. And again early green shoots the pent pledge, the idea of putting fifteen percent of your shelf space into African American brands and companies Amazon, Microsoft often IBM have stopped selling facial recognition software as day Lauder is changing their hiring practices and committing to reflect the world makeup in their in their workforce, not just their historical makeup. And the third thing I would point out is yet to be seen,
but again I'm hopeful, is will consumers engage. Because we can get society to engage, businesses to engage, in consumers to engage, it will build the foundation of what's happening here. While in no way drawing equivalency. Over my career, I've seen time time where consumers have picked up social issues and expressed that in their buying patterns. We saw that in the clean food movement, where organic grew to new levels as people expressed their desire to change how we
eat as Americans. More recently, sustainable products of all sorts have really become the consumer choice CpG growth over the last few years have been in sustainable products. There any percent of consumers say that they will spend more for a green product. So as we look forward on the racial justice, will consumers also express their desire here? We're
seeing early evidence of that. Recent polls showed that seventy percent of consumers said that they would reconsider their purchasing habits from a company if the CEO didn't speak up on this matter. So if we can get all of these flywheels working society, business, consumer behavior, I think that the year ahead will be deeply shaped by this moment in this movement. That's TPG co CEO and founding partner
Jim Coulter and what I love Jason. You guys talked about everything, obviously what's been going on in the last thirteen fourteen weeks, uh, and of course you delved into our investment environment and kind of where we are. He like so many others, are telling us we're at a time where we're going to see a lot of changes in industries that have happened because of the virus, but it sticks around longer, whether it's fitness, whether it's education,
whether it's healthcare. And that was part of just a forty five minute, uh conversation. So if you want to check out the whole thing, just go to Bloomberg. Yeah. I really enjoyed catching up with Jim. It was a nice way to sort of reset my mind a little bit about where we're going, and also to be reminded that for big investors and big executives there is opportunity in disruption. Well that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol mass are planning coming up in our next hour, We're gonna go inside the magazine looking at how for black CEOs in technology, humiliation is part of doing business. It's not a new reality, Jason. Unfortunately, it's an enduring one and a reminder of the many things that still need to change across this country. This story really knocked us back, and Sarah McBride told it
so well. That's coming up, plus another edition of Business Week Talks featuring conversation with Christmas Seta about a year on from the company's one anniversary. He is the ling like all of us, with an unprecedented landscape. He's the President CEO of Hilton Worldwide. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Hello. I'm Carol
Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Today we're bringing you some of the most important, we hope informative conversations we had on our daily Bloomberg Business Week radio show across the week, right and conversations that were happening. As we know, the news continued to change around us. Now. One of the guests that we caught up with is Everett Sands. He's the founder and CEO of le Industry. It's a fintech company. It's a company that focuses on learning to very small businesses,
especially those owned by minorities, women and veterans. And I really felt like he is another one of those voices that helped open up kind of our eyes to what's going on in America. Yeah, looking forward to hearing that one back. Plus another edition of Business Week talks our conversation with Hilton Worldwide President and CEO Christmas Seta for stuff. Though, let's go inside the magazine. It's a story that kididly
is hard to read. It's about black CEOs in technology and the fact that humiliation, well that is part of the job. We caught up with reporters Sarah McBride, Well, um, it's just a sad state of affairs another way, whereas Silicon Valley is disappointing this time when it comes to
African American founders. I with my colleague Crea a Non reported a story where it was just jaw dropping the number of anecdotes we heard from black founders and how they've just been subtly and not so subtly mistreated every step of the way in ways that white founders never have to think about. Yeah, I mean, and and it's interesting, Sarah, because what you guys do a really nice job of
the industry. And I have to say, it's one of those stories that you have to read it and as you're reading it, it's actually hard to read in something it's horrifying in in a lot of cases, and and sort of embarrassing in a lot of ways to think about, um, because it is anecdotal through your story, but also appears to be systemic. This is not sort of these one off things that that are happening. I mean, this is
constantly happening right. In fact, one founder who I talked to who isn't in the story, basically told me she was insulted that it's so well documented the racism in Silicon Valley. She asked me, why do I even still have to talk to you to explain how racist Silicon
Valley is? Can't we move behind beyond the anecdotes and um, the founder that was the lead of the story will hate as somebody I met at a dinner maybe five or six years ago, and his story he just stuck with me all those years, and um, when this moment came, I knew it was the time to approach him and
asked if he'd go on the record with it. And he's somebody who's run a company listed works for many years, and has raised many venture rounds for the company, and one of his key aids is for many years with his white marketing head, and whenever they went to a meeting together, very often the investor would just assume his marketing head was the CEO and reach out their hand to him first and shake the wrong guy's hand and say hi, Will. And they said it was horrifying that
it also became funny when it happened. You know, they had dozens and dozens of times over the years. I spoke to both of them in the end, and um, they said that if that happened, if the meeting got off on that foot, there was just no recovery and they would never raise money from that venture firm because the VC would realize the mistake and just be so mortified that they would want to end the meeting as quickly as possible, and there was never a check written
from any of those firms. He Will told me about one time he raised a one hundred million dollar round last year where he was sitting in a meeting. The investor had made that mistake, and Will was five or ten minutes into his presentation and the investor interrupted and said, you know, I just wanted to say again, how very sorry I am that I made that mistake, which told Will that the investor had heard nothing for the previous
ten minutes. He's just been so embarrassed. Um, it's just an unpleasant situation when you're forced to deal with your own racism, and certainly for the founder, not conducive to raising any money. And that's reporter Sarah McBride and Carol I have to say. When I read this story, and even as we were talking to Sarah, I just thought,
I can't believe this. I mean, this is really stunning. Yeah, really important story, Jason, and she noted in her story about the racial makeup of VC very similar to the rest of the tech industry, with about three percent of investment partners at VC firms being black. I do want to put out one positive note though. In her story
she talked about tech companies vcs. They're really responding in recent weeks with messages of solidarity, and they've also contributed more than three million dollars um are made investments towards minority groups. So they really, I think, are trying to make it better. But they've got a long way to go.
They have a long way to go, and I feel like one of the things I took away from that story was all of the unconscious bias that is built in, you know, and I feel like maybe we're not talking as much as we should about that because the specific anecdotes about, you know, a black CEO walking in with his white employee and the VC going to the white employee and basically introducing himself and assuming that he was the CEO, and the implications of that, the idea that
basically that meeting never gets back on track and an investment doesn't happen, And so it's insidious in many ways, and I think a really important thing for us all to be thinking about. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week coming up, the CEO of Lendustry on the importance of lending money to minority owned small businesses. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing you some of the most important and informative conversations we had throughout the week on our daily radio show, covering a lot of subjects Jason, but of course front and center, yes, the virus, but also the continued protests over racism across the country. And I felt like so many of our conversations Carol really met at that nexus and really illustrated something that we've been talking about for the last few weeks, which
is this crisis. Both of these crises ultimately have a massive economic component, and that was at the core of our conversation with Everett Sance. He's the founder and the CEO of Lendustry. They work with small businesses, mostly minority owned businesses, and one of the things they're doing is helping them navigate all the relief that's being put out
by the government. Here's what he had to say. I mean, I think the first thing we want to do is kind of look at how we how those businesses entered um the COVID, you know, the COVID of pandemic situation. Right. So, I mean minority owned businesses were already in financially curious positions before the start of before the start of the pandemic. Um. And now what we're seeing is okay, closures kind of national average. Then you jump up to h for Latino
and forty one percent for African American. This is the study out of University of California, right. Um. But the problem is is that it's just been devastating for so long. Access to capital has been an issue for so long. And then when you look at some of the programs that have been pushed forward. Let's take PPP for example. Historically SPA has only done three percent of its lending to African Americans. Um. And so the thought process might be, well, Okay,
here's this new program. It has no collateral, it's it's a it's going to give you a forgivable loan. And you know you have African Americans coming in and saying, wait, I don't know anyone that's ever been a proof for sp A. The last time I try to get a proof for sp A, I got declined. The banks that I need to go to are the banks that have also declined me to get this loan, and I know, by the way, the process has come frosome. I don't really know that there's going to be a forgiveness process
that I'm going to be able to accomplish. I mean, let's just stop for a second loan and forgivable or forgivable loan don't even go together in a sentence, by the way. Um And then when you also think about it, it's like, Okay, the money is going to run out, so I gotta have all my paperwork together. The money is going to run out immediately, and I'm going to deal with something that I already tried in the pass and I have no peers that have been able to
accomplish it. So that's the problem. Um. And And so an entity like industry is constantly working on the solution, which is trying to help change that narrative. What really does change that narrative, what makes the biggest difference and gives these you know, gives those individuals who have been forgotten in the financial system, you know, an opportunity. Well, I mean, first of all, I heads off to the government in the administration because they have definitely tried to
make some concrete changes. Last night was our nineteenth change. UM, so I think that they're definitely trying, but I think from our prospective of industry, there's some near term, some middle term and long term solutions. But the near term is we've got to get them back off the sideline. We've got to raise the flag, sound low alarms and say the positive alarms, right the bells. Maybe it's a better word that there is a hundred and twenty billion
dollars left. The process has gotten easier, and the forgiveness process is being worked on. UM. We also have some suggestions that can make it even better, where we would say, hey, let's take the loans at a hundred thousand dollars and below, and let's just make them forgivable really really simple, one page application with certifications to the bar. The second thing we would encourage is an extension of the program. It's going to take a lot longer to rebuild the hope
within the African American bars. I mean, you can't go sixty days saying jump in line, we're gonna give you this sp A loan and expect bars to react really quickly, especially after what happened around one. So one of the things we think is Let's let the community development financial institutions, the minority deposit institutions, and the CDCs also called mission based lenders, let them have until September thirty have to
keep working on this bar. It doesn't hurt the economy for them to keep going in any way, shape or form. So let's get to the long term here, because they're big structural issues. We've talked about them. Uh, what does the government? What does the private sector need to do? You first? Yeah, so I think great question, Jason, you know,
mid term kind of right now. One of the things that really look at is that one of the really important features of the Cares Act has nothing to do with p P p H. A considerable amount of money, a minimum of one on a quarter billion dollars who was given to each state based on population. States got more money than the one in a quarter and several of those states have taken a portion of that money, and they said, we're going to give grants to small
business owners. Lindustries actually in contracts right now are in conversations with one large state where we're going to release a nine figure some to those states to that state small business owners. When you think about how to help small businesses, it's always a combination of equity and debt UM,
so that would be obviously the equity portion. The other thing we're looking at is all SBA loans approved between now in September six months of principle and interests will be paid by s b A. So if you got a loan September one, the first payment will be April one. And so we want to help small business owners have that combination of patient capital, equity and debt so that they can restart and continue on their businesses and hopefully
thrive beyond that. Is there a case that the money is there through the government relief program, certainly for minority owned businesses UM, and they just need some help in getting access to it, and we need the system to be a little bit more simpler. You know, it's a great question. I think part of it is when you think about access, which is what we know. Common theme has always access to capital. One of the things we've tried to do with Lineasters we've tried to partner with
financial institutions. So we have fourty different financial institutions that we partner with. For example, of p p P, we partner with Goldman Sacks They've been an amazing partner. They don't do small business lending. So part of it is as financial institutions, we've got to say, Okay, what am I good at and where can I find a partnership that can deploy the capital um to all business owners?
And yes, and with intentionality around minority business owners. So you know, there might be a financial institution that says I'm going to focus on home ownership, Well, they're going to need help with small business or vice verstart right or student loans or other things that have affected underserved communities, underserve borrowers, small business owners. I do think there's some other things that could also be done, which is we could look at banks, for example, and we can say,
let's just let's give them double regulatory credits. So Community Reinvestment Act, let's give them double regulatory credits if they either deploy this capital or they partner with a mission base linder that deploys the capital. And that's industry CEO
Everett Sands. This was a really important conversation and a callback for sure, Carol to the conversation we had a few weeks ago that you and I keep going back to w John Hope Bryant the idea that there are some systemic structural economic elements to this, to this social justice movement that we really need address well. And he reminds us too that there's so much room to still make up in terms of the injustices and equalities in our financial system when it comes to people of different colors.
We need to understand. I love this point that he made that we will make mistakes as we go along. That's key to the process and it's okay, and it's how we all get better. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week. Coming up, Sports Illustrated Executive editor John Worth, iim on bringing back sports in a pandemic. We're gonna talk tennis. We are, and we're gonna lament the fact that we won't see him at the US Open, but it was good to catch up with him and get his perspective.
This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Well, today we're bringing you some of the most important, we hope informative conversations we had across the week on our Bloomberg Business Week Daily radio show. Yeah, and this is a
guest we love talking with Jason. We're talking about John worth On, executive editor for Sports Illustrated, attributing and correspondent for CBS sixty Minutes, and we caught up with him to talk about professional sports, how they're looking to get back to business. But what's interesting is we had to talk about tennis because the U s t A came out this week and they said, Yep, the US Open.
It's going to take place like it always does in Flushing Meadows at the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center as scheduled in late August, but big difference. There's not going to be any fans. We're all sort of cautiously optimistic and a little ambivalent, and it's it's great that the tennis micro economy will be restarted in some of these players who haven't earned a dime since, you know,
since February and March can make some prize money. But it's going to be a very very different US Open, and that all sort of presupposes that we don't see some unpleasant trends in COVID. I mean, I think everybody is a little ambivalent here. Well, I feel like just on the educational side. We've been watching like some of the you know, Ivy League institutions way in you know,
how do you open in the fall. We've been waiting for some of the iconic stars of tennis, and we did get a story are Jillian Tan Serena Williams said she will or she plans to participate in the US Open, and that was that that I was told was was pivotal that this is being driven by television dollars and Roger Federer's injured her his knee, and a lot of players are in Europe and have expressed some real uh uneasiness with crossing an ocean and coming to the US.
And Serena Williams, who does not have to cross an ocean, and is uh your sister turned forty today and Serena's almost thirty nine. Um she has indicated she is willing to play, and I was told that that went a long way towards enthusiasm and this event is going to happen. They're not gonna have as many stars as they did last year, but they've They've got Serena and that's a good starting place and it is very significant if if Serena Williams says, I'm gonna make like Federer and I'm
gonna sit this one out. Maybe I'll see in one. I don't know if we are having the same conversation. Really, Yeah, that makes an interesting point. Um, a minute ago before we do some news, John, what do you think what jumps out at you as other than not having fans as the most radically different thing either for the players or for those watching. Um, you know, for for the sake of this broadcast, I will say that the US Open makes, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, and
a lot of that is driven by sponsor dollars. And it will be interesting to see not just fans, but no one in the suites, no one in the the hospitality villages. Um. There there is a huge sort of uh, you know, a lot of revenue. There's a lot of scene at the US Open. Has nothing to do with tennis. That's for you know, it's for hospitality and entertainment that's
not going to be there. The fact that there is enough money in television a loan to pay the prize money and then presumably make the financials work, tells you a lot about a media dollars these days, but also what percent of the revenue sup years we're getting in previous years, um, which is not going to look favorably compared to other sports. We're here with John worth On, executive editor for Sports Illustrated, special correspondent of course for
CBS sixty minutes. John, what do you see coming back elsewhere in the sports world? Um, it's a great question. I think a lot of this depends on labor relations. A lot of this depends on what season it is, whether there's international travel. I mean, the NBA is still talking about having this sort of bubble season in Florida.
Baseball is unclear whether baseball will return given nothing to do with co only ten gentially having to do with COVID, It's it's sort of the same labor stripe that's plagued baseball for for decades. Golf is back. Um, some of this is about the sport itself. Well, you know, when to tennis, one thing it's got going for it is you've got two players separated by a net and yards apart. They're socially distanced. They're also getting on planes from all
over the world. College sports may not have international trail BOWLD, but you also have the issue of sort of unpaid labor. When you when you hear about a style Ohio State football players, for example, who have to sign waivers about
getting COVID, it makes us uneasy. So Ever, every sport sort of has its own set of challenges and uh, it's going to bring you know, We're we're learning a lot about labor economics, We're learning a lot about risk reward, We're learning a lot about how sports are governed and which unions have cloud It's really in some ways that someone who covers sport, it's really exposed a lot of
the things that we don't often see exposed. That's John Worthime, executive editor for Sports Illustrated, really interesting to hear what he had to say about Serena Williams that if she didn't sign on for the US Open, maybe it wouldn't be happening. Jason absolutely, Well, we know that this is a star driven business in way ways, and so yes, Serena signing on, especially with the absence of Federer. He has taken himself out of the season owing to that knee.
We don't know what it's going to be like though the U s Open. And he also was able to give us some nice perspective on their sports and all the question marks around that well, and so many of the question marks have to do with what he said. We're learning a lot about labor economics because union and labor issues and negotiations are often what's determining how, when and if sports of all kinds ultimately come back. So a little bit of an economic lesson there as well.
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up business Week Talks. Our latest edition features the conversation with Hilton President and CEO Christmas set Up. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. It's time for another edition of Bloomberg Business Week Talks. And in this edition we welcome back someone we've talked with Jason before. It's Christmas Seta. He's the
president CEO of Hilton Worldwide Holdings. And we know how many times we talked throughout the week about the travel industry. It's ten of the global economy and it is getting being hit on so many different fronts, and leisure travels, business travelers. They're not going to come back for a long time. They're not and that was clear from what he said. I mean, he's an naturally optimistic guy, but this is a business that is really facing a massive reckoning.
Check it out. I'm saddened by everything that's going on. And this is something that as you can imagine, in a in an industry and in a company that is incredibly diverse, this is this is a huge issue. This
is Diversity is not a new thing for us. You know, We've been focused in this area for a long long time and and been recognized for number two Diversity inc um ranking in the United States for for diversity um But the reality is um as is depicted by what's going on, you know, right here in my hometown of Washington.
You know, I could literally hear the protests going on from my house and explaining to my children, two of whom both in New York and Washington, ended up in the march, you know, to or their black friends in the in this process, this is a sad day for America. And I think we've had many of these side sad days over the years and in recent years, and I think to your to your point in the question, it's high time we do something about it, that we not just talk about it, but that we act upon it.
And that means that collectively, as a society and as a country, as we think about reform, we need to think about this and we need to do something about it, including the criminal justice system. And that means each and every one of us um that has that, that our leaders across a broad range of industries, we need to even if we were we were focused on it, and even if we were, as is the case with Hilton, recognized for it, we have to recognize we have never
done enough. Given what is going on and what we're seeing, what is abundantly clear is there is so much more to do, and so, like everything for me and for Hilton, it's about trying to be a constructive part of the solution. And so you know, we are very I've been communicating like crazy with all of our team members, including our
black team members, all around the country. The stories I've been hearing our heart wrenching that they're pouring their hearts out about the impact, you know, throughout their life that racism has had on them. There's obviously no place in society, no place in in in our industry, and no place in our company for racism, and so as a company, as much as we've been focused on it, there is so much more that we can do at all levels of our company to create more opportunities for our black
team members. And that means at the very top of the ecosystem as we think about and already we're thinking about our border directors, to the lowest levels of the company, and to make sure that we're creating opportunities and a feeder system to to develop up our teammates in the in the black community in a way where they can
have bigger and better opportunities. And so as they say, this is something we were focused on, Okay, but I don't want to rest on our laurels and the fact that we were ranked number two, and that's not good enough.
I think for everybody, every leader, I think that the messages um we we obviously have not done enough, and that as society, as business leaders, as political leaders, we need to use this moment to rally for change and not have it be like it has honestly been in a number of other cases in recent years where we talk there's a burst of activity and then we go back to to uh, you know, back to where we
were well. And Chris, this is obviously coming at a time when you are listening and thinking about your business and probably the most existential and holistic way that you ever have. And you've been in this business for a long time. If you think thirty seven years, believe right, I would have said, did you start when you were five? What happened? Chris? Oh? I thank you, Carol. That's very kind of you, know, I didn't. I'm older than you think.
All the gray hairs that I that I have and a lot more than in ninety days and I had had before. Exactly what's the biggest, single thing that's going to change about travel? I think here's the thing I think, guys, when you wake up And you may think I'm being apollyon, and I'll answer the question. I think when you wake up in three years, okay, I think travel it's hard to see it right now, like it was hard to
see it after nine eleven. In the in the wake of that, I think travel and the experience in a hotel will look a lot more like it did ninety days ago than it does now. Okay. And now it looks like there's not many people in the hotels. You see people in ppe um, social distancing, you know, unbelievable. You know, hygiene protocols like our deal with a saw in the Mayo Clinic to provide hospital cleanliness standards, etcetera.
Some of that stuff will will go on and and some of it, you know, we'll we'll reverb back to normal. What will be different, you know, in my mind is things that were already happening will accelerate. Okay. So example, we've made and we talked about it last year when we were together, huge investments in technology. And I'm not just saying it because we've made these investments, uh to promote Hilton, that's my job. But but I'm saying because I think it will be broadly what you find in
the industry. There are things with technology, the digitization of of our business that we're happening, but we're happening at a relatively slow pace, and I think many of those things will the adoption rate to the expansion of the digitization and the speed of that happening will excel accelerate like crazy. So example, we've already rolled out to almost every hotel in the world digital check in, digital room selection, and digital key so on your Hilton Honors app you
can have you already could have had contactless entry. So for our Hilton Honors members, about a third of the people used it. Um I. You know, when we have customers that are coming back in the hotels, you will see mass adoption of that, and then people won't go back. It'll be like a cash flow machine was, you know, thirty five years ago, where everybody, you know, once it got adopted, people realize, wow, this is easy, this is seamless.
Why wouldn't I do this? You know, other technologies like how you run everything in the room, we call it Connected room, how you run temperature, how you run lighting, how you run your audio visual um all of that which we developed in a proprietary technology called Connected Room, and we're rolling out not as extensively as Digital key. You will see that demand for that, an adoption of
that accelerate. I do believe you also see hygiene standards, while they were really good in the industry already, by the way Mayo Clinic was was was sort of shocked at how good we already were when we when we sat down with them to figure out what to do. There's no reason why you won't see those higher, higher standards. But it's digitization will accelerate because I gotta ask you, because people are like, you know, tweeting at me and
messaging me. I've got to ask you because you said it's going to be you know, three years from now, Well it'll look a lot like you know, more like it did you know ninety days ago, right pre COVID in terms of kind of the travel industry, the hotel industry coming back. But you know, what, what are you seeing so far? I mean, how robust pick up and travel do you expect based on any of the advanced booking data that you're seeing. And I'm also curious about
about business travel. Yeah, well, I think you know, there's three big segments in our business. There's leisure, transient, business transient, and then group business. You know, the vast majority of our business, well of our business relates to business related travel, either groups or business trems, and of it is what you would think of as leisure travel. Most people don't think about that, but that's sort of the breakdown of
of our business. And what we're seeing is significant recovery okay, but still um very significantly off of any sort of historical standards. So I'll give you put put some basic numbers. I think at the bottom, system wide occupancy for us in uh in eight in in May would have been you know, like ten or twelve percent, two or three
times better than it was. But to keep that in perspective, we finished last year with an average occupancy of almost seventy okay, so it is meaningfully devastatingly um lower than where it was. But you are seeing a slow grind and the way it's happening, which is fairly typical by the way and other a their declines, it's leisure first, it's business, and then it's group and right now what
we're really seeing is predominantly growth and leisure. So like Memorial Day weekend, we had markets near beaches and you know where people want to get out. We had hotels that we're at capacity, the lower capacity because of distancing than normal, but as much capacity as we can handle. But business travel has not really come back in earnest because most people still aren't back in their offices and allowing people to travel. And that's Chris Is said of
the president CEO of Hilton Worldwide. Good to catch up with him. He's an optimistic guy. As we said, and yet and yet the travel business is going to take a long time to recover well. And as we say, we uh, you know, do this show that the news is happening around us as we have these interviews. And after we talked with Chris, Hilton, Worldwide came out and said it's cutting nearly its corporate workforce globally, so we're
talking about coporate employees. It's also extending its corporate pay cuts, reduced hours and furloughs for up to three more months. So they are continuing to have to pair back their industry because Jason, it's really simple. The demand is just not there and they just don't know when it's going to come back. And that wraps up the weekend. Addition to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser.
Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio live Monday through Friday starting at two pm Wall Street time. You can also watch the show live on YouTube. Just search for Bloomberg Global News. And in addition to our daily podcast, download our Business Week Extra podcast this week as well, featuring our conversation with comedian Paul Riser. It's not just a comedian man. He's an actor, he's an author, he's a writer. If you follow his Twitter feed, he's
certainly watching what's going on the world around us. But just like us, Jason, he is working from home. Yeah. True, multi hyphen it. It was definitely one of our favorite conversations of the week. We'll be back right here next week at the same time. This is Bloomberg