Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend-March 13, 2021

I've been keeping track. In fact, my calendar book, every week I write, Okay, what week it is that we have been or many have been working from home? It is, and you know it's it's a week that I've seen a lot of memories play out on social media, on text message chains with family. One year ago this week, you know, the last time stepping foot in a restaurant, the last time visiting family. Um, it was a year

ago this week that the world completely changed. Yeah, exactly, Friday March the last time we had a guest actually in our Bloomberg Radio studio. And I just remember, you know, our managers and like we want to be safe, we want a home. We're sending you with equipment, like we just want to make sure everybody safe. Hard to believe it. It has been a year, no shortage of virus headlines. This week it's still, of course top and center for us.

Here the CDC issuing its first set of guidelines Carol on how fully vaccinated people can safely visit with others. And I gotta say people are feeling good about reopenings, but at the same time, we keep talking to various members of the medical community, like listen, we still have to be really, really cautious. And I gotta say on that we've got the person that last spring was done by the New York Times, the CEO at the center of New York's coronavirus crisis. And we've got a new

crisis brewing cyber security. Lucky for us though, we just happen to have on Tom Siebel, founder of Cebel Systems, also c three AI, just as we learned that hackers broke into thousands of security cameras, exposing testless suppliers, jails, even hospitals doest you feel like cybersecurity. It's one of those stories people keep saying, you know, you guys aren't talking about it enough. It's a big, big story. It's getting lost in the other headline, it's terrifying. Yeah, absolutely,

all right, So all of this to come. Let's begin though with this week's issue of the magazine. It features a deep dive into equality, and that includes him. The cover's story, which was among our most read on the Bloomberg It is about Dorothy Brown. So Dorothy Brown, she she spent her career as a law professor documenting racism in a tax system that's supposedly color blind. In fact, she thought it was color blind until she really started

doing research onto this years into her career. Bloomberg News Personal Finance editor Ben Steve Berman wrote all about it right, and Ben joined us along with Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber. Joel kicking it off though by talking about

the overall equality issue we have. We launched a vertical that UH at Bloomberg called Quality that will be sort of the home for our ongoing coverage, and we wanted to help make a splash at Business Weeks as we launched that that initiative and that and that project, and so we really kind of like pulled together across the global news room to try and bring as many of

of these stories to life as we could. And there were a couple in particular that stood out to me that we're a little bit more US centric that funny enough, both had to do with taxes, and we heard about Jason Grotto's story on on property tax um and how it's effectively like a regressive tax. And there was another thing that caught our attention, which was Ben steveerman Um saying, Hey, by the way, do you guys know about Dorothy Brown, who's got a book coming out? And I said, I

have never heard of Dorothy Brown. Tell me more. And with that I'll segue is over to Ben Um. This is a professor, a legal illegal tax expert, Um, a law professor at Emory UM. And she spent decades basically examining the U. S. Tax code. And and Ben, that's where it gets provocative. Where does she found Yeah, So she's um an interesting person even before she became an eminent professor of tax law. She's grew up in the bron She worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert back in the eighties.

She's had a long career, but Um, since the nineties she's been looking at different parts of the tax code and saying and really analyzing what is the impact this has on wealth, um, especially on the wealth of black people and the wealth of white people, and what the part of the question is, you know, and we've had a racial wealth gap between black and white in this

country that really hasn't narrowed at all. So you see many more black people going to college, incomes uh going up, but they're the wealth of black folks is not keeping pace with well, it is keeping pace, but it's it's

waste away behind um the wealth of white families. And so what she's concluded is that the tax code has a big part in that, especially the US income tax, and a lot of these carve outs in the income tax for retirement and homeownership and all sorts of other things that have been built into this supposed the progressive system did really end up in a situation where a black person and a white person with similar incomes, uh,

the black person can end up paying significantly more. How did she get there to this point because initially I think her thinking, according to your story, is that you know, thought, you know, tax code, it's going to be color blind. Yeah, I mean, that's that was her assumption when she decided to get into tax you wanted to escape the whole issue of racism. Her original plan was to be Um

following the footsteps of Theurbid Marshall. And then she, you know, civil rights lawyer, and she said, I don't want to deal with that in my professional life. I just want to focus on this this what seemed like this color blind system of all these intricate rules and tax code doesn't even mention race really. But she she Um was part of a movement of people who back in the nineties who really started to say, hey, there's these other

areas of the law. They were written, All these laws were written by white people, generations of white people, Um, And and you know, is there some hidden racism there? And what she's really showing in her book is that the generations of lawmakers have built the system that's really optimized for white wealth, for people, for white people that are already wealthy. The stories in this week special Equality issue reminding us that so much work still has to

be done. That was Bloomberg News Personal Finance editor Ben Steveherman, also Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Webber. Be sure to listen to the full audio version of the story on our podcast feed at Bloomberg dot Com. Hey and Tim. By the way, Dorothy Brown's book, it's entitled The Whiteness of Wealth, How the tax system impoverishes Black Americans and how we can fix it. That book coming out later this month, and she's gonna be joining us in a few weeks on air to talk about it. I'm really

excited for that interview. The book not even out yet, already making a splash exactly. Coming up more on the equality issue and once again involving taxes and racism. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from Bloomberg Radio. So we continue with coverage of this week's equality issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine.

Another story Tim, having to do with taxes and racism, more specifically about how in cities across the US, unfair property taxes are keeping black families from gaining wealth. To set it all up, here's Bloomberg's Reneed a young She's got the story of one woman from Detroit. I feel like there is no safe place for me to have this conversation because I'm gonna get judge one way or another. That's delicious. Scott from Detroit. She was over taxed on

what was once her home. She became a proud homeowner in two thousand five, a dream because she always wanted stable housing for her kids, something she's never known. But when Scott lost her job during the Great Recession, she fell three years behind on her property tax payments, and those payments shield were much higher than she should have been. Then Wayne County took her home away and auctioned it off for less than ten percent of what she paid for it. I feel betrayed to last year to learn

that I was over taxed by five thousand. It makes me stand, It makes me depress, It makes me feel like a failure. For years, the city of Detroit used inflated valuations of Scott's house to calculate her property tax bills. She now rents that same home for twenty seven percent more than she once paid for the mortgage. You know, it's not just a rental property. This is my home right. I raised my children in the space. Scott is not

alone and her story is not unique. Her home was among tens of thousands in Detroit's lower income black neighborhoods that the city's assessors routinely overvalued, and this happens all across the country, where nationwide data show local officials have also systematically undervalued home and affluent areas, reducing the taxes those homeowners paid. Ban Behaves Brown leads the nonprofit organization Georgia Advancing Communities Together, which focuses on affordable housing and

community development. She says, the entire real estate system has a role to play in equitable housing, and it all starts with training, not just your training to get your license and you're training for renewal, but to also go deeper into ethics, trainings that look at in turn racial

biases and how to overcome them. In many cases, real estate investors profit off of unfair tax burdens, but for the people who they weigh on, like Delicia Scott, it leads to a vicious cycle of unpaid bills and property seizures and ultimately destroys the best chance for families to build generational wealth. For more on this story, subscribed to the Paycheck podcast from Bloomberg, with a new season focusing on the racial wealth gap. You can find Paycheck on

Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That was Bloomberg's Rnita Young. Now let's get more on this story, which was among the most red on the Bloomberg this week, with the reporter who wrote it. It's Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Jason Grotto. He joined us, as did Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Webber, who began by talking about disparities. I think the unfairness is the thing that

um really stings about this one. And you know, everybody hates property taxes to begin with, but then to have unfair qualities kind of layered on top of it, I think is the thing that can definitely provoke some outrage. And it is one of these things that sort of hidden in plain sight. Um, but it does affect people of color, especially black communities, disproportionately. So, so Jason, help us. You've been through so much data on this one. Help us break down what you found. Well, first of all,

thanks so much for having me. Everybody, Um, well, so you know, the thrust of the story is actually based on a mass of study out of the universe. See of Chicago Hair School of Public Policy. A professor there, Chris Berry, analyzed twenty six million property tax records over a ten year period and all over the country UM. The analysis found the same pattern, and that is lower priced homes being overassessed and higher priced ones being under

assessed relative to the market value of those homes. And of course all property taxes are based off of these valuations. So it's sort of bad data in, bad data out. And the result is it just excused the entire property tax um uh and places a much greater burden on those who can support it, makes it regressive. So tell us the story of Delicia here. So you know, uh, Delicia is someone who you know, I've been talking with

for many, many months. Uh. You know, obviously it took a lot of bravery for her to come out, um and actually talk and put her story out there. You know, there's a lot of game that goes on here. But essentially, you know, she bought a home back in two thousand

and five after working at a corporate cafeteria. She doubled her income when she got a job at a domestic violence shelter and was able to qualify for a mortgage, and and things were going along fine until the Great Recession, when she lost her job, and it took her a couple of years to get a job back, and she missed a tax payment and once you followed behind property taxes, it's really difficult you know to get back, uh, you know, caught up with those because there's so many fees and

fines that get ladled on and so she just couldn't catch up. Um, the Wayne County, the county you know for Detroit, foreclosed on the home and an auction it off, as your story mentioned, And since then it's been sold two more times while she's been renting the home. So the last sale was for eighty four thousand dollars um,

you know, far more than she paid originally. And you know, part of the reason why the value has gone up because her rents have gone up because now you know, it's an income producing property and the cash that it that it throws off every month is keeping the value high. Well, the investment, right, there's a whole investment angle into that, and and I wish we had more time. But one thing I do want to get to is this whole idea between you know, tax assessment being overvalued and private

appraisal sales being undervalued. And as you say, you know, Christopher Barry's research. It's not just Detroit you talk about it an example in Brooklyn. Oh yeah, it's all over the place. We we spoke with a woman Carmen Daniels in East New York, you know who. You know. The really hard thing here is m Daniels her property, uh, you know, a single family home. Um. She felt like the valuation that the New York City Department of Finance put on it was pretty good, you know, she thought

it was pretty fair. But then she learned that, you know, three miles away in Clinton Hill, there's a condo that someone bought for three million dollars and the tax you know, it's taxed as if it were, is only one point two millions. So even though that home the market value is eight times greater than hers, the actual tax bill is only a thousand dollars more for that prop higher price property. So once again, the burden of it is,

you know, tilted unfairly. There's something called the effective tax rate, which I'm sure everyone knows about. That's what gets skewed because of these valuations. That was Bloomberg News Projects and Investigations reporter Jason Grotto and Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber. Check out more of Business week special equality issue. It's

on newsstands, online, and on the Bloomberg still ahead. Unfortunately for New York City, it seems to be anomalous compared to a lot of the declines we're seeing in the rest of the country. We check in with the CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital. One year since the COVID outbreak. Yes, we've made some progress, but there's still a lot of costs for concern. There really is. You're listening to Bloomberg

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Business Week. So, as we mentioned at the top, this week marked the one year anniversary when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, which meant tim we know this for so many of us, the beginning of working from home and a real complete disruption of our lives. Friday thirteenth, we're talking about Friday, March thirteen, tim that was the day we last had a live

guest in studio. I think for a lot of people, including our next guests, there were signs that this was going to be worse than we thought, even earlier then March thirteenth of last year. Dr Stephen cor Went, President and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital, who, as you might recall the New York Times calling in the Ring, the CEO at the center of New York's coronavirus crisis. Unfortunately for New York City, it seems to be anomalous compared to a lot of the declines we're seeing in

the rest of the country. What we've seen was a secondary surge that started in that December time frame, and we still have a lot of COVID patients in the hospital and a lot of sick COVID patients in the hospital. So although we're about thirty to thirty five percent of where we were at that horrendous peak in the April time frame, we still have a lot of patients in the i c U. We're still living with the virus, and the positivity rate in New York City still is

hovering in that five percent range. So it still doesn't really feel good in terms of what our emergency rooms and I S users seeing. So hopefully with the with the vaccine, as we get more people vaccinated UH, the quicker we get people vaccinated, the less likely one of these variants UH will escape the vaccine and we can get back to normal. But right now we're seeing a plateau at a level that we're not really happy with. To be honest with you, that's some really disconcerting news.

And my question is is why. I mean, we did learn today that new virus variances account for fifty of New York City's COVID cases. That's what health officials said at a briefing on Wednesday. We know that these are more infectious than older strains of the virus. Is this why this is happening in New York? I think so. I mean, you know, all of this becomes speculative because we're not testing every single sample, but it looks like

the British variant is the dominant variant. We've seen some South African variant with our own genetic testing when we do sampling. Um So, I think that that's probably it. The more disturbing thing is that the percentage in the i c US has gone up, and that means that you know that the number of people who are quite

critically ill has gone up. Um So, even with the south to get variant with Johnson and Johnson vaccine, people did not end up in the hospital and did not end up in the i c U. So I think that's going to be the critical thing, making sure that people don't end up in the hospital, even if the positivity rate is high. Dr. Coroner the demographics the same as it older people, is it minorities in terms of

the more severe cases or the majority. It's a somewhat younger skew in part because I think that, thank god, the nursing home patients and a lot of elderly patients have already gotten the vaccine. So that's good. Um And we're you know, uh, I know that younger people are at lower risk, but we see a lot of young people in the i c U. So everyone's got to be particularly people young people who are have high body mass indexes or are obese or prediabetic and diabetic. So

so that's that's a concern. You know, I heard you two anecdotes about what you recall. My recollection of that day was, you know, in March eight, believe it or not, March eighth of last year, we had four COVID cases in our entire health system, which has thirty six undred beds. By March fifteenth, we had sixty six patients. By March two we had five nine patients, and by Marche we had patients. So you call that dramatic slope and for those of us in New York, how absolutely horrific it is.

But my recollection of that week was actually this very day, Uh, my chief Operating Officer, Dr. Laura Freese called her contacts in the archdiocese and said, you don't really plan to go ahead with the St. Patrick's Day parade, do you? And if you recall that Friday before the St. Patrick's Day, they canceled it. Uh And um, you know we all sort of rolled into it thinking let's hope for the best, and it was really horrific. Listen to him, that's something

we've heard over and over throughout the pandemic. That was Dr Stephen Corwin, President n C of New York Presbyterian Hospital. And we know that even though vaccines are are rolling out him, We've heard from everybody, still got to wear masks. You's still got to do some social distancing. We still have a long way to go. Yeah, we certainly do. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week up next, Always be well,

increasingly that is the case. Somebody is watching a Bloomberg exclusive involving the breach of thousands of surveillance cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons and more. Totally creeped out. All right, what our team uncovered that's coming up next. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Big Bloomberg exclusive this week. We were all over it when it

crossed the Bloomberg terminal. It was about a group of hackers that say they breached a massive trope of security camera data collected by a Silicon Valley startup and tim. In doing so, they gained access to live feeds of what about a hundred and fifty thousand surveillance cameras. They were inside everywhere, hospitals, companies, police departments, prison schools, even

a testless supplier. But talk about serendipity. When this news broke, we actually had Tom Siebel, founder and chairman and CEO at C three AI on the air. You were talking to him. Tom is also, of course founder of Sibel Systems. I think the threat associated with US cyber threat okay from bad actors at nation states including Russia, China, North Korea,

Iran is existential. I mean, these people have the ability to shut down the United States, a great power, great infrastructure, the financial system, the healthcare system, you know, with a cell from from the other side of the planet, and they can do it tomorrow. This has been very very well documented in books that have been recently published, such as The Perfect Weapon and this is how they tell me the world ends. Uh. And this is very various

here stuff. The National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence published its report for years in the making, then concludes that today the United States government is not organized or investing to win the technology competition against the committed competitor, nor is it prepared to defend against AI enabled threats and rapidly adopt AI applications for national security purposes, that we are exposed there are bad actors out there, and this

is very scary. Well, you know, it just reminds me of It's like I've seen this movie before. We saw it in the form of the health pandemic. Lots of warnings for years, and yet we weren't prepared. And I feel like we're setting setting up for something like that again. And I have to say, I'm reading this story and they say, um, they breached massive trove of security camera

data collected by a Silicon Valley startup, Ricata. They gained access to live feeds of a hundred and fifty tho security cameras inside hospitals, companies, police departments, prisons, and schools, able to view video from inside women's health clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and the offices of this company of Ricata itself. Um. And they were using in some cases, some of these cameras, including in hospitals, were using facial recognition technology to identify

and categorize people captured on the footage. UM. I think about this. You are so in on the AI world. You talk about us not being prepared for Listen, there's great things to be had by it, but there's also a downside. We're not ready for it or not prepared for it. When you get into cyber security and info

sect this is just very scary stuff. I mean, the Chinese went into the Office of Personal Management in Washington, d C. And it walked off of like twenty million records of everybody it's ever been considered for a security clearance. I mean, the you know, the Russians were in there within the last month and no telling. Nobody's him in telling the story of how thoroughly they penetrated the United States government. I mean, the Emperor has no clothes either.

This is not on the national agenda. And this is existential. If these people to turn off the US power created, which they could do in a second, nine out of ten people in the United States die. So this makes the whole COVID pandemic look like a common cold, you know, compared to I mean, this is very very serious stuff. This is existential stuff, and it's not on the national agenda. Yeah,

it says. Another video shot inside the Tesla warehouse and Sayghai says workers an assembly line hacker, said they obtain access to two cameras and Tesla factories and warehouses. Well, this is your world. You're having conversations with people who are tapping into and working with you. Guys, you provide you know, enterprise AI software, UM is anybody kind of aware of how to do this in a responsible way.

I mean, this is your world. Yeah. I would say the organizations that are most equipped okay and have the greatest levels of security as it relates to AI and cybersecurity are the banks. I mean, these guys have have security regiments for their information systems are completely aero gapped, they're tested, they have security protocols that are incredibly vigorous. While they're dealing with the US banks or the European banks.

These people have done us a perlative job, and the people in the United States government could go to school on that. They look like, you know, candidly, they look like cub scouts compared to the way the banks handling information security. You've been kind enough to indulge us as we were breaking down these headlines on this major hack. You know, listen, Tom, You've been in the technology world

for a long time. You've seen it evolved. It's gotten much more sophisticated, it's got a lot more invasive, it's gotten a lot more useful, and it's such a part of everything that we do. AI specifically talk to us about kind of what's front and center right now in terms of where it's going, who's using it, where it's

going to be the most productive. Well, leading corporations around the world are using AI and smarting analytics, precision medicine, aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications, banking, and they're using AI to deliver better products and services, to deliver safer, cleaner, more reliable energy. They're using AI to secure data, data assets from cybersecurity attacks. They're using AI and defense and intel agents. This is the largest this is you know, we look at enterprise AI software.

This is a third of a trillion dollars market in say so, this is the largest growing enterprise application software market in history. Okay, and we serve all segments of that industry, from banking to tel go to healthcare to government. Listen.

So give me AI for dummies, because I feel like we throw around, certainly not you, but we throw around the term artificial intelligence a lot, and I think people have a grasp of it, but I don't think they understand, especially as you go through that list of basically our world, to be quite fair, whether it's military, whether it's you know, medical, whether it's energy, um where the use of AI is making things so much better. What is the AI for

dummies if you had to explain it to somebody, great question. Okay, so AI and so many to strip away all the all the mystique and all the noise, AI is an area that would call predictive and where we're able due to kind of advances in information technology to solve problems that never been able to solve before. Where we can predict things before they happen very accurately. Heart failure okay, diabetes Okay, it's a failure of a transformer in New

York City. Okay, the failure of a jet engine, so we can predict these events, or the failure of a critical piece of equipment on an offshore or rig, say for world Dutch Shell, where we can predict these events, you know, say days or months in advance, and replace the transformer in New York City and prevent the electricity outage. Okay, intervene uh clinically and prevent the heart failure. Okay, you do some intervention on the machine and present the aircraft

failure before it fails. That in a nutshell, that's what enterprise AI is all about, is predictive ant relication. That is, accurately predicting events before they happen. And we're able to do that today with very high levels of precision. Well, and when it comes to something like healthcare, Listen, we have all been obsessed with our health care because our

lives depended on it in the last year. And understanding we all got I think safe to say, somewhat smarter in understanding how vaccines are developed and the complications of you know, a virus and and all these things. When it comes to healthcare specifically, you talk about AI like we can predict heart failure. I mean, is this an area that we have yet to explore in a big way when it comes to a I yes, I think this is well. This is a field where we apply

AI to healthcare. This is what we call precision medicine. This will be the largest commercial application of AI. And for example, we can take the genome sequences and the health care records of say the population of the United States or any population, okay, and apply seene learning algorithms to these data and predict with very high levels of precision,

who is going to be diagnosed with what disease? Okay in the next five years, heart disease, lung cancer or whatever it might be, and then intervene clinically and avoid the diagnosis. Well, you combine that with telemedicine to reach previously unserved UM members of the community, and the economic

and social benefit of this is staggering. Then you have genomes, specifical medical protocols where where we you know, have tailored medical protocols to the individual genome which are highly much going to be much more highly efficacious at a much lower cost. So these are examples of a I applied to medicine. This will be again the largest application of ai UH in any field. That was Tom Siebel, founder,

chairman and CEO at C three AI. He's also author of the book Digital Transformation, Survive and Thrive in an Era Mass Extinction. That wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanivik. More ahead in our next hour, including our Women's History Months special Hour, a look at prominent individuals and finance, tech, venture capital and innovation who just also happened to be women as well.

That's right, are all female lineup includes the CEO of work Board and why diversity is so important, especially when it comes to venture capital. Also the CFO Estate Lauder on global growth and consumers what they're buying lipstick not so much skincare. Yeah, I definitely bought a lot of skincare during the pandemic. And also coming up Verizon Business CEO on supporting women owned small businesses and female entrepreneurs. And grab your favorite snack, but ditch that plastic cutlery.

We're gonna have the president founder of Habits of Waste on how you can help combat climate change by making these simple changes in your life. Doesn't have to be an organic snack. I don't know, but it's gonna be easy. Okay, deal. This is Bloomberg for those fortunate enough to help the person who has always been their hero find the care guides you need to help at a a ARP dot org slash Caregiving brought to you by a ARP and

the ad Console. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happened, Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Carol Masser.

And in the second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Weeks, some of our great guests on International Women's Day, leaders in tech, innovation, branding, and the environment, who just happened to be women as well. We're going to hear from the CFO at Estate Lauder on how the global cosmetics giant and its consumers around the globe have been shopping during the pandemic. Yeah, the trends have

changed a little bit. Also, a friend of the show, Verizon Business CEO Tammy Urin, on where we stand in the fight for equality. Little hint, We've got a long way to go. Yeah, we certainly do. Carol, you also had a great conversation with the president and founder of Habits of Waste. She's spreading the message about small, everyday changes that we can make that would make a big difference.

This was a favorite interview of mine. First up, though, let's get to the entrepreneur who has founded and led three tech startups, sold one to IBM ran a high growth business at IBM. We're talking about dadre Park not she's CEO and co founder of the Enterprise sas company Workboard. They work with Comcast, Cisco, g E, S, tra Zenica, so many companies, And she is definitely no stranger to

the VC world. This is my third company where I thought funding and got funding a CC world and I'll say, you know, with some embarrassment that it hasn't improved much a few decades that I've been working on it. I think part of it is, um, we don't look like what the prototypical founder should look like, right, the architect that people have in their heads. Now, that's changing, I

think now in very meaningful ways. And there's a lot of organizations driving chains, including for example, all Rays, and what you see today which you just wouldn't have seen five years ago, much less ten years ago, is women partners at really every quality firm has real women partners making real investment decisions, uh and driving those investment decisions in in the VC firm. So I think we well,

it takes a bit of time. I think we actually finally turned a corner on getting women partners in the venture firms that actually fuel those startups. Well, that that gives me hope. Um. What about corporate boards though, and I know this is something that you've certainly been keeping an eye. Corporate boards still mostly white? Uh white? Are eight in ten directors at Spies at least are still male. What's going on with corporate boards? Why is it so slow?

Especially when we you know, we know the research when it comes to diver City Mackenzie's done at so many others have done at that. When you've got a diverse board, when you've got a diverse senior leadership, you do better financially. Yea. I think there's a couple of things that are shifting there and that will accelerate some sense of sort of

accelerate post But a couple of those. One is you know, I just added to women independent directors to my board, Margot Geo Judgis, who was a former CEO of Ancestry and Kathy Bengko, who is a former vice chair of Deloitte, both really senior talented women, And as I was doing the search to add them to the board, I used

a search firm that was focused on women executives. And so what they've done, which is something I think hadn't been done in the past, is actually build the database of candidates, build the pool so that when you want to find talent, you're looking at a pool that is enriched by women leaders and women executives versus the same old data is of the same old pool that looks

the same old way it's always looked. And that's what people and that's what's going on still on a lot of companies right everybody's going back to the existing pools, the old ones exactly. But I do think that executive search firms are now quite mindful of opening the aperture.

The other thing, and probably more interesting, is in my work with senior leaders, most of them are looking beyond their own sector for expertise, for insights for how other people are changing the game, and most of them are acutely aware of the extreme disruptive opportunities and frankly risks

and face their business. And I think that what we'll see is this enormous generation of direct to consumer leaders, many of whom are women, who have created fantastic companies, grown them have real go to market leadership skills and

are very disruptive thinkers. If I were the CEO of a mainstream company looking for diversity of thought provocative ideas in a way to enrich the conversations I was having at the board, I would look to those disruptive leaders coming out of d C, DTC, what for, what forgive me? And what is it about d to see that you think really puts them out there ahead of ahead of others. Their business models, the way they think about reaching their customers,

the way to think about serving those customers. It's a a lot of it is just blank slate, right, not bogged down by the way we've always done it, and started instead with what would be awesome? Like what would what could we imagine? And then that's a pool of many many women in those organizations as co founders, as CEOs and clos and CFOs right, women in different roles there. So I think it creates a pipeline of diverse talent that has the kind of disruptive thinking and phenomenal success

that you'd want around you in the board room. Because I do wonder too, and you probably have a lot of experience that this are are a great person to talk to about this is that you know, money always talks, and I do wonder if there's at some point somebody's going to be like, Wow, look at this company, uh, the diversity that they've got, and look at how well they're doing, and so what's the common denominator? What is

it that's getting them to that point? And I know there's a lot of factors at play that make a successful venture or institution or company, but we but we know the research, and I do wonder at some point is it just people are like, this is the smart thing to do financially, especially if you're publicly held or anything. Yeah, I think until its leaders perceive CEO is perceive it as the smart thing to do financially, until they perceive it as when I bring those different voices on that

different experience to my table, I'm a smarter leader. That was dadre Park, no CEO and co founder of the Enterprise Sas Company Workboard. The full conversation on our podcast feed. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, the CFO at St. Lauder and what global consumers are buying that's up next. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Spinovik from Bloomberg Radio. St. Lauder is a behemoth when it comes

to the cosmetic, skincare and fragrance world. They are, tim one of the largest in the world, selling in some a hundred and fifty countries. They own a portfolio brand, some created internally, many others like Lamaire, Bobby Brown, glam Glow, Mac and others. They bought them. A great person to find out what's going on around the world and answer the question of what consumers are buying is Tracy Travis, Executive Vice president of Finance also CFO of s day Lauder.

The consumer, UM, you know, based on what we've seen globally, you know, is still UM supporting obviously prestige beauty. I mean our our sales, you know, are are recovering UM, you know, every every month, every every quarter. Certainly we just reported our our second quarter results UM, and we returned to growth UM for uh, you know, a quarter

earlier than what we had expected. UM. But the consumer is uh, you know, is gradually UM you know, coming back to I think spending UM in in the categories that that are important to to her like like beauty. How did consumer spending shift during the pandemic? Consumer UM spending shifted very much UM to online. First of all, so you know, we were one of the companies that um our our distribution was deemed to be non essential globally.

You know, we sell only prestige beauty, so we sell in a lot of department stores and specialty stores UM which closed UM initially during during the pandemic UM and then reopened. But you know, TRACK has been been a bit light UM and has gradually been building. So we saw a tremendous shift to online and we were prepared for that, you know, with our own brand dot com sites UM, with our retail partners and UH and their sites as well as some of the platforms in pure

play UM sites that that we sell on UM. We saw a tremendous UM you know, UH shift to UM to looking for her favorite skin care products, whether it's Lamaire or Clinique or or Essay Lauder UM or some of the other skincare brands that we UH that we have. We also saw UM a pick up in fragrance UM and again no surprise, more people working from home people UM were UM. We saw our our bath and body

category grow as well as our home fragrance category grow. UM. So you know, those are are some of the trends that we have observed during the pandemic. Makeup has been the most impact of no surprise, given given the fact that you know, many people are working from home and those that are going out many are wearing masks as uh, you know, as instructed, and so that does have an

impact on particularly the largest categories of makeup, foundation and lips. Um. And those are categories that we expect, certainly as the vaccine rollout um, you know continues to progress uh and uh and we start to see people migrating back to work and back to school and resuming some of their social activities. UM, we expect to you know, to have a strong, strong makeup recovery at that point in time. Tracy,

I feel like you've described me. I spend so much more on skincare uh in the last year or so. UM then then you know, certainly on you know, traditional makeup. And it's just very interesting you talked about though, you know, shifting to online and I do wonder we've seen just an increased digitization of our world when it comes to retail. Not just you guy is but everybody and you know, folks that had strategies that maybe they were going to roll out over the you know, next three to five years,

all of a sudden did them overnight? What has changed in terms of your digital strategy specifically because of the pandemic and just you know, seeing how this is how an increasing number of consumers want to shop. Well, we had a very strong UM focus on on online for for many years. Actually we started our online sites more than more than twenty years ago UM, and we were focused at was our fastest growing channel heading into the pandemic. What we've seen is an acceleration of the penetration of

of online. Certainly more consumers, a lot of new consumers that we had not seen purchase online previously started to purchase online. Obviously when when UM brick and mortar UM you know, became less less attractive to shop in UM during this pandemic. And so we expect that we're going to continue to see those those trends coming coming out of the pandemic. Clearly, we expect that consumers will return

to brick and mortar. But those that you know have developed the habit of shopping online we expect will continue and we have added quite a bit of functionality to our online site that have many of our retail partners. We've added virtual try on in terms of makeup UM, we have a virtual diagnostic for our clinique brand UM.

We have live streaming events. We've added a lot more video content and how too, and we've actually seen which is one of our encouraging signs for makeup, We've seen more consumers actually access those videos and uh UM you know, with an interest in learning more about skincare treatments as well as UH as well as makeup treatments as well. This is this is a business where people like to try before they buy UM, and you know, they do

that in person in stores. I'm wondering how the in person experience is going to change on the other side of this pandemic. We think that you know, again, uh you know, we have tried to add as much consultation to our online sites as as possible, but we also know that people miss that human interaction UM and that ability to actually buy now, get now, and so that's something that you know, certainly an in store experience provides an addition to as as you mentioned being able to

physically physically try on product. You know, we have sanitary practices at you know, all of our counters and in our freestanding stores. UM. So you know, as consumers return, you know, we are are making sure that um that they can try comfortably. And and you know, in terms of the behavior's post post pandemic, you know, we do expect that. You know, we ended last year with our

online business, UM, you know at a twenty penetration. You know, we certainly expect grow from from there going forward, as vaccines continue to roll out, they're expecting more business. Of course. That was Tracy Travis, Executive vice president of Finance also CFO of St. Lawder. I gotta say I find it interesting too, you know, and I'm not surprised. We've seen shopping trends changed dramatically over the past year, what people are buying, how they're buying, uh, and what she talked

about kind of a focus on skincare. I've seen that in my own world. You know, you're not buying lipstick, You're not doing the things you were doing when the world was opening, you know, was opened up. Yeah, it makes sense if you're wearing a mask you're not necessarily buying what you'd be putting on your face. You seem like a mask kind of guy. Wait, I was I was thinking of Like, I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking of like overnight masks. I mean, I wasn't

thinking of overnight masks, That's what I mean. I was thinking, as you're also like, you know, my my nine that I'm wearing around the office. That's what I'm thinking. Well, you're that too, But I could see you like, I didn't think, yeah, sure, sign me up, give it to me, all right, still to come up Bloomberg Business Week. I think what we're now seeing as a sense of hope and optimism. Verizon Business CEO Tammy Irwin on helping women

and female entrepreneurs succeed. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. Carol recently Verizing Business announcing

an effort led by our next guest. It's all about championing women and confronting the ongoing crisis of women leaving the workforce at unprecedented rates due to the impact of the pandemic. We see it everywhere. Tim, She's a favorite voice of mine to check in with. We're talking about Verizon Business CEO Tammy Irwin, who I've talked with several times throughout a pandemic, and this time around again that's

where we started. We've talked so much about how people have reacted and responded, and now we're really in that phase where people are beginning to reimagine what the workforce of the future looks like. We're calling that work forward at Verizon, which is how will we work and what

does the new norm look like? You know, Carole and I have talked about some of the challenges that women have faced throughout the cod and I think what we're now seeing is a sense of hope and optimism, a sense that kids might be back in school in the fall.

So I would just tell you, I think we're seeing resiliency and we're seeing the hope as people begin to look to what the workforce of the future might be and how that will give women a little more time to lean into their career and people a chance to get out and live life well. Having said that, you guys at Verizon are very specific and deliberate when it

comes to initiatives and programs. Talk to us about the most recent effort and some of the work that you guys have done, whether it's mentoring, whether it's working with small businesses. Tell me a little bit about what you guys are doing right now. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. We are really proud of the work that we've done

to really put a spotlight on so many thanks. Carroll and I have talked about the fact that when COVID hit, we said our number one priority was taking care of our employees, followed by our second stakeholders, which is making sure customers have all the connectivity in the services that they get and relied on from Verizon, and then third

caring for shareholders, and forth caring for society. And as we've looked at how we really lean in and care for all four of those stakeholders, we've really put a lot of time into how do we make sure that women have a chance to be successful. We know in January alone, two hundred and seventy five thousand women dropped out of the labor force. We know that women are coming into the workforce more educated than ever before, but

following out. So what we've done is a number of things building off of things we did in We successfully launched a program last year called Women in Business and it was a series of seminars, and it was a seminar that really focused on a number of different its vertical, so whether you were in the healthcare, whether you were entertainment, whether you were in a public sector of finance, you had an opportunity to do say what are other women doing them? What are the things I need to do

to be successful? Those summers are reviewed two hundred thousand times because what we know is that working women view employee sponsored resources. It's an important aspect of how they do it all, how they've battle this work personal that

they're trying to do. We're really building out that phone and we said that's great for yesterday, but what can we do in one And we've launched a new program we announced on Friday called the Rizon Collab and It was really intended to be a collaborative career engine platform that we're going to invite others to participate on. As we talked with women about the things that they need to do to be most successful, as they reimagine UM

and an environment posts COD and we think that's really important. Terry. One thing I want to ask you, especially because you at Verizon in your team, there's a lot of different programs that you put out there, what really makes a difference in terms of giving UM a woman, a woman's the support they need, the leg up, the ability to kind of aspire for more, you know, where they maybe have, you know, financial responsibilities at a firm, you know, to

take on more. What what are the programs? Is it mentoring? Is it? You know, we had a great story on the Bloomberg specifically at a European bank who said, you know, what really makes a difference is child care enable you know, enabling women to then take on more. So what is it specifically that you find packs the biggest punch when it comes to helping women advance professionally and really get to those higher echelons. Yeah, listen, I think there's several

critical things. One you touched on, which is caregiver programs, whether it's caring for children or caring for aging parents, making sure that companies offer programs to give families choice as to how they take care of those responsibilities. So that's one we've really taken a leadership position, and the other one is really making sure that women have the right kind of competent skills and capabilities to compete in the in the work environment. I started a program in

two thousand seventeen that I'm super excited about. It's called WOW, which was Women of Wireless we translated into Women of the World. It is a program deployed across Verizon. At this point, we've got six thousand women who have graduated from that program, and it's really designed to say, help women learn great confidence, how do I define my personal brand as a woman, compete for jobs, have good communication skills, and learn to network, all things women are great at,

but sometimes they need a little encouragement. Sometimes they need to be taught how to affectively do that. That was Rising Business CEO Tammy Irwin cutting up. Most people don't even want it, so it's a win win. And by the way, restaurants are saving a ton of money. Our next guest successfully convinced Uber to change settings in their applications so that no one no one receives forks and knives plastic forks and knives unless they ask for it. Wow,

talk about a change maker. This is the president and founder of Habits of Waste. Coming up next. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. Tim, we have talked a lot about the climate, certainly on air and about climate change in the past year. Some good blue skuys animals coming out seeing mountain ranges for the first time as

our society was shut down because of the pandemic. Not good that it was shut down because of that, but nonetheless the environment came back in a big way. Right is Bloombergreen reported last year as many as two point six billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It's about eight percent of the estimated total for the year will

never be admitted into the atmosphere. That's according to estimates by the International Energy Agency pick any world shaking event twentieth century history, none has produced a bigger decrease in admissions, and that's the good news. But Tim, you also smartly remind us that we've also seen single use garbage to move up, plastic utensils, masks, and a lot more because of the pandemic. Masks on the ground, loves on the ground,

you still see it everywhere. Yeah, exactly, Well, looking at how we can create all of us can create better habits that help the environment and climate. Is Sheila more of body. She's president and founder of Habits of Waste, and we began talking about what the past year has been like for her. It's been quiet. I have to say I've been Um. I was living a very intense life prior to the pandemic. I don't even know how

I did it. I mean I was a classic person that was burning the candle at two ends, and the pandemic just forced us into a very different lifestyle that, um, you know, really made me think a lot of about a lot of things. So, um, the environment is definitely at the top of the list. Well, and it's interesting

because of the pandemic. As I mentioned, Uh, and the inswer to this is that like all of a sudden we talked about with people not driving to work and planes not flying, uh, the environment got a lot cleaner. At the same time, we have been using a lot of single use items, whether it's uh, plastic cutlery and plastic bags or you know, masks one time. So it's

it's kind of this dichotomy of of different things going on. UM, tell us about what you are trying to do with habits of waste, especially when I feel like we've all had a past year to really think about our impact, our footprint on society. Absolutely, UM, So I come into environmentalism with a little bit of a different angle. I studied sociology at U c l A and found it fascinating to understand human behavior and how to shift the behavior of the masses. So throughout the pandemic, UM, food

delivery applications went through the roof. So the increase in food delivery orders was about So what I realized is if we were able to convince people to only receive plastic cutlery upon request, how could we decrease the forty billion pieces of plastic cutlery that are entering our waste stream every single year. So I was able to convince uber Eats, Postmates, and grub Hub to swap that default setting, so it's no plastic cutlery comes out anymore unless you

ask for it. We're still waiting on DoorDash to jump in, and it's imperative that they join us because they had about of all food delivery orders. In that being said, um, we used technology to get to this point. We had an email campaign on our website at Habits of Waste dot org where users could come in send an email and it would go directly to these food delivery applications. And I felt that if the food delivery apps knew

that this is what we wanted. We have this junk drawer everybody has in the kitchen that they feel horrible about throwing away, yet it built to the rim with plastic cutlery. I mean, ask anybody they've got one. So luckily these emails worked and we sent about ten thousand emails to date, and now we're just holding out for DoorDash and then we'll have it all done. Amazing. How though, like I've got to say, we've gotten used to it and not getting cutlery and don't miss it. I'm actually

kind of grateful. That we're not getting it, and silly for us for not kind of saying earlier on like don't you know, don't put it in. But it became such a habit right of all the takeout places, right, and it's really about choice architecture, Like, how is it that we're just being bombarded with these habitual behaviors of waste without really getting a chance to even do better

or bypass it. You know, I spearheaded the first plastic straw and cutlery ban in history, which was in the city of Malibu, and unfortunately, banning plastic straws was a lot easier than banning plastic cutlery. So here we are trying to at least have it only upon request, and most people don't even want it, so it's a win win. And by the way, restaurants are saving a ton of money.

I'll give you this one really interesting fact. Postmates announced that within a year they saved a hundred and twenty two million packs of cutlery from entering the environment, and that was an equivalent of three point two million dollars in savings for restaurants. So, you know, plastic is really important, But the next most important thing that I've ever done, probably in my whole entire life, has been um, trying

to get more people to eat plants. Well, well, the almost important thing we need to do right now, Sheila, let's talk about I'm up on your website and I was looking at it earlier today as well. There's a form you can fill out to join a challenge that you have. It's called hashtag eight meals. What's that about? Yeah,

so um. Actually, it's a brand new app that we have and it's available in the app Store under Habits of Waste and eight Meals was basically born because you know, I'm very much involved in environmental work, yet one thing I've yet to, you know, be able to commit to fully is going fully vegan and eating every single meal plant based. Is just something that I felt was impossible. If I feel this way, I can guarantee that many

of your listeners probably feel the same way. And I felt very dissuaded by the whole thing, and always like I, Okay, I'm going to try this week, but then I'd fall off the bandwagon. I came across the study by this University of Michigan and two lane talking about how Western cultures must decrease their animal protein and take by fort at the very minimum in order for us to even have a chance that climate change. It is the number

one thing individuals must do to make an impact. So I thought about that and I said, okay, well, how do we translate that for the everyday person to be able to adopt this idea into their daily lives. So three meals a daytime, seven days a week, twenty one meals. What's that that gives us eight meals? So that's the goal, is that we all want to try and increase our plant based meals by eight meals a week, and we've created this new application to help everyone do that by

providing recipes, linking your meals. You want to plug in into your calendar, you can check out how much of a carbon reduction you're making, because by eating eight meals a week, it's actually carbon that you're reducing, which is the equivalent of driving a hybrid car a week, I'm sorry, a hybrid car for a year. So eight meals a

week for a year is equivalent. Um, don't you don't you almost feel like like I think about this year where we as individuals global citizens learned a lot about obviously a health pandemic, but also what it takes to create a vaccine, Like we peeled back the layers. And I almost feel like food production is a thing where I don't think we all really understand where a lot

of stuff comes from or the impact it has. We've we've done a lot of stories here at Bloomberg about meat, meat production and what it does for the climate and the environment. Um, you know, what what do you think about in terms of what we need to do though to also educate people about food. I mean, we understand organic versus not and things like that, but the mass production of food, you know, not so much, although we've got a glimpse of it, right when all of a

sudden the supply chain started coming undone during the pandemic. Right. You know, one fact that always sticks, um, is when you keep it really simple. So for example, creating one pound of beef is the equivalent of eight thousand gallons of water. So just thinking about these small things that you know, just like tidbits of information. And by the way, eating a plant based meal eight times a week is not so you know, impossible for many people, and in

fact you feel better and it's less expensive. So there's a lot of winds in there for your health, for your wallet, for the environment. So if we can just look at it like, Okay, I'm not going to commit, Fine, maybe you will. You never know. After eight meals, a lot of people are like, I'm kind of grossed up by me. I don't even need it. Great, But my my whole mission is to educate with as much small bits of information that would interest the everyday person that's

not in the environmental world. Because people are living their lives. They're busy, they just got to get dinner on the table, and they've got work in school and a million other things, especially this past year. So um, yeah, this is my philosophy that you know, if you can just give small bits of info, it's great. What do you think it's holding people back the most from doing things? Little things

like you say, these habits, uh, you change them. If everybody starts to change a little habit that's a significant one, you can you can kind of alter the outcome of our climate. What's holding keep up back? I think people just aren't aware that their impact matters. So it's just that everyone says I'm just one person. I'm only one person, But if we all said that, then nothing would get

done in the world. So this is an opportunity. Our whole website, our whole mission on Habits of Waste dot org is really about inspiring people to know you do matter and your actions do add up and so and then taking away obstacles. So for example, the eight Meals app is an opportunity for us to make it really easy and fun um and interactive to try you know,

increasing your plant these meals or cut out cutlery. Ultimately, companies want to do the right thing for their consumers um and if the consumers speak up and are heard, then it's a beautiful synergy. So with again back to the you know, cut out Cutlery campaign that we did, the applications, you know, they're like these emails, can you stop sending them to us? So they're listening. It's not

it's working. It's just a matter of again not shaming, and it's just positive and just understanding that we all, we all can make an impact. It's so true, we can all make an impact, each and every single one of us. That was Sheila Moravati, President and founder of Habits of Waste. The nonprofit is focused on reducing environmental footprints. Really love her points about doing small things that can make a big difference. It's a great way that we

can think about accomplishing goals too. Right, you can start moving the needle, all of us, just a little step at a time. Alright. Be sure to check out that full conversation. It's in our podcast feed. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanivik. Be sure to tune into our Bloomberg Business Week daily show Monday through Friday. It starts at

two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News. Also check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple or where ever you get your podcasts. And that's we will also find our extra podcast this week. It's Theresa Peyton, former White House Chief Information Officer, in fact, the first woman to have that position, and CEO at the Cybersecurity

Advisory and Strategy Firm for a list. It's of course timely considering that Bloomberg exclusive on the group of hackers who breached a massive trove of security camera data, and you can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake, available at Bloomberg dot com, slash Qt and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV and more. Bloomberg Business Week, it's available on newstands now are special Equality issue also finding at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal. Have

a great weekend everyone. This is Bloomberg