Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend-September 25, 2020

not going to be easy. We saw virus cases popping up in New York City, also around the globe, and throughout this pandemic, we've been reminded of so many of the inequalities in our world, and so how timely that this week across the Bloomberg Empire, we're talking about equality. The equality issue of Bloomberg Business Week, the Equality Summit held virtually of course, because that's the world we're living in.

We're going to hear some of the key interviews from that summit and talk to the editor of the magazine and some of the key reporters who contributed to that issue. Plus, we've got Vox co founder Matthew Iglesias on his new book and if we don't measure this and and look at it, If companies don't measure and look at this, We're not gonna make progress. We'll hear from Xerox chairman and CEO Ursla Burns at TPG co CEO and partner John Winkle reed on the importance of more diversity on

corporate boards. But first, Carol, it's the cover story about how it's time for a new approach to cure inequality because capitalism just isn't cutting it. Check out what Rebecca Greenfield, who leads the diversity and sustainability coverage at Bloomberg, had to say along with Bluemberg. Business Week editor Joe Weber. Credit to Rebecca, who has done a number of stories for us this year, and I think this is their

second cover um in in this space. And when we start of started talking to her about what how we wanted to approach the quality issue, I think she really came at it almost like a little bit of a sequel to her last cover story, and it was the idea that the last time, it was the idea that businesses just have a dearth of of black or minority CEOs, people of color, with a really really provocative uh cover

that showed just how white the fortune is. And this time I think she went even a little bit bigger about this and said, look like, actually the force of that companies have been relying on here is the market. The market is supposed to correct things, and it's clue clearly not working. And even more provocative, I think, is this idea that within HR departments D and I of the Diversity and Initiative crew has actually been part of

the problem. Almost I could pick it up from there. Yeah, thanks so much for having me and I yeah, definitely Absos did as a follow up to the last piece. But like Joab, the driving force behind diversity and inclusion initiative to the last three decades has been this market. You have an approach, So this idea that you know,

discrimination and in equality is bad for business. Um, you know you're you're losing out on productive people if you discriminate I guess people just because they look like And also there's so much research showing that diverse teams are just better and more productive. And this has been having the deconied apartment and you know, billions of dollars of industry to get more people who are women and minorities and the high paying jobs. And in the piece, um,

I get into how that hasn't worked. But also you know how the George Floyd protests this summer um have led to a bit of a shift in thinking away from this kind of dominant theory. And so Becca, what are people actually doing about it? I mean part of what you know, I know you and your team have described as this is obviously moving from the fringes into the mainstream, into the main conversation. That's one of the

pillars of everything we're doing with the Equality Summit. But what sort of actual movement are we seeing or is the entire point that we're not actually seeing anything. We're so actually are seeing some changes. And I think the biggest thing is, you know, this is not kind of sound like that, it's a mindset shift. So before it was kind of like diversity is good. Now it's like, Okay, racism is still happening, and so we need to do

things combat racism. I think we can add that to other isms that racism has been the focus um for the summer for good reason. So I think that's been a big shift, because you do different things once you start thinking about it in terms of fixing racism as

opposed to promoting diversity. And I think the biggest thing that I've noticed that's more tangible than a mindset shift is things that look very similar to and I would describe as quotas um, which is what my first article was about, which I remember that that was really great because I really thought about that. You know, does this

is this what we need to do? Yeah? I think companies, although they are reluctant to actually call it that because they're very scared of the word for various reasons, they are saying, like, we are going to aim to have a certain number or percentage of black people or Latin next people in certain high paying, high power roles, and

that is different. They had not done anything bad aggressive before Five Lives Matter protest, and I think it's things like that that might move the needle more or at bay at least just trying something different and then and that's a big shift in the last couple of months compared to the last thirty years. Back in one of the most provocative things, I'm gonna steal your thunder a little bit um, or at least let you steal your own thunder, uh is your opening anecdote from seventeen um

that is about Apple. Can you share that one because it's such a provocative way into the story. Yeah. So in twenty seventeen, the woman who is tutting up Apple's diversity and inclusion department, she's being at a conference and she said in her own marks, she said, there can be twelve white blue eyes blonde then in a room, and they're going to be diverse, and they're going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.

And she apologized for those remarks because you know, people said, uh, you know, if that's not really diverse city. But it was really that that the mission to get more women on minorities up and down the corporate ladder had really become diluted, and it really become driven by this idea

we just made diversity of thotten experiences. And when you think like, yeah, it's true, like a certain of you know, white blonde, blue eyed man from or clearly is going to be different than at white blue blonde man from somewhere else, but it does not has nothing to do with the original mission of getting more women and minorities higher up the corporate Later, and that was Rebecca Greenfield overseeing all of our managing diversity coverage and Bloomberg Business

Week editor Joel Webber. So, Jason, coming up from our equalities summit, we continue along this theme and this time about the failures of capitalism when it comes to diversity inclusion in corporate boardrooms. That's right, my conversation with former Zerox chairman and CEO Ursula Byrne. She's got a new project all about creating more diversity on boards. It is very aligned with John Winkle Reed's work over at TPG. Weill have that converse tion coming up next. This is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. We're going to continue with our equality theme this week. Jason. Of course, it's a deep diving the issue and our summit absolutely a summit you and I were both delighted to be a part of. And the conversation that I had, I really liked it. I have to say Ursula Burns, she's a force, the former Xerox german and CEO. She joined me along with

TPG co CEO and partner John Winkle Reed. We're talking about boards and we started talking about a new initiative that Ursula is getting underway. This started pretty simply and pretty you know, not a lot of ambition. It was the response to a lot of calls that I was getting in and my brother's and sisters, my black CEOs who were getting calls as well, right after the George Floyd incident. And it was calls to say from other us to say, we think we are doing things okay,

but it seems like we maybe missing something. Can you help me think through this situation? What's happening in the United States, what's happening all over the world? And I got probably twenty five calls Darren Walker from the Ford Foundation. Can we all got calls from other CEOs and business

leaders asking for some insight. And one of the things that became clear was that they were calling us they didn't have the resource at home that they could actually reach to clearly on their boards, they didn't have that resource they could say, can you give me some insights that would be able to help me and and my company,

our company get through this. After these levels of calls, myself and Darren and Gaby Salzburger, a whole bunch of were just together thinking and talking and saying, why don't we not become these point people of here. You know, can you give me a call and get a help.

Can can we structure something that's that's reasonable, that is a resource for companies to use income to if they wanted to do something pretty simple, because most of these calls were to us as business leaders speaking to ceo s, could we actually start at the top and structure something that was to get every board in the fortune fortune one thousand, fortune three thousand to have at least one black director, pretty straightforward and no other No, you know,

no gun to your head, no threats, No, this is all about you doing what is will be helpful for you and your company particularly now. Just do it as a natural, as a natural initiative, and it turns out that it then snowball from there. The more people that we talked to, the more we realize that this is something that's good. We're not the only group doing this, This is not the only initiative, this is not the only move happening, but it was something that we could do.

Um that was black lead three you know, three black people, myself, two women, uh, myself, Gabby Darren and some people around us as well. We have to NaIO helping us. They are they are helping us with numbers and with process and actually helping us build up a little bit more of a database. We have the black Director's initiative, who's engaged. We have the Boulet who's engaged. So there are a large number of people who actually are trying to work

on this. We know, maybe too many initiatives, but enough such that we can actually make progress on this one simple thing. One black director on every company that has a board. Let's start with the three thousand. Then we went to to try to finding out find out who has what. And it's interesting that the data is horrible. It's not well kept. Um, it's not an essential place. We couldn't. We couldn't. The way that we've found out the data is to literally get the list of directors

and look at the pictures and make an assessment. Now, how do we know if this person is black or not? So the second thing is about reporting. Can we get self identification the director self identify and get some idea of where we are, because if we don't measure this and and look at it, if companies don't measure and look at this, we're not gonna make progress and then the third plank is basically around support. Can we support?

Can we educate? Can can we be a resource to these companies and too these boards and two management teams, etcetera. UM to actually make progress on diversity as a total. We started with black, but it's not black only. We started with black because that's the moment that we're in. But we have we have women diversity, we have Latina diversity,

Latino diversity, the diversity across the board. And so, John, I want to turn to you because you and I spoke a year or so ago about some initiatives that you are undertaking, largely around including women on the boards of the companies that you were invested in. You have since expanded that. I want to back up a little bit to understand and help the audience understand why do boards matter so much? Why is there so much focus on the board. It seems maybe a little bit obvious

that I want to put that question to you. Well, I think you know that the words UM are really critical in a number of different respects in a in a private equity context. UM. You know, we bring a lot of capabilities and talents to our companies to help navigate, help build our businesses UM and our words are an

integral part of that. UM. You know, the private equity approach in governance in private company situations is slightly different, but not you know, it's not entirely different than public companies UM. But in a private context, you know, we're trying to investment companies create value. And one of the things that we do in particular a TPG. It's done

across the private equity industry. But one of the things that we are very focused on as a firm and proud of is that we are we're very engaged with

our companies and UM. So I would say if I had if I had to boil it down, I would say engagement with our companies to help our companies grow, help our companies navigate problems UM on one hand, and on the other hand, UM, I would say, having an investor mindset around the cable UM is often an important thing in terms of accountability and driving growth and improving our companies UM, and so quality of people that we

have around our boards is paramount. And so a year ago when we got together and talked about this, Jason, I think one of the things that we felt really important was UM having a group sitting around those tables that are adding value, that are UM, that are diverse and inclusive UM, and really are focusing on bringing great talent to the boards of our companies UM, so that

we helped drive and navigate the future. And UM. I think, as we talked about last year, we had we had launched an initiative that UM was focused initially on gender diversity where we would bring UH at least one woman to the boards of all the companies that we either controlled or had great influence on. And that's TPG cocy On partner John Winkle Reed, former Xerox chairman and CEO Earthla Burns very much on the same page about where

we go next. Yeah. Absolutely. That entire conversation, by the way, can be watched by going to Bloomberg Live dot com well, from changes in the boardroom to changes in a workplace because of the virus. What Semens have been doing through this pandemic is we hear from Siemens USA President and CEO Barbara Humpton. She gives us her take. This is Woodburn. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason

Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. This week on our daily show, we caught up with the President CEO of Siemens USA. She's Barbara Humpton. As you know, this is a company that has a wide lens at which to look at our world, power generators, high tech, you name it. We talked about a lot of things, including COVID nineteen's impact on the company. What Semens have been doing through this pandemic is serving the serving society as we've been built

to do. One of the most important things was siemens capabilities in healthcare are our colleagues and Semens Health and Ears has helped respond with additional testing capability and now most importantly with antibody testing so that we can understand public health as the virus continues to spread it. But

it goes beyond healthcare. We're engaged in helping with facilities, um ensuring that there's adequate hospital beds available, standing up new facilities and record time, helping manufacturers keep supply chain flowing so that we have enough ppe to meet our needs as we go. Overall, I would tell you Siemens is going to end up being an important partner for for communities around the globe and here across the US.

As as we deal potentially with a second wave, and our goal is to help America stay open potentially a second wave. I got to ask you, though, how likely are you expecting that, especially with what we're watching over in Europe right now in the UK, Well, we know that everyone everywhere is having to pay a lot of attention to community health, and we've got tools to do that now, right So expanded testing certainly makes a big difference. And we've also learned how to keep things open with

appropriate strategies like physical distancing, etcetera. One of our businesses and infrastructure actually has a whole program called come Back with Confidence. We're rolling out technology into buildings to help the people who are managing those spaces keep their residents safe. And I were confident that that's going to be a

major tool for us as we enter into the fall month. So, Barbara, one of the areas that we've been very focused on is what's happening in cities, and you alluded to this, and I know that you attended I believe the U S Conference of Mayors, and I want to understand what they're saying to you because the infrastructure that they have to maintain is critical, as both the network, but also just for individual human beings. What can you tell us about what's happening on the ground as you talked to

these folks who are very much on the front lines. Yeah, Jason, we were so interested in what's happening at the city level because this pandemic is hyperlocal, right. It affects community and and communities have to deal with different circumstances. So we wanted to survey mayors, and we asked the Harris Pole in concert with the U S Conference of Mayors, and we got great feedback from a hundred twenty four mayors across three or four states across the United States,

and it was remarkably consistent feedback. And what mayors are saying is they expect to see declines in their budgets. We're all concerned about that, understanding the economic impact UM, but they're also viewing investments in infrastructure as the most the most positive way that they can be working in both the short term and the long term to support the economies, bring jobs back into their communities, and and attend to health UM simultaneously. You know, I feel like

we've been talking about infrastructure for so long. Barbara, do you feel like finally something will ultimately be done, because you know, it's like one of those things that actually both sides of the ai'll agree that we should be putting any into infrastructure, you know, in Washington, and yet it doesn't seem to happen. You think it's a little bit different. You are actually seen municipalities saying we've got to do stuff, We've got to do things, Carroll and

and so here's what I think we're going to see. First, we've seen both campaigns at the presidential level talk about

infrastructure is being central to their agendas. UM. But but more than that, this is going to take far beyond I mean, before the pandemic, we were seeing something like a two trillion dollar deficit in the kind of UM spending an infrastructure that would be required to This is data from the American Society of Civil Engineers, so we knew we were working, you know, an uphill battle at that point. What's going to be necessary at this stage of the game is to mobilize capital from every sector.

So I truly believe that UM seeing not only government action, but private sector actions would be engaged in infrastructure improvement. So Barbara, in the few minutes that we have now. I just wanted to ask you what's this been like as a leader. I mean, you have a massive organization that you're responsible for, and I wonder you know, now six months in, this isn't triage anymore. You know, we're having to make real decisions about how our companies are running.

I wonder how you've handled it and what you've learned. Well, great question, Jason, and we just discovered early on, because we were so essential to so many segments of the market, it was necessary for us to, you know, basically pull our boots on and get out there and get working. Um, when we initially got started, about two thirds of our employees were able to work remotely, but that meant a third had to be out on the front line in harm's way. And that's Barbara Hopton, President and CEO of

Siemens USA. Excited to catch up with her because, as you pointed out, Carol, they have a window into the local governments, the state governments, and really this infrastructure issue that we're going to have to tackle to battle this virus. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, lots of problems out there for CEOs to solve and when it comes to all that ails the US. While our next guest, there's a pretty easy fix, and Jason, it involves the

number one billion or people. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. So Carol, straight up, I'm a fanboy of our next guest. I've followed his work and he delivered. Talking about Matthew Iglesias. He's the co founder of Fox. He's got a new book. It's called One Billion Americans, The Case for Thinking Bigger, and he is thinking big.

United States, major world power. We've been probably the most prominent country in the world for a hundred years now, the world's largest economy, the world's largest domestic market. But China is up and coming on us. They're in purchasing power parity terms. Their economy is bigger than ours. There's a lot of tensions, you know, talking about TikTok, you can talk about PRC censorship of American movies. Um, and you know, what do we want to do about this?

And I think one obvious answer would be to go after the underlying source of Chinese strength, which is that they are such a large country, we could seek to grow our own population domestically, and that's both by being more open to immigrants we are privileged to be a country that tens of millions of people around the world want to move to, and also by doing more to

support Americans who want to have children. We have, on average about one point seven children per woman, but the average woman says she'd like to have about two point six children. Men slightly lower preferences. But also, people don't necessarily care what we think um and we don't do very much financially to let people have the family life that they aspire to. We do no child allowance unlike most countries. In most jurisdictions, we don't provide for preschool.

We don't do much to help kids out during the summertime. Right now, during covid in, large squads of the country were barely even running public schools. So the idea here is focus on those two pillars and support families who want to have kids, support immigrants who want to come here, grow the population, stay number one forever. Okay, that point seven child is my favorite. I'm just gonna say that two points Hey, listen, I'm one of seven kids. There are nine of us in our family, So we've done

our part to get towards that one billion number. What's interesting is, though, and we talk about this a lot um. I mean, Jason, you know, has several kids, and I just think it's not easy to have big families anymore. You talk about policy changes, I mean, we really have to change things dramatically in order to make it possible. You know, there's a lot of stuff on the policy front that would have to change. I mean, some of

that is money, some of it is housing policy. Right, if you live in coastal areas, it's just it's really hard to get a big house. We don't build en up here. And some of it, though, is the culture. Right, as family sizes have shrunk, expectations have changed, and if we go back in the other direction to start having two, three kids, maybe four in some cases more commonly, you know, then you start to see businesses that more cater to

kind of family friendly uh models, things like that. So you know, we've gotten to a point of thinking of children as if they're like pets. Right, It's this kind of very expensive consumption luxury that some people want to indulge in and other people don't. And I think fundamentally that's the wrong way to think about it. Having and raising children is an important social function. Not everybody has to do it, but the people who do want to do it should be really supported by the larger society.

And so Matthew and we're gonna talk more about this. Only got about a minute left in this segment, and we're gonna do some news and come back. But I guess the thing that I would say just to t this up and give you a minute then we'll talk about it some more, is it's not going great right now. Like, I mean, this is not a country, uh that they're like, hey, come on in, like things are going awesome, like be a part of this, or like have more kids to be a part of it. Not to be too cynical here, Yeah,

I mean it's true, you know, but it's paradoxical. On the one hand, this is a country that a lot of people still want to move to. Right we are investing incredible efforts Trump is at least in trying to keep people out. But we're having real problems, real political dysfunction that is undermining the strengths of America. And I think part of the way to get out of that atmosphere of dysfunction is to think about things that unite us as a country, right, values that we have in

common that some of arrivals internationally don't have. And you know, what is a project that we can embark upon. What we still disagree about? Things we could talk about, you know, what's the right way to design financial supports from families? But if we can say, as we did during the Cold War, as we did during World War Two, that look, there's something we all stand for, right that points away sort of more functional punting. So Matthew, we're gonna move on.

But I gotta ask you, so, what is the case for a bigger population here in the U. S. Is it just a bigger consumer base? Consumption base? What's what's the thinking that change that's a game change or for the United States? You know, scale matters in international politics. It matters a lot, right. You look at a country like New Zealand are friends of North Canada. There's are nice countries, They've got high living standards, but they don't really count for anything on the world stage the way

the United States does. America's leaders, you know, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln through to the present day have traditionally thought that, you know, America should be a beacon of freedom in the world and a pastion of liberal values throughout the world. And that means we need to grow, as we have through the centuries, keep pace with the other countries out there, and economic terms, though, I think that growing our domestic market is also useful. We benefit

from being the place right. Entrepreneurs from all over the world. They know if you want to found like a great company, that this is a place to come, right. And so we want to let people come and keep doing that. But we also we want to grow. We want to maintain that status that you know, New York is not just a big city, it's the financial center of the world. San Francisco is the technology hub of the world old

and that's because these big cities anchor a big country. Matthew, it's Canada calling and they want to talk to you. They've got a bone to pick, all right, So Matthew, we're going to use the five or six minutes we have left to just ask you what the heck is going on in national politics right now. You're seeing all the headlines we're seeing, you're trying to break it down. You've got a great podcast. Um, how do you make sense of it? How do you get your head around

it and separate the signal from the noise here? You know, look, right now we're having a very tough debate about the Supreme Court. But the fact is Republican senators they have the votes to seat a conservative replacement for Justine Skinsburg, they have the votes to block a replacement for Justice Scalia. The frustration Democrats are dealing with is that the Senate

is skewed. You know, Nate Silver, the smart poet Lunch, they say there's about a seven point Republican bias in the Senate and it lets them get away with stuff that frankly, Democrats couldn't pull off. Nevertheless, there's actually a pretty good chance that Democrats will win a majority this

November because Donald Trump is quite unpopular. So the interesting thing is, you know, if Democrats do manage to win, are they going to do anything not just about the Supreme Court, but about the inequities that are sort of deeply embedded in our political institutions? Wow? Well, any politician to anything about what's deeply embedded in our institutions? Right, Matthew. I mean these problems that have come out because of the virus or what happened with George Floyd and others. Unfortunately,

you know they're not new, No, they're not new. And you know, of course, you know, nobody likes to see when when protests turn into riots things like that. At the same time, you know, you want to tell people, look, work on persuasion, go vote, you know, pursue your remedies

through through the legal process. And if you have a political system that's completely unresponsive to that, right, if people who live in cities don't have representation in Congress, if members of Congress just don't do anything no matter what the public's level of concern is, you know, that's how

you get into a situation of social disorder. And I don't defend everything that's happened on every side there, but you you need to show people that progress is being made on big national problems, and so far, I mean,

it's really not happening. So, Matthew, I know we're meant to talk about your new book, and we're celebrating it as we should, but you know, I do think about in many ways, how President your book The Rent is too damn high was in terms of what we have seen in this pandemic and how so much, as Carol alluded to, has been laid bare in terms of the inequalities, and so much of that it feels like is manifested in people's inability to just pay their bills, and we

are debating that now seemingly are round this question of will there be more fiscal stimulus? Are there any reasonable and by reason why I mean things that maybe policymakers can agree on remedies on that front at this point, given how clear it is that we have an issue here, you know, it's really tough. Republicans have been very intransigent

about aid to state and local governments. Uh the reason news that came in about tax revenue was actually pretty good, So it suggests maybe the need for aid is not quite as big as Democrats have thought it was. So if Republicans would say yes to a smaller number there, Democrats would get what they want then money to go out to people, which you know Democrats have been fighting for. But also it seems like it would help Republicans at

the election to get something done here. So you know, I I never want to you never want to count on Congress doing anything, But the stars do seem to be aligned in the sense that you know, both parties will be better off if they can get something done. On the other hand, you know, of fighting about justice Ginsburg seat, he's going to make Democrats really reluctant to

a deal now, more so than they wore a week ago. So, Matthew, if there's one policy you could just do right now that you think would have a really positive impact on the US, what would it be? You know, I think we should do what Canada, who I was knocking before did under under thanks now you like them, start giving money to parents of young children. I think it's a great response to the emergency of the pandemic. Is a really tough time for parents, but it's good policy for

the long term. And we definitely feel the gravity of his words about putting money into the hand of people who need a little extra, certainly in today's world. Matthew Iglesias, co founder of Box Journalists, author his book One Billion Americans, The Case for Thinking Bigger. You gotta check out our podcast feed for entire conversation with him. Loved catching up with him. Such a cool guys, and that routs up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business

Week from Bloomberg Radio. Stick with us. I'm Jason Kelly. So much more to come. I'm Carol Masser, including another story from our Equality issue of Virginia Cities, Playbook for Urban Renewal, Move Out the Poor, plus back to the Equality Summit. Maybe a voice you wouldn't expect to hear on Bloomberg Business Week. Carol's interview with actress and activists Alyssa Mlano and get ready to restock your pantries. We'll hear about that from the CEO of General Mills. This

is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Hi, I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. Plenty of head for you in this hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Jason, We're gonna hear from Hinder Groups Dr Nichehall. He takes over the top spot at the company in April. We get lessons his company has learned during the pandemic, plus

some lessons from General Mills CEO. That company, of course based in Minneapolis, what's going on in that city, as well as what maybe in your pantry coming up this fall. Plus everybody experiences anxiety differently. For me, I get in a crisis mode that is very hard for me to break the pattern. Actress Elissa Milano on our mental health struggle, something many of us can relate to because of the virus.

First up, though, back to this week's Equality issue of the magazine, we catch up with Bloomberg Business Week editor Joe Weber and Bloomberg News Financial Investigations reporter Caleb Melby about his story of Virginia Cities Playbook for Urban Renewal Move Out the Poor. In Norfolk, Virginia, they've been looking at what to do with a series of UH neighborhoods near their downtown that are two story public housing developments

and opportunity zones. Basically gave them the financing edge to finally UH implement UM kind of like a raise and Replaced program where these three UM predominantly black UH and and very poor public housing communities UM will be destroyed and replaced with some mixed income, mixed use properties UM. Some of them will get to come back. About one third in the first phase of the people who live there now, but not everyone. It's it's the idea, according

to the city, is to decentralize poverty. UM. And the story was a great opportunity for us to look back at the history of programs like opportunity zones to see UM how they're used by cities. Timing again, and it turns out a lot of times it's it's situations just like this one. Yeah, and certainly important to tell as we try to understand. Joe, come on in, Joe Webber now with us, UM, tell us about why this story

just really resonated with you. Well, so this is our quality issue, and you know, we've basically tried to look at especially in America through a lens of not just equality but inequality, and this one I think has really

stuck out to us for a while. And and Caleb had raised his hands UM in the Before times if you remember those as an area of interest that he wanted to pursue and and what was amazing with it And why I think a story like this is so important is because even from the Before Times, this is one of those topics and one of these areas of interest that still resonates. And if anything, what we've all lived through for the past six months in counting now

only amplifies some of these disparities. And I think that's brought to light in the story. Um Kat, the thing I was going to ask you about. You know this, Norfolk specifically more opportunity zones than any other city in in Virginia, and clearly it's gone. Um you know, maybe maybe slightly awry of of how opportunity zones have been conceived, but like, who's the who ends up winning here? It's an interesting question. Um yeah, So there there is a

developer the city is partnering with brin short development. They specifically specialized in exactly a project like this, um public to private slash public conversions. They made a name for themselves doing this with Cabrini greenhousing projects in Chicago. So like, in a very simple way, obviously it's business for them, but the City of Norfolk would tell you that they're winning right that that as designed the city does not work for them, and they are going to design it

in a way that is better for them. And the really painful thing about any project like this is like then you have to ask yourself, well, who is the city and are the people who are leaving. Are they part of the city? Um? And that's something UM people in this community called St. Paul's are grappling with, and UM what the politicians UM have been trying to grapple

with in town as well well and in Caleb. I do think about the body of work that you guys have have put together here, and you know, we've had Opportunity Zone investors on this program and we've seen it up close and personal here in New York City. I guess I come back to, and this is building on Joel's question, is this, you know, kind of people just kind of being pardon the pun, opportunistic about a law that kind of allows them to sort of make money even though it's not in the spirit of the law.

Or is this bad law? Well, that's a really great question. And you're right, there's there's investors here too, like neglected to mention those here on Bloomberg Radio. Figure, Yeah, no,

you're you're exactly right. UM. Look, opportunity zones we're specifically designed to have very few basically non existing guard rails because other programs, enterprise zones UH and empowerment zones in the nineties had a lot of them, and investors and local leaders complained that like they couldn't make matches work

because it was too restrictive. So opportunity zones there were specifically incredibly expanded of with with a generous capital gains tax bright and no real particular rules about like what exactly uh you know you you had to build with those investment dollars so long as it was going into these communities. So yeah, our reporting has focused a lot on um, uh you know, some what maybe outliers, right, we don't know because there's no actual public disclosure for

the program, so we don't. We don't. We actually can't measure in any way whether all of the opportunity zone money looks like Norfolk um or looks like say New York, which reported on before, or if or if there's some more like kind of locally minded investing dollars going in as well, because there's there's no reports from from the Treasury Department one way or the other on that. That was Bloomberg Business Week editorial Webber and of course star

reporter Caleb Melby. He's been looking so closely at opportunity zones and the big question, as we just heard, is really one of transparency. Carol, that's so true, Jason. All right, still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, A view of the pandemic from a global conglomerate. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Welcome back to the show, Carol. We do continue to hear about how COVID nineteen has really

changed the way companies do business. That's for sure, Jason. And we've got a really great perspective from Dr Anissha. He's currently Deputy Managing Director, chief financial officer of the Mahinder Group. We caught up from Mumbai. This is a company that has certainly a global view of the world. We kicked off our discussion though, as you might guess talking about COVID nineteen, the impact has been significant on

us as well as everyone around us. We saw the month of April essentially wiped out in terms of revenue as a lockdown was declared in India towards the end of March, and since then things have come back actually very very much better and what we expected. There are a number of lessons from this as well, and this

it might be will position us stronger going forward. So while COVID is unfortunate and we do hope that things do get better soon, uh, it is also teaching us lessons about how not to just survive, but how to thry, how to deal with uncertainty, and that will make us stronger. Well, that's so interesting that you say that, and I do think a lot of CEOs it's interesting. Go back to March.

I feel like no one wanted to talk to us because there was so much uncertainty, nobody had visibility, and then we all realized we're all in the same boat together. And so you know, people have been talking about what they're facing. CEO specifically, I am curious in terms of risk mitigation, what have you learned as a result of the virus when it comes to risk mitigation at your company. What we've learned is we've got to as leaders start being able to look around corners and be able to

look at various scenarios and planned for them. We talked about a hooker world many years ago, and that in many ways is an understatement. So the world has just gotten a lot more volatile and uncertain since then, and we have to be able to plan with scenarios, take options, take certain bets that we can double down on it for certain scenario plays out. Tyler talked about black spots, and he's talked about COVID not being a black swan.

He said, this is something that could have been predicted, in fact hadn't been foreseen, so it's not a black swan in that sense. But Tyl I've also talked about anti fragility and about how people and organizations can thrive in a crisis and can grow stronger in a crisis. So I think this is something that's teaching us now as to how do we do that? And you're right, Carol, as we looked at March, I think look really bleak and everyone was wondering what's going to happen? Where is liquidity?

How are we going to survive? And as we look at the last few months, I think we have survived. I think we have come out stronger. And it's really about the scenario planning. We have to change old paradigms. Just in time was a paradigm that we had in manufacturing. It's now just in case, uh, And there's a whole different set of things that come in as a result of it. Well, it's interesting too, and I think about

you know, you're in a hundred different markets. You have you know about two d fifty thousand employees or more around the world. UM. I do wonder how you keep your companies, your businesses, your values, UH and standards at the level that you want them to be that you need them to be in all of those different markets, especially in the face of such stresses as the virus.

I think that essentially comes from our foundation. Um Our founders when they set of the company nine actually had published UM Something in the Times of India, the leading newspaper in India, and they essentially published the Culture to talk about the culture and the values of the company that they wanted to instill in the company when they set it up. And those values have stayed with us for the last seventy five years. So this is about how we've been set up, the inherent values and the

company and that's what our leaders have been by. So one thing that we saw through the crisis that was very heartening for us is leaders across all our businesses UM found different ways to help the community. They came up with what are different things that we can do and we'll talk about some of them as we go along. But that's something that comes to them inherently, not because it's something that the society expects so that we have

to do. That's just who we are. I asked you about optimism when we kicked off this discussion, um, and and I do wonder an I'm looking at some of the numbers in terms of India the virus specifically, I'm looking at fifty four million cases of the virus more than eighty six thousand deaths. So is they're tough numbers. I mean, we had pretty tough numbers too here in New York, and it's it's kind of staggering. It makes you stop, it makes you rethink things. Um, I asked

about optimism. Has the optimism, though in general, eroded in India or at your company? Uh, the optimism has not eroded. I feel that people are looking at how do we get fast the next few months. But overall, I would say that growth fundamentals in India are very strong. The numbers in many ways are not surprising because if you look at the population density in India, it's far higher than that in the US and higher than most places

in the world. You look at the city of Homepi with twenty to twenty five million people, many of them very tightly packed together. These numbers in many ways are lower than what one would expect here, and as we look at some surveys, we also see some level of herd immunity that's starting to come into play just based on numbers in Mumbaile. So despite the numbers, the economy has opened up reasonably well. Rural India has been a very strong bell weather and it's really leading the rest

of the economy forward. Urban India has suffered notargely because of the lockdowns, but we started to see things open up there and I would say that things are difficult, so I'm not going to downplay that. But at the same time, as we look at three to five for ten years ahead, there is a lot of optimism at my India in terms of India as well as our own growth. And what do you feel like comfortable in

terms of predicting visibility. I mean, that's the other thing that we feel like for you know, individuals companies have said, we don't have any visibility for the rest of this year. We don't even know about visibility for next year. Meantime, you've got at least the US Central Bank they're talking about they have visibility enough at least at this point to say we're going to keep rates really low. What

kind of visibility do you feel comfortably talking about? Is it till the end of the year, is it till next year or is it not? Or do you not really feel like you have have any It's very different across sectors, differences dramatics. Let me give a few examples. Our farm equipment business coming out of April with almost zero sales, had a euro Way Your growth in May

of two percent, which we had not expected. We would have been very happy with, uh the growth of thirty or forty, and we would have said, that's great, we are getting back on track. But we had a two percent eu Way Your growth. That was Dr Nisha Deputy Maaging Directors CF of the the Hinger Group. And you can hear that full conversation in depth view of the

world that's in our podcast feed. You're listening to Blue Work this week coming up, another global leader weighs in on what's ahead when it comes to the virus, what's ahead when it comes to the global economy. Talking about the CEO of General Mills. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from

Bloomberg Radio. We're back here on Bloomberg Business Week. Carol Masser along with Jason Kelly, delighted to bring you some of the conversations we had on our daily radio show from top leaders who Jason, as we know, continue to deal with so much the pandemic and a lot more. Well, that is certainly the case for General Mills. We caught up with the CEO, Jeff Harmon ing they released earnings this week, but we had to start by talking about not just what's in your pantry, but what's been going

on in his backyard of Minneapolis since the summer. As a community, it's it's been a tough summer here in the Twin Cities, but we're looking to rebound and rebuild, and General Mills has certainly been a part of it. S f I looking, you know, starting with police reform, and CEO is really backing that. Here in the Twin Cities. We have a number of Fortune five companies and we're all kind of rowing in that direction and at the

same time trying to rebuild our city. Both physically in terms of the neighborhoods that um that needed, but also our you know, our education system and how that works and opportunities for for people of all colors. And so while it has been a tough summer, what I can tell you is the people in Minneapolis, all people in Minneapolis, are working hard to create a more just and racially

equal city. And if I think that we can do that, and Jeff, you are, listen, one of the individuals who has seats at the table right to really help facilitate change. And I do wonder do you think something is different this time around? Because we have certainly had lots of conversations with leaders like yourself, CEOs and heads of other institutions where you know, we talked about that. There has been so much talk for a long time, but nothing

has really substantially changed. It's not just well, we woke up this year and we're like, oh my god, look at all these problems. They've been around for decades. Is there something different though this time around? Well, there there certainly needs to be something different this time around, and I suspect that there is. And it's it's really the the involvement of the business community. I think you see

a differential. It certainly is for General Mills as we look to build on our our history of inclusion of particularly in terms of education outcomes, in terms of representation

supporting minority owned businesses. Um, we're building on what we have done, and I see other Twin Cities companies doing the same, and so I think what's different this time around is that the fact that there is racial bias and injustice is undeniable, and the business leaders are getting involved away that at least I haven't seen in my twenty five year career, certainly coming out and saying different

things than we've heard before. Well, and clearly cities like yours, and you know, we spent some time with other CEOs in your city, and the president of the University of Minnesota, Jung Gable as well. I know that they're marshaling a lot of the business community because it is such a vital part of Minneapolis and in the Twin Cities. Well, let's talk about the business, because it's obviously been a very different time for all ceo s. Your package food business,

I would imagine, is dramatical affected by the pandemic. Tell us what you've seen sort of by the numbers and where it goes from here. So what we've seen for General Mills is that the demand has really searched for for our business. Because of our businesses food served at home and only of food served away from home, and so we have had the challenge of rising to the occasion or producing significant amounts more food than we had before.

Our revenues were up double digits in our fourth quarter which ended in May, end up another double digits in our first quarter of this fiscal year, which just we were just announced today, and so increasing production by that

much has been a big challenge. But I'm really proud because General Mills and the rest of the industry has really written to meet the moment and we've done it, I think because our company are people feel that not only are we serving the world food the food the world loves at this point, but really the food that it needs. And interestingly, um I just just got you know, we just got done talking about our first quarter results.

Are our number of acts and our plants were down in our first quarter and we had a present tee ism rate of nine and so even in midst you know, all the challenges that the pandemic creates. It's actually brought out the best in general mills employees, and they're really proud of the work they're doing. So and I do wonder about trends like the demand for at home food. I know, I think you guys have come out and already said that you expected to remain above pre pandemic levels.

Do you fear though, it will start to die down as people start seeing how much food they've already stocked up. Essentially, well, we we were pretty confident that food demand, demand for food at home is going to remain elevated for an extended period of time. Part of it is that the reason is that people have mostly eaten through the things that they've had in their pantries, so there isn't actually there's not actually a substantial amount of pantry loading of

food at home anymore. In addition to that, you know what's driving the increasing a manner. People are not as interested in going to restaurants eating indoors right now, and we're approaching a season where a lot of people, especially in the northern part of US, would generally eat at restaurants indoors. Combine that with two other factors, I think people don't think about as much as that. Many people are not going back to the offices, so they're eating

especially breakfast and lunch. They're eating at home now instead of a way. And then finally, the economy is not going to be in great shape even once we have this pandemic resolve, and in times of recession, consumers tend to go to more at home eating they did in the last recession. We think they will hear too, because

it's a cheaper alternative eating out. I know you didn't give any kind of you know, it's hard to give kind of far out um forecast at this point, but what you just said, do you expect to be a tough year economically? And we just have about forty seconds here, I think I think Fist one will be a tough year economically, and I think for us that's going to mean we're going to continue to need to produce a lot of food because I think at home demand is

going to remain strong. And that's General Mills CEO, Jeff Harmon Ing joining us from Minneapolis and Jason. Of course, what we eat clearly contributes to our physical health, but increasingly we are also worried about our mental health actress Alissa Milana. She takes up that part of the equation from our equality summit. That's next. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly

from Bloomberg Radio. Our next guest is someone who has allowed us into her personal life before, and Jason, she did so again at this week's Bloomberg Equality Summit. She talked about her mental health struggles, something so many of us are dealing with today because of the pandemic, and how she is speaking out to help others. We talked about that along with her having COVID nineteen months ago

and continuing to have symptoms. This is Allissa Milana. Some days I feel back to normal and other days it's like I have a recurrence of the acute symptoms. I was sick with the acute illness for five weeks in in March and April UM and I've just I have not felt back to back to normal since then. Uh. Some days I feel okay, but really it's just this,

like is this incredible um exhaustion. It feels like I have no motivation to physically move my body, and I don't know if that is some sort of mental protection or if it's my body trying to regenerate or or what is happening. But I have shortness of breath, hard palpitations, my hair is still falling out, and I have this the worst part. I have this ringing in my ears that is driving me bonkers. So um, yeah, it's it

has not been great. And it's interesting because of all my friends have quite a few friends that that we're sick. There's maybe one out of twelve that feels completely back to normal. The rest are just having these these long hauler symptoms and um. So you know, we find great comfort in each other knowing that that there are other people out there going through the same thing, um um.

And that makes a really big difference. And I think that that makes a big difference in our mental health and in general, just to know that there are other people, um, you know, that go through similar things that than that we do. Well. This is why we're so grateful that you're talking with us and talking about your own mental illness and talking about anxiety. And I want to take a few steps back because from what I understand, just doing a little bit of research and watching some different

things and some interviews you've done. You've dealt with anxiety for a long time. Is that fair? Oh? Yes, yes, But I don't know that I had labeled it as anxiety. But my earliest my earliest recollection and and everybody experiences anxiety differently. For me, I get very UM, I get in a crisis mode that is very hard for me to break the pattern UM. And basically it gets to the point that my brain just thinks that's the way it's supposed to be functioning in fight flighter freeze UM.

And I should also say, is when when we when we're talking about UM issues that affect brain UM, you know, we really prefer to talk about mental health, not mental illness. I think once we start calling it mental illness UM, that's when the stigma UM comes with that. And and also to try to sort of be conscious of of the phrases that we use UM as far as like I actually just did it and I caught myself, you know that the rings in my ears was driving me bonkers.

Like all of those things, all of those natural UM ways of describing things of the past we sort of have to break out of, I think in order to in order to break the stigma. But my earliest recollection of being in crisis mode was UM. I lived in South Africa for three months in two thousand and it was, you know, only nine years after apartheid was abolished, and I volunteered in a township in a children's hospital, and

I was very strong while I was there. When I came home and had to assimilate like that part of me UM that volunteered and and dedicated my time to helping other people and trying to to assimilate that with the person that lived in Beverly Hills and drove a BMW UM, I had a very hard time getting back and getting acclimated and UM and I went through about and at this time I didn't I didn't know, but I would say four or five months of complete and

total panic anxiety UM. And for me, I have generalized anxiety disordered that also and I also get paddock attacks. So what that basically means is my base level of anxiety is almost in a panic attack mode and then panic attacked or sort of on top of that. UM. So yeah, so I remember, like I went to my general practitioner and I wasn't even in therapy, which by the way, there was anyone that needed to be in therapy. It's it was a child after that that that survived. Right, Um,

but was there anybody? Was there anybody around you? Was there anybody around you saying, you know, wait a minute, a lista, this isn't right. You know, you shouldn't feel this way chronically, and that would step in. I mean, my mom was, well, I have a lot of the same characteric characteristics as my mother. She um, she suffers from anxiety. She also has dyslexia. UM, I have dyslex as well. So she was, Yes, she was encouraging me

to go. But I went to my general practitioner and they put me on a you know, a very generic antidepressant which made me, you know, gain fifteen pounds, and and that was like a whole other issue. And plus I was writing week, I was working on charm and so it was very hard to take that sort of break and sort of and and self care. I want to bring you forward a little bit because from what I understand, it really became I guess, very debilitating. After the birth of your son, Milo, tell us a little

bit about what happened. Right you came home and and I know there were some complications or some stress just before he was delivered. Tell us what happened. So, um, So I was in labor for eighteen hours. I pushed for three and a half hours, and um, he came to us vias um c section. UM. The birth itself

was in the labor itself was very traumatic. UM. Not to get too graphic, but when a woman says she pushes for three hours, it is with the help of of nurses who are basically trying to manipulate the baby while it's still inside of your body to get the baby out. So for me, it felt incredibly invasive, um and traumatic. And I think that it triggered my sexual assault trauma because I was sitting there and I was thinking,

why is this feel like such a violation? Why is this does not and I don't think women talk about this. UM and you're not in control, and it's it's right, you're not in control. It's it's a very tough situation, very heated, and there's lots of people coming in the room and plugging things in and like you know, I used to my mom used to joke like if they had a car in there, they'd be back in that end just to like so so that I think is what triggered my postpartum anxiety. And then I had UM.

I felt better, my milk came in, I felt better. I had this beautiful, little, delicious baby, and UM. And it was it was when he weaned. He weaned himself very suddenly without any like going down. My hormones were out of control and UM, that's when my anxiety started to come back again. Was when my hormone level dripped dipped after he weaned, which was at ten months. You eventually found yourself in the er room right at you know,

in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, But before that A part of this story that I think is almost the most important is I went into my the g y n Um when this first started happening, and she looked at me and with a straight face, she said to me, well, it's a big life change. Go for a hike, try to find some self care time. And by the way, she said to me, you're thirty eight years old, so if you want to have another baby,

we should probably start thinking about that. And I remember so clearly, just being in tears, and I looked at her and I said, I'm not sure. I want the baby that I have right now, and you're talking to me about another baby. So I felt completely like the the the health care that I was getting was totally not where it should have been. So I would just go to the emergency room. I would go to the emergency room every time I felt like I couldn't deal well.

And one of the times that you went, you actually had yourself committed right for three days, I did, I did I Why did you do that? Why did you do that? Why did you know you needed to do that? So at the time, I was working on Mistresses, which was a show on ABC, and I was still functional and I was still able to learn my lines and show up for work. And the thing about mental health and when you're struggling with mental health, uh issues, is

you can't see it. And that's actress and activists Alyssa Milano a conversation, as I sort of jokingly said earlier that you wouldn't necessarily expect to hear on Bloomberg Business Week, but a reminder part of our equality Summit of how holistically we really need to be looking at all of these problems. Great interview Carol master Well, that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Jason Kelly and

thank you for that. Jason Kelly, I'm Carol Master. Be sure to check out our extra podcast Abigail Disney, documentary, filmmaker, philanthropist. She's also an activist and proponent for using the wealth gap. She is calling on companies to offer respect, dignity and a living wage to everyone who works for them. And for that type of interview and so much more, catch our daily show Monday through Friday. It starts at two

pm Wall Street Time. You can also watch us on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News and of course, always check out our podcast. So many in depth interviews there. Check it out wherever you get your podcast, also at Bloomberg dot com and the magazine. It is on newsstands now the Equality Issue. It is worth a deep read. We'll see you right back here next week at the same time. Have a great weekend everyone. This is Bloomberg