Former CFTC Head Bowen on Advancing Women in Business

tech companies and at finance companies. And joining us now at the Bloomberg Business of Equality Summit is Sharon Bowen. She has a partner at Seneca Women, which is an app designed to promote women in technology. She also happens to be the former commissioner of the u s c FTC, the Commodity Features Trading Commission. We are so happy to have you, Sharon, Thank you for being with us. I want to start with where are we How much progress have we actually made when it comes to these male

dominated fields like technology and banking. We're making progress, but frankly a little bit too slowly in my opinion. UM. One of the stats that went a highlight is when we look at global bank CEOs only two percent of women. When we look at global bank boards, less than twenty percent of women. And so I think in finance we

definitely have a leadership gap that we need to fail. So, Sharon, I, I've spent uh, you know, over twenty five years on Wall Street, and what I noticed over the years and doing a lot of recruiting is, you know, incoming recruiting class of young folks out of business school or something that looks really representative of the overall population in terms of gender and and and and ethnicity, but as you go through the ranks, it really just becomes more male,

more white. And what do you think corporate America generally can do to kind of support women's support minorities throughout their career paths? Um, And you're right. We I think we've solved the pipeline problem that used to be the paradigm where are they we can't find them? Um? I think we solved that problem. UM. But I think companies have to look at um themselves holistically, what barriers that

they are that may be preventing people to success. UM. You know, whether or not UM, we consider not just things like you know, flex time, but frankly, equal pay. Um, that's one way we can change the dynamic. And I think more importantly, you know, I think one of the messes out there is that, you know, we don't need to fix the women, We need to fix the system. And so I think companies need to be a lot more intentional and approaching these issues and finding ways to

engage their employees UM in a better way. So what are some reasons why? I mean, just to give a sense of what you have done, because your career has been storied, It's been tremendous, including UH being a corporate transactional lawyer, Davis Polk, Latham and Watkins of the most premier law firms. Why aren't there more women atop these high paying fields that typically are among the most respected in society. Well, you know, if I had to start with the wise, why women aren't at the table, why

women aren't getting equal pay, why women aren't dancing? Frankly, we could be here for a while. Um, so just three minutes, um. But you know what I'd like to focus much more on is is sort of the future. And I quoted earlier May Jamison, who was the first African American UH woman astronaut to travel in space, and she said, the future never just happened, it was created. And so I think it's our job to, you know, harness our collective power, our knowledge to create a different future,

and the future that we really want to see. So it's at at Seneca Women. I know you've created new technology product to address some of these issues. So Seneca Connect, can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, So, Seneca Connect is the first app design to advance women at work and in the economy. We work with Apple to create it. We were one of eleven women own business entrepreneurs selected for the first Apple Entrepreneurship Camp and I'm really excited about that and the fact that our

Apple is really trending wealth in the app store. You can download it for free. We also have an enterprise versions for corporations to help them create a much more diverse and inclusive culture. How does it do that? What does it actually do? So we give daily content tips

and tactics lessons from um more leaders. We give you tools and resources that you can use to to move to move the needle, if you will, and we use it as a way for companies to engage their employees with feedback, because we know with greater employee engagement, you get better productivity, you get better profitability, and people feel

better about coming to work every day. Yeah. It's really interesting and definitely something that we've seen again and again showing that the broader the viewpoints, the broader, uh, the diversity of people's backgrounds and experiences, the better the business case. Have you found that most companies are receptive to that story. Well, not only their receptive, but I think that the data bear set out I think pretty much through all me tricks, um, I think we're now sort of pass that that proof

if you will. It's just not doing it, yeah, which is which is good. It's about doing it um. And it's also about being you know, much more intentional in terms of where we invest our money and UH and

making sure that we support women owned businesses. And I think earlier I mentioned that only you know, two percent of VC funds and four percent of bank loans go to women owned businesses, which I find that troubling, particularly given them out of wealth that women control, I think we will be controlling something like seventy two twillion dollars of global wealth by so we need to use that money that we have in our big accounts and private equity funds to make sure we can lend to women,

because it's puzzling to me why we can't use our own money to lend to women. So yeah, the seventy two trillion dollars in my bank account, Polly, I'll be right there for Sharon Brown, Thank you so much. Sharon is a partner at Seneca Women, also a former commissioner of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commison. Thank you so much, Thank you so much. Joining us here a Bloomberg at

Bloomberg Business of Equality Summit. Here at the Bloomberg HQ in New York, we are broadcasting live from the Bloomberg Business of Equality Summit at Bloomberg Headquarters in New York. We are so excited to bring in our next guest, Caroline Tasted, Group of President for North America for Procter and Gamble, joining us after her panel on gender equality. And I've got to say, when you talk about equality,

what is the ultimate goal? I mean, what is sort of, uh, the best case scenario of a fully equal boardroom or a fully equal company look like to you. Thanks Lasa. It's a pleasure to be here. Uh. And what it means to us from an overall standpoint for PNG is uh,

frankly winning. Uh. You know. So we know that when we have any good, when we have an equal world, when we create a world where we have equal voice for women and men and for all individuals, that communities are healthier, businesses thrived, the world's a better place for all of us. And so from a business perspective, we know it's a key contributor to growth. And so for me,

equality equals winning and a great place to work. So within PNG, a global organization, a huge organization, what are some success stories that have pushed equality and diversity through in your organization? And then commercially, what are some of

the stumbling blocks you guys will come up against? Great question? Uh, From a from an overall standpoint, we at P ANDNG have what we call our principles, are values, our purpose as a company, and so our value is very deeply tied to a world where everybody gets to bring their full self to work. So equality very broadly um identified and we think about that from all types of intersectionality, both visible and invisible. As you think about that, so that's a core part of who we are as a company.

It's a really big part of why I'm still with this company more than thirty years later. It's just a great company to work for, and it's a company that values individuals, and so that's certainly a starting point as we think about equality. We also know that it's really important what a company stands for. What a company works on is important to the stakeholders around it, whether those are investors, whether those are partners, consumers, customers, are employees.

It's really important today for companies to speak up on issues that are important to all of those stakeholders, and that's what we do with our citizenship voice. And one of those part one of part of that voice is really equality, whether it be gender equality, whether it be diversity inclusion in a very broad in a very broad perspective. So they're growing number of socially responsible funds and people who are looking to investing companies that do focus more

on equality. How does one measure it? I mean, from your perspective, how should people look at a more equal company? What should that look like? It's a great We think about it as equal representation, but we also think about it as equal voice. And those might be different things. It's hard to measure. It is hard to measure. Representations not hard to measure. Representation is not hard to measure, but you can also we all do company engagement surveys.

We all get feedback from our employees. We work very hard to have dialogue so that we can get employees feedback on what's working or not working. And so that's where the engagement comes in. And you think about we know that engagement drivers are for our employees are really making sure that they have a company they can be proud of, They have a they feel like they can make a difference in the work that they do every day. Uh, they have a place to really learn, to grow, to

advance their career. All of those are engagement drivers. And a part of what delivers that for people is a company that stands for things that are good. We want to be a force for good within the world that we live in today, with in the communities that are people live, in the communities we serve, and we also believe that when we integrate that, when we get that right and it's fully integrated to the business, which is always our intention, it always it also becomes a force

for good for growth. Rather, we're speaking with Carol and Tested P and G North American Group President on diversity equality. One of the ways I think we can measure it is in the paycheck. And I know there's a US government issue about paycheck transparency where you know, I guess you have to report dated about you know, pay on gender and race and so on and so forth. Does that's the P AND embraces we look very carefully pay equality.

That we are very committed to pay equality and making sure that we pay equally for equal work, equal pay across any any aspect. And so we audit that externally, we work on that internally, we measure it to make sure we deliver pay equality, and we feel very good about our work in that place. We have a very very high correlation to equal pay, will work for women, for men, for people of color. That said, the other thing we said is a very high standard for ourselves.

We are not fifty fifty yet at the very top of our company. We are committed to get there, but we're not there yet. And if you think about all of the studies from a pay equality and a pay transparency, the biggest contributor to pay inequality is lack of women's representation and people of color representation at the very top

of organizations. And so while we feel great about the work that we do and our and our intentionality of equal pay, equal work, we also know that we contribute to the wealth gap by virtue of not having equal representation, and we're very committed to closing that. Where are we

in terms of making progress in this front? Remember last year we talked about some of the brands that Procter and Gamble has, whether it's Bounty or charmin or Crest and Dawn, and I'm thinking of the advertisements they'll see on television, and they do represent you know, more diverse families and different living situations. And we talked about how

that's conscious, it's it's it's very intentional thing. I'm wondering, is there ever pushback from consumers, are from you know, groups of people that perhaps aren't aren't necessarily you know, loving that there can be. There certainly can be for when we get it right for our consumers, for the people were targeting. We we tend to do well, but certainly there are situations where we take a stand on

things and it's uh and we get different reactions. So you may have seen our Gillette campaign that we launched in January, which is really all about believing in the very best of men, believing in men, setting a great role model for the next generation. But when we launched

that campaign, we had different reactions. Did you know that it was going to be as controversially expected that it would We expected that it would be and some of the reaction, UM was a very orchestrated campaign in that from that regard, but we really felt very committed to the message. We feel very committed to be leaving in the best of men. We feel very committed to what men can do to take a stand and and role model what we need in the next generation. And uh,

and we believe in the best of men. Do you think that it ended up being a positive for the business as well? I think it's I think it can be a positive for the business. One of the things that was really um noticeable, and you know, we measure everything and we we failure. We worked to be very authentic in our voice, because if you're not authentic, it comes across as that. But certainly, if you think about Generation Z or millennials under thirty, we had a very

positive reaction. They had a very positive reaction to that entire campaign. UM. And frankly, our intention with that was to spark a conversation, to spark a dialogue, to have people talk about it and and learn and and create discussion. And we certainly did that, and that was the intention. Carol. Then, Tasta,

thank you so much for joining us. Carol is a group president for North America for Proctor and Gamble baseds Cincinnati, of course, but joining us here at the Bloomberg Business of Equality Summit at Bloomberg Headquarters in New York City. We can we can all attest. It's very sunny out to what I'm saying, we have said in our eyes and everything. Carol, thank you so much. Clearly, Lisa, you

know a compelling issue for corporate America. You know, it's I think that the data has been clear for years that equality, diversity within the companies, within the board rooms, it's good business. You see it in superior performance, So that data is pretty clear. Well, Immigration and the accompanying nationalism was certainly a central theme to the presidential election, and it has become even more prominent under the Trump administration.

UM to see how business and political leaders are navigating this complex issue. We welcome Ali Irani. Ali is the executive director of the National Immigration Form based in Washington, d C. But he joins us here today at the bloom Burg Business of Equality Summit here at the Bloomberg headquarters in New York. Ali, welcome to Bloomberg. You know, how does immigration reform and the rise of nationalism impact

corporate America? How how's corporate America dealing with this? We we know it's a political issue, but how is it from the business perspective? Well, our senses that corporate America

is really trying to parse out the politics from the policy. Uh. You know, clearly this is a really intense political debate at the national level, but corporate leadership across the country is really trying to understand how do they serve their immigrant consumers, but also how do they integrate and support their foreign board workforce and really kind of create a

corporate family culture. Um. We've been actually working closely with corporations from Walmart to Chobani, to Commons and and many others to really help them, uh, develop the strategies to better integrate their foreign board workforce and provide the skills

and opportunities so that all of us can thrive. So you've been doing this a long time, right, how much is what we're seeing now in terms of the wave of now tionalism different from periods of time in the past, both that you've seen as well as just in the history books in the United States, if you look at the history books. Uh, I mean, the sad part of our nation, Sistor, is that we have a long track record of not being very nice to the people who come after us. Um, you know, the turn of the

nineteenth century. Uh, you know, there have been peaks and valids of this debate. What's different now is that we have a media environment that is very quick, is very partisan, and brings that picture, that sound of the family fleeing violence or corruption or poverty to your living room. So there's a perception or feeling that, you know, the refugee fleeing Syria, the migrant fleeing Honduras is going to be

your next door neighbor tomorrow. So what can leaders do in the corporate sector, in the public sector due to help the American public understand global migration? I mean, look, this is going to be one of the top issues for generations to come. Sixty million people are forcibly displaced. Today, over two fifty million people live in another outside of their home country. This issue isn't going away. We need leadership from the corporate sector, which is emerging UM, as

well as from the elected officials. So you've traveled to Honduras to Mexico. You've seen what the US southern border issue is on the other side. What what are some of your experiences there. So a few weeks ago as part of a delegation that went from San Pedro Sula in Honduras to El Paso and into Juarez. And what's really clear is that in a country like Honduras it's just eight million people, not a very large country population wise, UM, it is a very it's undergoing a very very toxic

mix of corruption, violence and poverty. So people are now at this point they're saying, you know what, as a group, we can be safe by walking to the US to seek asylum and safety. This administration, unfortunately, has done everything in their power to stop people from being able to seek asylum. The amazing part is that when we were in Ola Passo, you have the faith community, the business community, law enforcement who want to make sure that people can

apply for asylum in a safe and fair way. If people don't apply or don't are not eligible, they should they shouldn't be out to remain. So we're not saying everybody should be able to come. We should be able to say if people are seeking asylum, they should be

able to apply for asylum. So one of the big arguments against allowing having an easier policy of bringing in immigrants is that they will take jobs and they will accept lower wages than people who are already in the United States will accept, and that will drive down how much people get paid. What have you seen with respect to that? And uh, you know, is that is anything changing on that front? Yeah, So a few years ago there's a national Caddegis of Science panel that get the

leading academics in the country looking at precisely this question. Um, and we have to be honest about it. Um. At the high skill or even the middle skill level, there is no impact and it grows quickly. At the positive impact grows quickly over time. That's the h one B issue probably probably right at the lower skill is level of their economy, there is a small impact on wages. We're talking you know, one percent impact more or less

that impact. Negative impact dissipates quite quickly as you move through time, so net benefit to the economy at large is positive. The questions that American workers have and their families have, because ultimately we all want the same thing. We want our children to do better than us, is real. So I think as advocates, as corporate leaders, we have to be honest about that conversation and help people understand that immigrants are creating jobs, they're protecting American values, and

ultimately they are like the rest of us. They want to make sure their children gonna do better than them. So, in this very politicized environment as it relates to immigration, what are you seeing from corporate America from the boardrooms? How aggressive can they be in this environment? Well, you know,

um Lift is an amazing example. Right. So they're in the news right now because of the their pending I p O they released yesterday and news that they are working with US the National Immigration Forum to help their drivers improve their English language skills. This is a program that was initially funded by the Walmart Foundation. We're also working with Whole Foods and Kroger's and a number of others, but for a lift to say we are a socially

responsible company. We're gonna do good by our drivers because that makes us more responsible American citizen. UM. I think is is not just reassuring, but it's inspiring to hopefully the rest of the corporate community. Are there any industries just quickly here that are suffering right now as a result of reduced immigration to the United States. Oh, the

list can go on and on. Um uh. You know, so if we want to maintain three percent GDP as a nation, we've got to figure out our immigration system. We need a functioning legal immigration system that provides adequate labor for the agricultural sector, not just seasonal but year

round labor like the dairy industry, UM, the service sector, hotels, um. Processing, but interestingly, even the manufacturing sector in the middle of America, they are you know, really scrambling for not just labor at large, but you know, the folks that can do the advanced manufacturing. UM. So it's us very easy for this conversation becomes political and a kind of a war

of talking points. But when you look at the data, when you talk to families and business leaders at the local level, they're saying, you know, what we need a functioning immigration system their folks. Ali Rani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum in Washington, d C. Joining us here in New York for the Bloomberg Business of Equality

Summit held it the headquarters here. Really interesting to hear about immigration when whenever we talk to corporate leaders, they all talk about how they do kind of rely frankly on people coming in in order to fill their ranks. As automation in high tech continues to rise across the economy, workers must continuously retrain to remain competitive. To help us dig into this growing issue, we welcome Jake Schwartz Jacobs, co founder, chief executive officer of General Assembly. He joins

us here in New York at our headquarters. Jake, thanks very much for joining us. I wonder if you could give us a sense of kind of the skills gap that we hear about a lot. As technology continues to permeate throughout the economy, a lot of workers feel displaced in The technological gap is often cited. What what is going on out there in the economy and in our business. Is doing the right thing to retrain? Yeah? Well, um, I mean that's a big set of questions really, because

we're talking about essentially the entire economy UM. I think I think we can sort of divide it up into a couple of core issues. I would say probably the biggest is that almost every company, regardless of industry, regardless of location or size, UM, regardless of how previously sort of dominant and competitively advantaged it was UM, is now sort of faced with a serious UM mandate to transform themselves into a software company, a data com company, a

cloud company, UM. Mostly because the threat and opportunity that those technologies UM offer right now are so fundamentally large that it is if they don't take it, there's an opportunity for new entrance to come in and eat their lunch. So if you look across consumer, industrial, financial services, mining, I mean, you name it, there is some sort of digital transformation at a foot that is become sort of a fundamental existential question for that company, and they need

people to do that. Now. What's funny about this is that UM, because you know, while these changes have always happened in the past, and there's been upheavals, creative destruction, all that stuff in capitalism, it's all great, UM. The reality is, I'm not sure if ever, before every industry and every company of those industries have been searching for the exact same types of talent at the exact same times, and so you can almost think of a it's like a run on the banks, right, but it's the run

on the data scientists. Yeah, I mean, And that's basically what General Assembly does, right, is that you retrain We do people in data science, right, data science, software engineering, product management, ux design, all of these skills that are sort of so new, um, but so important to be able to actually make the stuff that allows you to be a digital company or a software company or a

data driven decision making company. And we certainly hear CEO say all the time that they struggle to find the workers that have the skills that they need to fill the jobs that they have. My question is is it enough to simply teach data science to somebody or to give them specific wrote skills, or is there something fundamentally amiss in sort of the whole education system that leaves people unable to do certain things, that leaves a limited

pool of people who are able to complete the tasks. Um. Well, I tend to opt for the viewpoint that most humans have pretty elastic brains and can learn different things. Now, perhaps that's a different levels and there's different levels of interest and engagement for different individuals around different subject matter and that's fine. But um, at the same time, yes,

there is something fundamentally wrong with our educational system. And I mean, when we're talking about skills gap, I mean I just have to worry how much is just sort of like this there is. But we have lived in a century where UM education was not particularly that the infrastructure of education. The institutions were not really held accountable to UH, Corporate America or the labor markets to say,

are you giving us what we need? Are you being And they weren't being held accountable by the students themselves either. They weren't being held accountable really by their main customer, which for the most of the time was the government, right who was the payer for for all of this stuff. So there was a huge accountability gap. Now that doesn't mean that all that education is fully wasted. It's just

dramatically inefficient. And I think you see that all the time. Um, when I went to liberal arts called I went to a fancy liberal arts college, thought I was learning all this great stuff, But I remember, whenever I get really interested in learning a skill because like a you know, a job I wanted outside would would have it. I would ask, like a professor, hey, where can I go learn that here? And and it would always be, oh, we don't do practical skills. It's this like taboo thing. No, no, no,

we're not here to do practical stuff. And it was almost like this sign of of being down in the gutter with the people if you were if you were teaching practical things right, vocational schools for people who couldn't hack it in algebra class, right. And And I think that mentality was what when we started General Assembly back in two thousand and ten, what was what we were

trying to sort of attack head on. And we were trying to build the something that was sort of a mix of vocational training from a para paradigm perspective, but with the sort of branding and social cachet of graduate school so that bowl wouldn't be afraid to sort of come to do it. And we were, you know, surprisingly successful at it. Well, so, Jake, it didn't it didn't serve you too badly to go to the fancy liberal arts college. After probably will say J. Schwartz, co founder

and chief executive officer of General Assembly. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. I'm Lisa Abram Woyds. I'm on Twitter at Lisa abramwo wits one. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio