In this episode, we are headed to West Virginia to flip the script on what we know about the energy business in the heart of coal country. We introduce you to a new type of energy and a new type of business. Meet Solar Holler, the "benefit corporation" that addresses some of the toughest economic issues in West Virginia. Joseph "Joe" and Elizabeth Opoke are father-and-daughter descendants of miners who came to Marion County, WV in the turn of the 20th century. Their immigrant kin came from Hunga...
Apr 13, 2023•21 min•Season 3Ep. 4
In this episode, we head to Crete, Nebraska, America's heartland, in our quest to gain insight into the human cost of the meat we eat. We tell the extraordinary story of the "Children of Smithfield," the adult children of meatpacking workers at Smithfield Foods who stood up to Big Meat, the governor, and others in positions of power and authority to proclaim that their parents were not "expendable." These brave children stood up to meat producers whose callus and irresponsible response to COVID-...
Mar 29, 2023•19 min•Season 3Ep. 3
In this episode, we tell an almost surreal story. It is the origin story of "union busting" at Starbucks, one of the country's best-known progressive and socially-conscious companies, and the highest ranking food service company on the list of Fortune's Most Admired Companies . Our host Dr. Dawn Carpenter , a Starbucks shareholder, is encouraged by activist shareholder efforts to seek intervention at the board-level to remedy what a New York administrative law judge recently ruled to be "egregio...
Mar 15, 2023•23 min•Season 3Ep. 2
In our Season 3 kickoff, we celebrate the resiliency of the human spirit. We step into the psyche of Gina Schaefer, the founder and CEO of A Few Cool Hardware Stores in-and-around Washington, DC. Gina combined her entrepreneurial spirit and love of community into a space for people recovering from substance use disorder to rebuild their lives. One of Gina's former employees, Shane, shares a deeply personal story of being the gay son of a Pentecostal minister with broken dreams and a heart full o...
Mar 01, 2023•25 min•Season 3Ep. 1
To the loyal WDIP tribe, welcome back! We've missed you. Thanks for your patience as we re-vamped the show. We hope you like the changes. For those who are just finding us, thanks for giving us a listen. We're the podcast for those who think that there is a social and moral value in economic life. We believe in the power of the human spirit. Ultimately, we believe that each of us has choices to make. And we think one question can help. In the work we do, in the things we buy, in the investments ...
Feb 07, 2023•2 min
In this episode, Dr. Dawn is in conversation with Dr. Elisabeth Bik and Dr. Ivan Oransky . Dr. Elisabeth Bik is a microbiologist and scientific integrity consultant who has worked to call out fraudulent scientific papers. She became renowned in her fight against the bad science behind hydroxychloroquine as an effective therapy against COVID-19 that resulted in a global Twitter assault. Dr. Ivan Oransky is an accomplished journalist, editor, and educator who founded Retraction Watch , the world's...
Mar 09, 2022•36 min
As we head into the 4th of July holiday weekend, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation from October 2020 with The Assassin, famed short-seller Fahmi Quadir. Now that meme stocks are a thing and short-selling and hedge funds have made their way into social media lexicon, we thought it was time to take another listen. We'll be back in two weeks to share with you a conversation with Dr. Dawn and the folks at Hustlers for a Cause-- talking entrepreneurship and the soul of What ...
Jun 30, 2021•28 min
In this off-season episode, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation with Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) CEO, Lisa Mensah where we talked about the idea of "finance justice." The original conversation was released in December 2020. The work keeps pressing forward as OFN seeks to build coalitions of investors that believe that investing in people pays rich dividends by building lives of greater economic success. Special thanks to Peter Collins for sharing his soulful renditi...
Jun 09, 2021•18 min
This weekend is Memorial Day weekend-- the unofficial start of summer... at last! At What Does It Profit , we are officially in the "Off-Season" and busy cleaning house, tuning up, and otherwise getting ready for Season 3. During the off-season, we wanted you to get to know more about our host and the ethics work behind the show. We also want to introduce new listeners to insights from our back catalog in mini-episodes beginning in June. This week, we introduce you to our friends, Adaam and Vane...
May 25, 2021•37 min
We've reached the end of our second season. This is the time when we take a pause and look back. In today's episode, it means looking back to our pilot episode about shareholder activism and our Season 1 bonus episode called The Price of the Ecuadorian Chernobyl . This is the story of Chevron and the decades of oil dumping in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In this episode, we jump back into this epic David and Goliath story and get to know Steven Donziger , the human rights lawyer at the center of all o...
Apr 28, 2021•43 min
We've reached the last regular episode of Season 2. Hold on to your passport. We're still travelling. We start in New York and then head to India with Megha Desai. Megha is the former ad agency protégé, who after a decade in the business, answered the call of the ancient Indian philosophy of Dharma. She has energized a newly transformed family foundation into a leading voice for economically and socially marginalized women in India. Megha's amazing work has empowered women in ways that break thr...
Apr 14, 2021•40 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Despite being in the midst of a global pandemic, we're going to take a trip around the world. We're talking about the Economy of Francesco (EoF) with Paulo Santori, an economic historian in Rome and with Myrian Castello, a "human-right-to-dream" activist and facilitator in Brazil. EoF is a global youth movement inspired by Pope Francis and Saint Francis of Assisi whose members and their co-operators believe that now is the time to be bold and build an economic future worthy of our humanity....
Apr 07, 2021•39 min•Season 2Ep. 11
This week we stay in the co-op space a little longer and get a two-for-one. As an homage to Women's History Month, we talk with one of the most celebrated marketer of co-ops-- and one of less than a handful of women responsible for driving the development of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC. We talk with Roberta MacDonald, Senior Vice President for Brand Strategy at the Cabot Creamery Cooperative about life and the story behind of one of America's most beloved agricultural co-ops...
Mar 31, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This week, we're going to switch things up a bit. We are going to talk about the idea of inclusion, but from a slightly different perspective. We are going to learn all about economic structure called a co-op. Sure you likely have heard of housing co-ops, maybe even grocery co-ops… but do you know just how common they are? Let's talk co-ops with Casey Fannon, President of the National Cooperative Bank. Meet the WDIP Team at www.whatdoesitprofitpodcast.com , and meet our host at www.dawncarpenter...
Mar 24, 2021•21 min•Season 2Ep. 9
This week, we talk with Logan Scott, Manager for Diversity and Inclusion at The Walt Disney Company. Logan's work during Black History Month on the New York Times' 1619 Project inspired us. Logan talks about superheroes, diversity, equity, inclusion, and what it all means for business.
Mar 17, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 8
This week, we take storytelling to a whole new level. We learn that each of us is a "superhero" at something. We talk to the man whose Instagram feed has selfies with the Hollywood Superhero A-LIST. In some ways, we think of our guest today as a kind of superhero himself, building community where it's needed. Today, we talk with the legendary Gareb Shamus, former Chairman and CEO of Wizard Entertainment, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Ace Comic Con. #KamalaHarris #ReadAloud
Mar 03, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 7
The winds of change are blowing in corporate governance. Where will they take us? Time will tell. This week we have a shareholder perspective from a man whose name is well-known in the investor relations offices of many of the most well-known corporations in America. We like to call him a dean of the Shareholder Rights Movement, others like to call him a corporate gadfly. You decide: corporate gadfly or an inside progenitor of the next generation of capitalism. Shareholder Activist, James McRitc...
Feb 24, 2021•29 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In 2020, JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon's tenure at the helm of the Business Roundtable expired. But what about this whole new way of doing business? In 2021, shareholder activists put the stakeholder governance paradigm to the test, and JP Morgan said, no. The whole issue got us thinking. It's time for an update on this new vision for a stakeholder approach to corporate governance. We talk with someone very familiar with what's been going on, Reuter's corporate governance reporter, Jessica DiNapoli...
Feb 17, 2021•18 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In this episode, we're not talking about bulls or bears. We're talking about the big, fat elephant in the room. The finance industry is ethically-conflicted. We talk with JC de Swaan, hedge fund investor and Princeton finance ethicist, about Robinhood, Wirecard and a few other notable companies-- as a way to frame how to do finance better. The hope is to inspire the idea that finance can be a force for good.
Feb 10, 2021•27 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In this episode, we explore the idea that everyone who has retirement assets should have the ability to know where their money is invested and how it has an impact in the world. With knowledge comes power-- the power to make sound economic and moral decisions. Our guest is Congressman Andy Levin, Vice Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee and author of legislation that could make that happen.
Feb 03, 2021•31 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this episode, we're going to a difficult place. How do we as a society express-- or dare we say-- determine the value of a human life? The question itself forces us to make an important distinction between economic value and moral value. And to help us sort through this, we couldn't think of anyone better than the Special Master of the 9/11 Victim's Compensation Fund-- Ken Feinberg. He is arguably the world's leading expert mediator between the bank and the tragedy.
Jan 27, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 2
We start our second season with one of the most notorious narco money men in US history, Jorge Valdes. We hear the story of how a 10-year old Cuban refugee becomes the youngest person to work at the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami and who then goes on in the '70s and '80s to run the international operations of the Medellin drug cartel. Jorge is one of only a handful of the leadership from that era who is still alive to tell the tale-- and Jorge's story has lessons for all of us.
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In this special bonus episode, we revisit an issue we explored in the first episode of the season and talk with Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams about her work to engage with Chevron at its 2020 annual shareholder meeting, using her activist shareholder voice to urge for Chevron shareholders to be able to call special meetings to discuss significant issues affecting shareholder value. In this case, it happens to be the over $3 billion the company has spent evading is over $9 billion obligation...
Jan 13, 2021•27 min
Welcome to those who have just found us... and welcome back to our loyal WDIP listeners. This three minute trailer takes a tour through some of what we learned in Season 1 on our quest to explore the moral and social value of business. Season 2 promises introductions to voices you might never imagine on a business show. Think of it as Business Talk 2.0-- listen with your conscience. Join us for new episodes on Wednesdays. Season 2 launches January 20 2021.
Dec 30, 2020•3 min
In this episode, we rewind the clock to pre-COVID days and take an "audio" vacation to the Amalfi Coast of Italy. We talk with culinary entrepreneur Chiara Lima of the famed Mamma Agata Cooking School in Ravello. Family businesses can be found all over the world, and here in Italy the "happy hands" of the entire family are involved. Buon Natale... Saluti!
Dec 23, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode, we talk with CSR and sustainability legend, John Elkington. John takes us beyond his "people, planet, and profit" to the "U-bend" and on to the green swans that bring us regenerative capitalism. John is one of the world's leading futurists and is here with us to share his hopeful vision for the future.
Dec 16, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode, we talk with Lisa Mensah, President and CEO of the Opportunity Finance Network about "finance justice." We talk about how the struggle for justice in our country has much to do with money. We talk about the work of CDFIs (Community Develop Financial Institutions) and the role that they play in fostering economic justice in some of our nation's most challenged and disinvested communities. She offers a vision for a path forward and celebrates and encourages participation with some...
Dec 09, 2020•30 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, we talk with Cat Berman, CEO and co-founder of CNote , a specialty investment firm that seeks to turn idle savings into resources for change. Cat left her role at Charles Schwab to use her finance and investment skills to bring high-quality financial products to underserved markets. Cat discusses the transformative power of finance and the multiplier affect of strategic investments.
Dec 02, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In this episode, we talk with former BlackRock executive, Morris Pearl, about his crusade to enlist his fellow millionaires to support the idea that even the rich see it in their interest to pay more taxes. Capitalist to the core, Pearl warns critics not to conflate paying taxes and civic duty with the naughty scare-word: socialism....
Nov 25, 2020•32 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this episode, we talk with business ethicist Kirk O. Hanson about corporate misbehavior. He and co-author Marc Epstein posit a theory that not only are there bad apples, but there are also bad barrels-- and some industries are just ripe with bad orchards. In their book, Rotten: Why Corporate Misconduct Continues and What to Do about It , they tell the tales that end up inspiring corporate scandal documentaries on Netflix. But what they do that the documentaries don't is give a prescription fo...
Nov 18, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 7
