My guest today, Mellody Hobson, is a truly
inspirational leader. Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments
and Chair of the Board of Starbucks, she’s the first black woman to be chairperson of
an S&P 500 company, and the first black woman to head the Economic Club of Chicago. Throughout her career, Mellody’s called
for greater boldness when it comes to conversations about race and inequality. A national voice as well for financial interest
in the US, she’s currently aiding an investment project to bring more black executives and
minority executives to the top of corporate America. A very warm welcome to you to the podcast,
Mellody. Thank you so much for having me, I'm delighted
to be with you. Same here, Mellody. So, Mellody, you grew up in a large family
in Chicago, the youngest of six children to a hardworking single mom who was trying to
make ends meet in a hostile climate of racism and discrimination. You’ve described your mom, I think, as ruthlessly
realistic but someone who never gave up hope, ever. I think you are the last kid, many years behind
your siblings, so did you get most of the attention? Or on the contrary, did you have to figure
out everything by yourself? And what was the effect your mother’s outlook
had on you growing up? It’s so funny, I’ve told that story many
times about how I grew up with these five siblings that were so much older than me,
and no one has actually asked me that question about the attention. It’s a really interesting and thoughtful
question because when you’re the last, and as far behind as I was, what ends up happening
is you’re kind of on your own. I think that it actually ended up being this
great gift. I didn't get a lot of attention. I know that that sounds crazy, because I think
people think the baby gets all the attention. My siblings were adults when I was born, so
you can imagine that they weren’t that interested. They had their own lives, they were doing
their own thing. Of course. My mother had already had five children, and
so at this point it was “been there, done that.” I have a joke that I only have one baby picture. Oh wow. And I'm 9 months old in that picture. I'm not a baby, a newborn, there isn’t a
baby picture. So the attention issue wasn’t what you would
normally think of of the last child and the last child be very spoiled. But what it did do for me, and this is something
that I very much appreciate, didn't understand at the time but certainly do now, it made
me incredibly independent. Because one of the things that my mom did
was, anything I wanted to do, she would tell me, “You have to figure it out. You have to make it happen for yourself. I'm really busy, I’ve got all this stuff
going on.” But she didn't say it in a way of I don't
care about you, because she was very clear about her love and devotion to me. But she just put it on me to make it work
out. And to this day I think that was one of the
greatest gifts that I was ever given. So basically she empowered you since you were
a baby to figure out the next steps of your life all the time and you learned so much
I'm sure by doing, trying, making mistakes, and then going back to your mom from time
to time to check out. And she was just always just very pragmatic. She wasn’t a coddler. But at the same time I know it sounds crazy
because it’s two distinctly different personality traits, she was still very warm. And so I think as you grew up, I listened
and I learned that of course education was very important to you, and you are actually
an outstanding student. Your offer of places, of both Princeton and
Harvard, and obviously you picked Princeton, which was not necessarily the obvious choice,
I think, for most people at the time, as seen today maybe. And then you decided to join the financial
services industry. So why did you make that choice, both in the
way of Princeton versus Harvard, because that’s not trivial, and then how did you pick that
community of financial investors as a place to go, as a place to learn, as a place to
basically make sense of your life? Again, both great questions. So the first one, let’s do Princeton vs.
Harvard. So I'm this really devoted student, and I
tell people part of the reason that I was so focused as a student is I had a lot of
chaos in my life. We would get evicted, our phone would get
disconnected, our lights would be turned off. Sometimes we’d live in an abandoned building. And so as a result of that, the one thing
I could control was school. That was my environment. I could control my outlook, my output, and
I could control what happened there. So I became obsessive about controlling that
and getting good grades. That was very fulfilling to me and actually
made me feel empowered. Yes. The thing also, so now I'm coming down to
college, and I didn't have a family, we didn't travel, we didn't do anything like that. We didn't take road trips, we just weren’t
those people. And so when it was time to pick a school I
said to my mother, I have to see them. So we saved up whatever money we could, we
flew to the East Coast and we took a train up and down the East Coast to go and visit
schools. This was a big deal for us to do. Yes. And I always thought I would go to Yale, until
I visited Yale, and I just didn't think it was for me. You didn't like it. It’s an unbelievably great school but I
just didn't see myself there, which was a bit dramatic and traumatic for me because
I had for some reason envisioned this. We went to Princeton and that’s where I
felt, “I'm supposed to be here.” Which was counterintuitive because it was
in a suburb, not a city. I was from Chicago. And it seemed like I would go to a big city
like Columbia in New York or Harvard in Boston. We got to Columbia and my mom said – Columbia
at that time was sort of in a rough neighborhood and that has all changed in the last couple
decades – she was like, “We’re not getting out of the car,” with the cab. And then we went to Harvard and I have to
say, Harvard was amazing, beautiful, everything I thought of for a college. And my mother really started pushing Harvard. And the famous story that I tell is that she
kept saying, you can go anywhere in the world and say Harvard and it’s like saying Coca-Cola. She said, you could be in an African village
and everyone knows what Coca-Cola is. And she said, but Princeton is like Sprite. Oh, not even Pepsi. No, she said Sprite. She said Sprite is like an American drink. So she said, you know, it’s different. But ultimately I really give her a lot of
credit, because again she was very much, “this is your choice.” And so I made the decision to go to Princeton. And that was a decision that was great, and
there were a lot of people who influenced that decision. Bill Bradley and an alum named Richard Misner,
and there were a lot of people. The idea that they would focus on me so intently
to have me go to a school said a lot about how passionate they were about this school,
which meant it must be really special. Yes. Then getting to financial services, I told
you about how I grew up. Well, one of the things about the way I grew
up, I tell people I was desperate to understand money. I wanted to understand how it worked. It wasn’t about how much I would have. I wanted to live a comfortable secure life. And I thought the only way that I could do
that, because I didn't learn about money in my family, and in fact, my mom, for all of
her great strengths as a person she was terrible at money. Managing money. Because for a whole host of reasons. But because of that, that became another focus
of mine, that I wanted to be secure. So financial services, I tell people my calling
and my purpose in life was born out of my circumstance. Of course. Super clear and tells the inner motivation
to kind of master your destiny starting with financial security, it makes a lot of sense. So you get this very first job, and I think
it was an interesting interview process I learned about the way you got this job. And you’d been working at Ariel Investments,
which is America’s oldest black mutual fund firm since you left Princeton. John Rogers was the CEO of Ariel Investments
when you joined, and I think he’s been your mentor for many, many years. He made you president at the age of 31. Now he’s your peer, if I'm not mistaken,
as a co-CEO like yourself, but he’s also the godfather of your daughter, so very personal
as well. So tell us more about this very unique personal
relationship and partnership you built with John. What did you learn the most from him? And vice-versa, what do you think he learned
the most from you in return? Wow, there’s a lot there. I met John when I was 17 years old before
I went to Princeton. And then ultimately I went to Princeton and
he was a trustee of the university, and he would come and visit the school every quarter
for the trustee meetings. I'm a student and so sometimes he would stop
and say, “why don't I grab a coffee with you?” etcetera. And so we started this friendship. I'm 11 years younger than him. He was the class of ’80 at Princeton, I'm
the class of ’91. The firm had already been started. He started Ariel in 1983, and as you suggested
was a pioneer in the space, as well as a pioneer in investing in small and midcap US stocks. So he’s an unusual personality, he grew
up as an only child, and he had these remarkable parents. His father was a Tuskegee airman in World
War 2, the black fighter pilots, and his mother was the first black woman to graduate from
the University of Chicago law school in 1947. So these were remarkable people. And in the Chicago community I knew that they
were remarkable, and my mom had told me that John was this “wunderkind”, you know,
the “stock picking wunderkind,” even though the idea of stock picking etcetera wasn’t
something that was something that we knew about in my family. Yes. I get to know him and cultivate this relationship
with him that quite frankly I worked really hard to cultivate. I tell lots and lots of stories about being
a summer intern and sitting with him at MacDonald’s while he’d read the paper, and reading the
paper in the exact same order as him, to try to learn, and a whole host of things that
I did. I think what happened was, I was a really
willing student, really willing. And I was also someone he told me on my first
day of working at Ariel, he said, “You’re going to be in rooms with people who have
big titles and make a lot of money, but it doesn’t mean they have better ideas. I want to hear your ideas.” To me, that is the definition of inclusion. That is including someone in a conversation
and telling them you want to hear from them. He invited me to speak my truth – and I
say “my truth” because truth, that’s with a small t, not with a capital T, because
I was just learning and growing at that point. It was a pivotal monumental relationship. Other than my actual mother, and my husband,
John Rogers is probably the most consequential person in my life. And he did have a big effect on shaping me
as a person, how I viewed the world of investing, how I viewed being a leader, what kind of
company we wanted to have at Ariel. And then this idea that great people share
power, they don't hoard it. He shared power with me. He was always happy for my success. And then I was happy for his. He never felt that somehow my having the opportunity
to be big made him small, or vice versa. And it’s interesting, you ask about how
the relationship has involved, because John gave a speech recently, someone said to him,
he was asking about having mentored me, and he said, “Well, the interesting thing about
Mellody is I mentored her in the beginning and now she mentors me.” And I think that the roles did reverse in
terms of I started to push him on certain things as I got my sea legs and got very comfortable
and had my own vision of what I wanted. And we went through a role of mentor/mentee
to co-leaders, which is extremely hard to do, because it’s very hard for a mentor
to see you as a peer. But that did actually happen, which shows
what kind of person John is. Lastly I’ll finish this by saying in a way
that hopefully doesn’t sound inappropriate, but I say John and I, we’re like a married
couple where it gets better over time. We’ve been together for so long, but my
admiration and respect and love for him only goes up. And I think that allows us to be more successful
together in business. I think that’s why our company works as
well as it does and is able to grow and succeed. And we’ve defied all of the odds about co-leaders. Oh yes, bigtime. Very few companies have co-CEOs, but in our
world, it really works. It’s amazing, because indeed as you already
said, Mellody, I know only of a few companies that have tried co-CEOs, and it usually doesn’t
last long, actually. There’s always some people, emotional issues
happening at one point about big egos taking over the others. So I think it’s been a wonderful opportunity
for both of you. In essence, to finish, what do you think he’s
learning the most from you recently as a reverse mentoring process? He actually talked about that very recently
somewhere, and he talked about the fact that with me he feels that I had more of vision
around diversifying the business, diversifying our products, about that we could be in more
than one city. He always thought that we needed to be in
Chicago in one place working alongside each other, and he said that he really did see
my vision work in a way that he hadn’t anticipated. I think John and I are complimentary in that
we’re both very courageous leaders in our own way, but we offset each other. Where he’s sometimes more gentle and I'm
more tough it’s needed and vice versa. And I think the other thing where we have
actually made each other better is I think that he knows…because we have a genuine
love and respect for each other, I remember once we had a really big disagreement about
something, like really big, and it was probably one of our biggest disagreements. I was fighting hard for my point of view and
he was fighting hard for his, and he said, “Wait a minute, let’s stop.” And he said, “Listen, this is what I know
about you. I know that you love this company, I know
that you would do anything for it. I know that you want what’s best for it. And I also know that we just happen to have
different visions on this one thing. And it doesn’t mean that yours is bad and
mine is good, they’re just different. And since you know I want the best for the
company, and you know I would do anything for the company etcetera, this is no longer
emotional, it’s just about how we get to the best solution.” And I thought those were just very smart,
wise moments that really did shape how we even manage our differences. Because we’re rooted in the fact that we
want what’s best for the company and best for each other. I’d end by saying something that I just
think is very rare, that he did become chosen family. And even though we are not related – and
I had someone very recently say – especially in minority businesses, you often have families
that run the companies. But at Ariel we’re not related, and yet
we are chosen family in a lot of ways. And that is again highly, highly unusual. But we do see each other in that way, and
in our most difficult moments of our lives I think we’ve been great sources of comfort
and support. And in moments where we needed to have straight
talk and someone really push us, we’ve done that with each other from a perspective of
love. Very inspirational, joint leadership at the
top of a company for so many years, Mellody, in a way you’ve been reinventing I'm sure
yourselves, both of you, and reaching each other from tough moments and great moments
as well, so wonderful. I’d like to go back to I think one of the
passions you have since – and we understand why now, the early days – financial literacy. In 2009, you set about creating and hosting
your first TV show, “UN-BROKE: What you need to know about money.” Which led to regular appearances on the financial
segment of “Good Morning America”. With your TV work, you were teaching people
about money management, which is so important, obviously for a lot of people, particularly
those who never got any of that education. You know, in my podcasts, Mellody, I also
had the opportunity to meet with another guest, her name is Jeroo Billimoria, I don't know
if you know her. She’s a serial social entrepreneur from
India, she lives in the Netherlands, and she founded an organization called Child and Youth
Finance International. She’s a systems change leader, as we call
them in social enterprise, and she has basically shaped and changed policy in 175 countries,
worked 65,000 partners. Anyway, driving the same passion you have. So I’d love to understand your lens, your
point of view. Where it came from is very clear, it tells
your family context and why you had to take care of and understand that money muscle,
master it. But tell us more about how do we need and
what do we need to address that problem, starting in the US in your home country, but you could
explain of course your vision I'm sure to the world if that makes sense as well. I’ll start off with the fact that one of
the things I felt as a child when we were at our most vulnerable and financially insecure,
was literally physically ill. I had so much angst and worry and anxiety
about where would we live, what would happen to us. I knew more than any child should know about
bills being late and how much our phone was and rent and all of those things. And it created a cloud, you know, this heavy
cloud sort of lingered over my life during those years. So then I go and work at Ariel and I didn't
make a lot of money in the beginning, I made $35,000 a year, it seemed like a million,
because it was the first time I could know that I could pay my rent and my bills and
all of those things. And I saw the sky open up. I saw the clouds part. And I said, this is a different way to live. There’s so much more comfort and security
that I feel now that I never felt before. And I wanted that for other people. So then I said, how do we get there? Because here’s the problem that we have
in our society. I stumbled into the financial services world. I started to learn about money by doing at
an investment firm, and ultimately became a student of the markets in a way that I think
has made it virtually impossible for me not to hopefully make good financial decisions
over the long term because I’ve studied the best in the world. People like Warren Buffet, John Templeton
and others. But also what I would tell you is that I came
away with this real sense of devastation about the fact that we don't learn about money in
school – in America or basically anywhere else. Globally, yes. And in America I give the example that you
could take woodshop or auto, literally, a class on cars or whittling, and I always ask
people, who whittles in their spare time? No one. But not take a class on investing. And the reason that that is profound and really
important is because that class on investing ultimately has profound implications for the
rest of your own life, your ability to pass on money, wealth, any kind of security to
your family after you’re on this planet. And how you live while you’re here, especially
in those later years. And so the language of money to me needs to
be taught in the beginning. Like children who learn a language very early
on, we all know it’s easier to learn a language when you’re 5 than when you’re 15. And yet, we don't have these conversations. So I became really obsessed with this idea
of having money be a part of a childhood conversation. And it’s interesting, because parents today,
especially in the US when they’re queried on this, they would rather talk to their children…they
rank speaking to their children about sex and drugs higher than their comfort in talking
to their children about money, which is directly related to their lack of understanding. So the situation hasn’t changed today you
think in the US actually, despite not just your work, but many other organizations’
works happening? Or do you think you’ve started to move the
needle a bit? Very, very little. We started a school, because at Ariel we say,
“Don't admire the problem – do something about it.” And our school is over 25 years old. We have a saving investment curriculum, and
we give every first grade class $20,000 real dollars to invest, and the money follows them
through their grade school career with the kids taking over increasing responsibility
for managing it. People say to us, “What do you teach a first
grader about money?” We start with something as simple as barter. “Do you want a cupcake or a Pokémon card?” And the child really has to put a value on
one or the other, and you’re helping them to see how to value things as time goes on. And it gets more sophisticated over time where
they learn small cap, mid cap, they learn the indices, all sorts of things. But it is a conversation that can be had,
can be learned. And here’s the great thing: our kids ultimately
get homework that they take home that their parents end up sitting and learning from. So it has a ripple effect, a domino effect
in terms of a community. And the kids teaching their parents, actually,
financial literacy over time. But there's not enough of this. You know, the one off’s an anecdote, we
need systematic change globally. We need it in France, we need it in America,
we need it in Spain, the UK, etcetera. Because these concepts…the reason that we’ve
had the financial crisis, the setbacks that we’ve had in society etcetera, a lot of
it has to do with our lack of knowledge. Yes, that’s so true, Mellody. Maybe you can connect with Jeroo, who I was
talking about, and a few of those other global changemakers working the same issue, because
I think there’s so much to be done in that space. But wonderful to hear the way you can see
the change happening through the schools but at a much higher scale and urgency as well. Another moment I think of truth was one of
your key TED Talks. You had many TED Talks, but one of them I
think was watched by over 5 million people. And when you were making it almost a decade
ago, some friends warned you not to talk about race, arguing that it would make you a militant
black woman and hurt your career. But of course you ignored those friends and
you said, “We need to learn how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable race discussion.” You wanted to be unapologetically black and
unapologetically a woman. And you used this TED Talk as a platform to
call for people to be color brave and not color blind. Can you explain what you mean by those terms. For again, the global audience we have as
well, in the US, but outside of the US from the world, and give some concrete examples
of what is it to being color brave, what does it look like in terms of behaviors, attitude,
that you’d like to see happening more often in society? I think this applies to race, but it also
applies to other issues like religion, as an example, sexual orientation as an example. This idea of opening up your life to others. And the reason I talked about color blind
versus color brave, in America I was often confronted by people who would tell me that
they didn't see color. They’d say, “I'm color blind, I don't
even see it.” And so I started to really push back, because
I said, “In not seeing color, you’re not seeing that it’s missing in your life. You’re not noticing that you’re in this
homogenous room with all white men, or all white people, and you have no concept about
the rest of the society around us.” Shonda Rhimes, the great entertainment genius
that she is who’s done all the shows like Bridgerton and Grey’s Anatomy etcetera,
she once explained to me that she doesn’t use the term diversity, she uses the term
normal. I think this applies to many places around
the world where she talks about when you’re in major metropolitan cities – think London,
think New York, think Chicago, think Paris – she said, when you’re in these major
metropolitan cities, when you’re walking around the street there are people of all
walks of life, all race, all religion, all sexual orientation. You get into these towers and as you go up
the towers, the higher you go they get whiter and more male.” Or narrow. Now maybe that’s not true of India or China. But the idea that the orientation, the type
of person starts to become more homogenous. And so I said, what if instead of being color
blind, especially in the context of my experience in America, we could be color brave? Invite people into our lives who don't look
like us, who don't act like us, who don't think like us, and who don't come from where
we come from. Where we actually seek these people out in
our lives, and in so doing, expand our perspectives on what is possible, and ultimately open up
our own thinking, and ultimately make us more tolerant. I think if that were to happen we wouldn't
have wars. We wouldn't have so many of the things that
we have, the kind of situations that pit people against each other, that shut people out,
that ostracize them in certain environments, because we would have more of an understanding
of who they are, what they believe, and why they believe what they believe. And you can be someone who doesn’t believe
what I believe, but I can still engage with you and have conversations with you and learn
from you. And that’s the goal of this whole perspective,
and that’s the idea of being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Generally we want to surround ourselves with
people, ideas, situations that make us comfortable, but that’s not where we grow. I think it’s so strong in terms of the construct,
but it’s also, as you know very well, so hard to in a way push, motivate people from
all walks of life as well, to seek for that diversity of opinion of people in their lives
day-to-day. We’ll come back to that later, Mellody,
when it comes to boards of large companies, which is a starting point; when it comes to
investment function, another lever in your hand actually, to make a change. But it’s such a big deep societal mindset
change that needs to happen, so it would be great to discuss further. I know you’ve been impressing many people
around you all along your life, and it’s inspiring many people, Mellody. One example among many I’ve heard talking
about you is Sheryl Sandberg, right? Who said that you inspired her to write her
best-selling book, Lean In, and that her life was altered by meeting with you, actually. So let me ask you the following question,
because I know you like also the movie world, especially a special one. What is Mellody Hobson’s super Jedi power? Because you have a super Jedi power, I'm sure. I know you have. What is it, and how, if I can expand on that,
how did you learn about your very special strengths. And then how have you been able to build on
your strengths, which many people don't do necessarily, over time, to build that incredible
self-confidence and the ability to drive that success and impact you have in your life. So let’s start with the super Jedi power
of Mellody – what is it? I think I have a couple of superpowers. I think one is that I'm a very, very strong
communicator. I'm able to have an idea and to express it
in a way that I think can inspire and move people. And I think in my communication skills I can
do it in a way that doesn’t create a fighting words kind of environment. And so I think that without capitulating in
terms of my point of view. So I'm very strong in my point of view, but
also, the give and take is very exciting to me. That is something that I think some people
have a strong point of view and then winning at all costs becomes the way that they want
to engage with you, and they’re waiting to speak just to tell you why you’re wrong. I do, I think I stay open to perspectives,
I'm looking for better ideas. I often tell people, my board, when we go
to them for presentations etcetera, I bring the idea to them and then I says “shred
it”, like “destroy this idea and tell me why I'm wrong.” I'm open to that kind of feedback. I think the other superpower that I have is,
I had a friend who said this to me, that I'm non-threatening and I'm not threatened. I'm very comfortable with all sorts of people. So even though my personality can be such
that people will say that I'm intimidating, I don't feel that way. I feel like I try to connect with people at
all levels, all walks of life, because I am them. I see myself in the eyes of a regular person
who’s trying to make their way in the world, because that’s what is imprinted on me as
that sort of ten-year-old girl and where my family was. When I look in the mirror, that’s who I
see. I don't see any of the other stuff. There’s that joke that people who lose a
lot of weight, they look in the mirror and they still think they’re fat. I still think I'm ten and that we’re not
going to make it. And so being that person just gives me a different
level of empathy, I think, with other people. A willingness to share that I think makes
me less insecure. I think sometimes the need to be dominant
etcetera comes from a point of insecurity. I think this idea of how did I learn of my
strs and how did I build on them – I practiced. So you talked about my time on television. I would just wake up to do Good Morning America
at 4 in the morning, I’d wake up at 3 or 2 and I just practiced and practiced and practiced. Prepped. I’d get in the car where a driver would
drive me to the studio and I’d run through my script with the driver. Just anyone driving me in the car. And I’d say, “What don't you understand
that I’m saying?” Because I wanted the driver in the car, the
cab driver, whomever it is. And they would think I was crazy. I'm like, “I'm doing this segment on TV
on this topic and I'm going to read it back and forth. I’m going to pose the question and then
answer it, and tell me if you understand. If you don't understand what I'm saying, tell
me.” I did that so many times. Hundreds if not thousands of times of being
on TV for 20 years. And then lastly I think, where does the confidence
come? This one is easy for me. My confidence comes from being studied. When I am studied in my subject matter, I
am very confident. When I was on television there was someone
who would watch all of the segments, and they’d say whenever they thought I was unsure – and
I'm trained to hear this in myself – he said, your voice quivers just a little bit. And he’s like, “The average person can’t
hear it, but we’re experts and we can hear your voice quiver.” I learned to hear my voice quiver. And then in hearing my voice quiver, I knew
when I wasn’t at the top of my game, and that I needed to know something and do more
work on an issue. And that became like a really great tell for
me for myself, of “you need to get stronger on this subject.” So the stronger I got on subjects, the less
quivering occurred, if that makes any sense. It makes tons of sense, and I love the way
you described, you painted a picture, Mellody, about your strengths and what you’ve been
learning perpetually on your strengths, practicing. Actually, you have to work super hard on your
strengths all the time. You should never take that as a given I think,
exactly as you said, practicing with the taxi driver at 3:00 AM in the streets of Chicago
or New York I guess it was. And it’s wonderful to see in a way where
you came from is you propagate that through the connection you have with people, creating
that empathy and creating that openness of embracing the other’s point of view to bring
them together, to move somewhere together, depending of course on the topic of discussion
at the board level as much as in the car as well. So wonderful way, it actually resonates very
much with me on positive leadership, it's the first circle, where we talk about myself
and the way I get to know myself, I become more self-aware, more self-confident, and
I drive all my positive energy from physical to cognitive to social emotion I have, and
to kind of master that. I don't know if that’s the proper word,
but to manage it properly so that whenever I connect with anyone – the taxi driver,
a foreigner on the street as well as a CEO of that large company, I connect in a deep
authentic way, and I'm propagating that inner positive energy I have in myself, if that
makes sense for you. It does. I call it confident humility. Yeah, I love that. Those are the two words I put together on
that. And the other thing I should say, the one
way that I think I’ve built on my strengths, I call it radical accountability. Wow, radical accountability! To really be intellectually honest with myself
and hold myself accountable for what I don't do well. I think a lot of people make excuses. I do agree. It’s easy for all of us, I would say, to
make excuse for mistakes or challenges we didn't handle well. Let me build on that facilitating discussion
about again your mindset. You’ve said you’re not a victim; instead
you try to be a victor. You have to decide how you’re going to show
up in your life. At one point you said, “I’ve used some
of my differences as a way to stand out and to hopefully count and matter and hopefully
create an opportunity for others.” So I’d love to understand the way you’ve
been learning along your life, Mellody, in particular the way you learn through feedback. Including what I'm calling “tough love”,
right? We all have sometimes tough love moments with
people we love the most, actually, or sometimes people we don't even love, actually. And how have you learned through the loop
of feedback from others? And how are you yourself giving feedback to
other people, because I'm sure they expect a lot from you as well, or maybe not. But I know this is an art, so tell us about
the art of getting the feedback, learning the feedback, and providing your feedback
to others. This is a big issue and it’s one that I
think is very important and I think it’s how you grow as an individual. Feedback has been very, very important to
my development. And one of the things, you’re not entitled
to feedback in your life. My friend Enbee Samoya said that to me once. “You don't have a right to it.” So when you get it, it’s a gift. Instead of thinking I'm entitled to feedback
that someone’s supposed to tell me, I have to invite that into my life. And I invite that into my life all the time
with my friends, with my family etcetera. I think a lot of people walk through the world
with blind spots, and they have people around them who enable them to have those blind spots
exist in a way that is detrimental to them. I do not want to be one of those people. I genuinely and with every fiber of my being
mean that, because I’ve been with so many people where I’ve seen that, and I'm like,
“Why won’t anyone tell them?” This is like holding them back. It’s keeping them from being their best
self. It’s keeping them from being well liked,
whatever it might be. And so this idea of learning through feedback,
I can give you chapter and verse of story after story of where feedback has caused me
to shift. I give the story of Bill Bradley, the great
Hall of Fame basketball player and US Senator who I met when I was 17 years old. I'm starting out my career, I stayed in touch
with him. He’s a big figure in the world, ran for
President of the United States. And I'm in my early 20s. And he said, “You know, Mellody, you could
suck the life out of a room.” I'm in my 20s, I'm sitting having lunch with
him, and I am telling myself as I'm sitting listening to him, “Don't cry.” Because that is like what I felt like. I could feel the emotion welling up in me
and the idea that the tears were going to come. And I'm like a ball hog. And he said, “You could be a ball hog.” He’s like, “You really could dominate
at the expense of really, you know, shutting out other voices, that’s your personality.” And so I sat there and I was just really taken
aback. And he says, “It’ll be interesting to
see if you can realize yourself and to be a fully developed person.” And I was like “Well, how can I be that?” And he says, “It’s not that easy. We don't know.” So I walked away from that and I was deeply
reflective. I'm like, this person loves me, they’re
not saying this to hurt me, what can I do with this? So I actually literally did tips, I developed
strategies for taking all conversation as much as possible off of me when I was in certain
situations and throwing them on the other people. And I did that always by asking questions. Something as simple as someone would send
their assistant down to pick me up in the lobby to go up to their office. In the elevator, “How long have you worked
here? Where do you live?” You know, this, that and the other. I would know ten things about the person before
I got upstairs. And again, you’re making it about them,
not making it about you. And doing that over and over again, because
I found people love to talk about themselves. Of course. So inviting all of those questions I'm not
a ball hog, and instead they feel that you really care and are interested in them. And that was something that just really helped
me. The other thing about feedback is, I can tell
you the moments where it’s been really, really critical in my life. I give one other story, I’ll give it very
quickly. My husband – and I joke I married Yoda’s
dad, I'm married to George Lucas – I was on the phone with him one day, I was at a
dinner in Chicago, he was out west in California, and I was giving a speech. And there was a woman who walked up to me
and she said, “I just want to let you know that in the middle of your speech I'm going
to have to get up and leave, I don't want you to think I'm being rude.” And this was someone who had never been very
nice to me at all, and had always been rude to me. And so my response to her when she said this,
she said, “I'm going to get up, I don't want you to think I'm being rude” I said,
“Well, why would it be any different than you normally are?” Whoa. Touché. I am so proud of myself and I called George
and I told him this story, and he responds like in just a dead, you know, pan way, not
being harsh but being true. He said, “Oh, so you decided to be small
too.” Wow. I will never forget that. For sure. And I hung up the phone and I was like, wow,
I decided to be small too. And that’s something that is helpful. Someone loves you enough to tell you. And then they actually shift who you are. Everyone else is like high fiving me, “she’s
such a jerk,” you know, this, that and the other. And he was like, “You decided to be small
too.” That’s a gift. Of course it is a gift. That comment changed my life. I love it. I love the two stories, and I'm sure you have
many others, Mellody, on both sides, actually, of the feedback loop as well, that you got
and you give and provide as well. I can tell you on the flipside of the feedback,
this is what I’ve learned, and it’s something that is actually hard for me, because I really
do want the feedback but I’ve learned everyone doesn’t want it. It’s like, really? I know that as well for a fact, yeah. And that’s hard. You’re giving it to them and you’re not
being harsh, it’s just like “here’s some facts.” It is, but the art of learning that, you’re
right, in terms of getting the person to understand that you’re here to help her grow, as opposed
to diminish her, to attack her personally, but to have a deep consciousness of what the
opportunity is for her or for him, that’s such an art, that’s so critical. So I love the gift you are making to our listeners
to seek for the feedback. Because if you are not seeking the feedback,
you’ll never get it. And when you get a feedback which is too superficial,
ask for depth into the feedback. Don't accept like – Can I say one other thing? Yes, please. You don't put conditions on feedback. So what happens, a lot of people, they say,
“Well, I don't like that person,” so therefore they dismiss it. “I don't respect them.” They dismiss it. We actually have a saying at Ariel, “You
take feedback from whomever, wherever, whenever.” You know, you don't decide because you like
the person that the feedback matters to you or doesn’t. You’re asking yourself, no matter who it
is, what – instead of dismissing it – what could be true about what this person is saying. Maybe there’s no truth there, but you start
from the position of there’s some truth there. Yeah, it’s so true. Let me shift gears, Mellody, if you don't
mind, based on all this incredible learning, feedback loop you had in your life, and you
keep having them I'm sure, like I do enjoy as well myself. I’d like to come back to this challenge
and opportunity you see where today only six black CEOs see that they have Fortune 500
companies, barely making 1% of that group, which is a tiny amount. And in 2020, in the wake of the police killing
of George Floyd, I think your response to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, you came
up with a very special plan called the Project Black, which is the first Private Equity initiative
or investment. Tell us more about where and how you shaped
the plan, where this idea came about the plan, and what you’re going to do with that investment
to change corporate America or global corporate world as well? During the civil unrest that was occurring
in our country, the summer of the murder of George Floyd, the vicious murder, Jamie called
me – I'm on the board of JPMorgan – and he said, “You know, Mellody, a lot of people
want to help black business.” And he was toying with some ideas of bringing
together black investment firms like mine. And he said, “Ariel could be a part of this,”
and he started naming firms. And I kept saying to him, “Jamie, that firm
is out of business, they’re gone, nope, don't exist.” And it made the point of where we were as
a society. And I said, “I think I have an idea.” My idea was born of a perspective that there’s
an emphasis around the world that in order to spur and grow minority businesses or emerging
markets, whatever you may, what have you, that this access to capital becomes fundamental
to the growth of the business. My co-CEO John Rogers always used to say to
me, “Access to capital is important, but access to customers is more important.” And I gave the example as I sat there and
thought to myself, if you have a fist full of receivables, JPMorgan will lend you money. So I said, “How do we create a world in
which we can bring capital and customers together to scale change in our society around black
and brown businesses, and therefore help narrow the wealth gap that exists in this country,
in America specifically?” Because, 95% of minority businesses, that’s
businesses run by black or Hispanic leaders, those businesses have less than 5 million
dollars in revenues. 95%. At the same time during the George Floyd summer
of unrest, a lot of corporations were saying that they were literally trying to diversify
their vendor list both literally and figuratively. Literally, because of the supply chain’s
disruptions because of Covid, and figuratively because they were not diverse in terms of
the types of suppliers that were supplying them with their needs. So I said, “What if we create an opportunity
for these black and brown businesses to be scaled to be tier one suppliers?” Because the problem that we have is that if
you have 95% of these businesses have less than 5 million dollars in revenues, they’re
not big enough to do business with the giants. In the scale, yes. For the large guys, yeah. So the idea would be that we would go and
buy these businesses that may not be black or brown when we buy them, but my word, they
become “minoritized” through our ownership. Businesses between $100 million and a billion
dollars in revenue where we install at the C-suite level at least one black or brown
leader who’s CEO, CFO, COO, a majority minority board in the US, and then also where we would
also seek to share equity throughout the organization, and when at all possible, where there’s
opportunity for growth of expansion of those businesses, to do so in disadvantaged minority
communities. So again to bring the opportunity to communities,
and again, from that perspective, help narrow the wealth gap in this country. We called it “Project Black” because I
wrote this memo to Jamie, and in the spirit of investment banking I gave it a pseudonym. But I thought, that’s a good enough name
for the endeavor. And so the fund which just closed is called
Project Black. I think you just closed $1.4 billion dollars,
right? 1.45. 1.45, so let’s be precise, sorry. Very sizeable. I love the way you think about not just access
to capital, but actually also to people leadership, changing the mindset and the types of leadership
we have in companies, and customers. At the end of the day it’s about selling,
driving also that supply chain at a much higher scale. I know our time is counting, Mellody, just
the last couple of questions. You also sit in clearly a number of boards,
including of course being the only black woman as a chairwoman of Starbucks, chairwoman of
Starbucks, and the only one I think is still in the top 500 Fortune companies. Not the first though, I'm the second. Ursula Burns was the executive chair of Xerox,
I'm the first non-executive chair of a Fortune 500 company as a black woman. Sorry. Thanks. Thanks for the precision. So what are the three steps that CEOs and
chairmen and Board of Directors, shareholders, should take to change this? Well, first of all I think…I keep saying
that we have to put elbow grease behind the lip service. There’s a lot of lip service around this
of stating intentions. But as Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is
no try.” This is the one area where leaders are often
trying to get credit for just an effort as opposed to results, and I think we have to
hold ourselves accountable in terms of results, in terms of diversity in the C-suite, amongst
executive leadership teams, in terms of diversity amongst suppliers. Are we fair and equitable in the ability of
companies to do business with those businesses? And I think also at the same time, really
just using that example that I gave with John Rogers inclusion, really making a commitment. I give a story about one of our friends was
running a big city newspaper and they were doing a special edition for an anniversary
of the city, I think it was the 100th anniversary. And it was a majority minority city, meaning
that the vast proportion of the city in this country was either black or Hispanic. And in that situation he assigned one of his
best reporters to do a special section for this 100th anniversary. And when the reporter came back he said it
was the only time he had ever stopped the presses at the company. Because once he got the special section as
a courtesy thrown on his desk when it was done, he opened it up and he leafed through
it and not one person in the special section that was highlighted was black or brown, and
so he stopped the presses. And he said he knew that the reporter was
a great reporter, it was two reporters in fact. He said there was nothing about them that
was inherently biased, they were just writing based upon their own personal experience. And it led him to ask a very simple question
and I think all companies could ask themselves this question: Is everyone in the room? So he said he realized that if he had had
more people in the room when that special section was being put together, it would have
come out very differently, more voices and more representation would have been there,
and it would not have been so one-sided, and therefore not really reflecting the society
that they lived in. And so I ask CEOs to say when they’re in
there with their strategy teams or making big decisions or whatever it is that they’re
doing, is everyone in the room? I love that statement, and I'm afraid this
is going to be your last question, Mellody, because I know you have to move. My very last question. You and George Lucas are building an amazing
museum of narrative art. Which is all about storytelling across many
kinds of arts and disciplines. My last question is more about, what is the
most important story you want to tell, not to the world, but to your daughter, Everest? What is the story you want to leave with her
in terms of, I'm not saying your legacy, but in terms of basically the most important probably
story you want to leave with her? I’ve thought about this a lot, and so first
I want her to be kind. I want her to be someone who cares about other
people. That is really, really, really important to
me. The second thing that I tell her is based
upon what my mom used to tell me, but I’ve amended the way that I say it. My mother used to tell me that “Mellody,
you can be or do anything.” I believed her. What I say to Everest now is, “Everest,
you can be or do anything, but I want you to believe that is true of anyone and everyone. I want when you look out into the world, whoever
you see, from a cab driver, to a janitor, to the lunch lady, to a CEO, to an anchor
person on television, that you believe all of them can be or do anything as well.” I think if we have that lens through which
we view society we’d be much more open to people and all of their possibilities. I love that signature, Mellody, and I enjoyed
so much your discussion today. Thank you so much, again, a thousand thanks
from Paris to you, and I wish you a wonderful day and a wonderful life and lives. Thank you so much, Mellody. Thank you.
