Empowering Leadership: In Conversation with Women Leading Marriott

Julian Lute:

Our first guest is the former chairman and chief executive officer of BET Networks, a media and entertainment subsidiary of Viacom that owns and operates BET Networks and several other ventures. She's had a front row seat to the explosive growth of cable television during her 32 years at bet and her perspective on media and the ever changing consumer landscape make her a valuable member of the board of Marriott and as well as a civic leader in her community. Please join me in welcoming Debra Lee. Nice to see you.

Debra Lee:

Thank you.

Julian Lute:

You can sit at the very end. All right. Our next guest is devoted to opening doors for women, encouraging and empowering them across all disciplines and levels. She recognizes that diversity and inclusion is a strategic business imperative and she ensures that Marriott's commitment to a culture of inclusion because she works to increase female and minority representation across key roles in the organization. She's also a 2020 For All Leadership Award nominee and honoree and I had the pleasure of getting to know her at the gala this week on Monday or Tuesday. So join me in welcoming Julie Caldwell.

Julian Lute:

Stephanie Linnartz is one of the most influential players in the travel, leisure and lifestyle space. In her role as global chief commercial officer, Stephanie is focused on the blend of technology and human touch throughout the travel journey to deepen customer loyalty. Stephanie is responsible for all aspects of brand management, sales, marketing, revenue management, digital distribution, consumer insights and innovation, as well as an information technology worldwide. So join me in welcoming Stephanie Linnartz.

Julian Lute:

What an opportunity. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you for taking the time to be with us this week. We're extremely honored to see you all on our stage and I'm excited for folks out there to actually hear your stories. So I thought we could start the conversation by talking just a little bit about your backgrounds. Stephanie, I know that your parents owned and operated a boutique hotel in Capitol Hill in Washington and several restaurants. So you and your five siblings supported those operations. Tell us a little bit about the responsibilities you had and how that unique experience shaped your interest in management, directing a team and ultimately working in hospitality.

Stephanie Linnartz:

Sure. I'd be happy to. Well, good morning everyone. Great to see you. So yeah, so my family owns and operates a small hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and as you noted, has had a lot of restaurants over the years, including Washington, D.C.'s oldest Irish restaurant and bar called The Dubliner right across the street from Union Station. If you're a Washingtonian, you may have heard of it. But I did grow up in the business I've done about every job you can do in a hotel. I've cleaned rooms, I've worked the front desk, I've worked in the restaurant, I've done it, I've done it all in. And so from a very young age, I loved the hotel business and I particularly loved just the aspect of being with people and given the location of my family's business, it was on in D.C. It was a lot of people from around the world.

Stephanie Linnartz:

So I've got the opportunity to grow up meeting people from all around the world and it was fantastic. I think that it also was a very good reminder for me how really hard the hotel business is, the restaurant business, the service industry, it's a 24/7 operation. And so I learned at a young age the value of hard work and just taking care of people. And so that's been my life. And when you grow up in Washington, D.C., You're honored to work for Marriott, which started in Washington, D.C. As a nine-silver beer stand. So my dream growing up really was to work for Marriott. And so I got my dream.

Julian Lute:

See, dreams do come true.

Stephanie Linnartz:

Dreams do come true.

Julian Lute:

That's wonderful. Thank you. Julie, I know you had an hearing disability as a child and you didn't want to wear a hearing aid. So in 6th grade I heard that you competed in a oratorical competition and won with a speech called Promise Yourself. You realized then, I've heard, that you had something to say. Tell us about that experience and how that may have helped you gain confidence that even with hearing loss that you could be a leader.

Julie Caldwell:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Well, good morning everyone and I'm honored to be here with all of you. Yes, that's true. I have a hearing disability and growing up didn't want to wear a hearing aid. I was always a good listener as we know that's a key competency of leadership. So listening for me, even with a hearing disability or maybe because of it was something that came naturally. I was always intently paying attention to what people had to say, but speaking and presenting and being the one to be heard in a group, that to me was something that was out of my reach as both a girl growing up as well as somebody with a hearing disability until I met Mr. Eubanks.

Julie Caldwell:

He was my 6th grade teacher and he saw none of that in me, but rather saw potential and saw the interest that I had in growing as a human being. So he encouraged me, he coached along the way. We worked on my speech together, we practiced together and the experience was completely invigorating and more than having something to say, which was also very exciting. People were listening and I had something to say about a topic I was really, really passionate about, but it also gave me the confidence to say, if I see something ahead of me that looks like something I'd like to do that nothing is stopping me. There was a great experience-

Julian Lute:

That is beautiful.

Julie Caldwell:

... even today, many years later.

Julian Lute:

That is beautiful. And does anyone else remember the teacher or the person in their life that kind of helped them break out of the shell? If you remember that 6th grade or 1st grader college teacher that helps you break out of your shell, can you make some noise? Thank God for teachers. Thank you for sharing.

Julian Lute:

Now, Deborah, your father was in the army and I know you moved around a lot growing up until you finally settled in Greensboro, North Carolina. But at that time it was a segregated South and in 6th grade you were elected class president. And from then on, I think you've never looked back. Tell us about how your childhood shaped you and inspired you to want to create opportunities for change.

Debra Lee:

Great. Well, good morning everyone. I'm delighted to be here. I was just marveling when Julie was talking about 6th grade. I was like, "That was my pivotal year also. How did that happen?" But I don't remember who my teacher was, isn't that funny? It was the students that that turned my life around. And as you said, we moved around a lot when I was a child. So you didn't get comfortable anywhere because you knew in two more years you were probably going to move. And I don't know if it was that experience that made me shy, but I grew up as a very shy child. Now, they call it being an introvert, that wasn't a common name then. And so I was always withdrawn. I mean I was comfortable in smaller groups, but like Julie said, talking in front of groups really just scared me to death.

Debra Lee:

And so when I was in the 6th grade class, it was my first week of school in Greensboro and the kids elected me class president. And I don't know if you remember that commercial, Give It To Mikey. I don't know if I was Mikey in that situation that they were like, well, she doesn't know any better, make her class president or if they saw some leadership traits in me, I don't know. But it did change my life and being in an all black school for the first time was very supportive. I had teachers that believed in us we have parents that believed in us and we were told we could do anything we wanted to do. And even though the town was segregated, we didn't want for anything. We had doctors and lawyers on our other side of town, we had a black bank and we just go to market street, which separated the town into black and white.

Debra Lee:

And we knew there was another side on the other side of Market Street, but we never had any reason to go there. We even had our own hospital actually down the street from my house. So I did become more outspoken as I went through the years until I got to high school. And one of the first times I was outspoken in my family against my father, which was not an easy thing to do because he was a major in the army. So you didn't disagree with him if you worked for him or if you were in his family. But he was one of the parents who sued the school system to integrate. He joined with the NAACP and they filed to make sure the schools integrated. And at the time, we were pretty naive and didn't understand that separate but equal did not work.

Debra Lee:

So we were having Save The Black School rallies in my high school and we would get up in the middle of class and walk out on the streets. So that was the first time in my life that I really disagreed with my father. So that was a big turning point for me. And then from a Dudley High, I went to Brown University, which was an amazing change for me. But I think the reason I was able to be successful is that I had that background and had all the basics and had a lot of confidence in myself. I still didn't like speaking in public, my voice still quiver years later, but I did have more confidence.

Julian Lute:

That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So Julie, I'm going to come back to you. I know that you rose through the ranks and you have been key in the evolution of Marriott's women's professional development group called JEWEL, which is joining exceptional women & engaging leaders. Tell us how that program came to life and what the impact has been on the women leaders in the organization.

Julie Caldwell:

Yeah. JEWEL is an amazing program. It is a collection of women leaders who focus on networking. We assign mentors to the leaders, they go through philanthropic exercises benefiting the community, and of course there are competencies, skills where we bring in speakers and other experts to speak with our women leaders. And many of you work for companies in a Great Place To Work that have similar experiences and similar programs with women's leadership. I think the most exceptional thing about JEWEL is that it's completely grassroots. I work in the field, I work with our hotels and our leaders across the United States and in the Western region. And those are passionate about developing women.

Julie Caldwell:

So although our headquarters develops fantastic programs and great guidelines and opportunities for women, the JEWEL program really came from grassroots. It comes from restaurant managers and front desk managers and the occasional HR professional as well. So that's what's really exceptional about JEWEL. And so along the way, of course, folks have developed their careers, some from the benefits of the JEWEL program. We recognize those individuals along the way. But I think more importantly than anything, JEWEL has created a community in our different markets where women leaders can come together and support each other. And that has grown across, it started in Chicago and has grown across the country in grassroots markets all over.

Julian Lute:

That's wonderful. I mean in the experience that we have at Great Place To Work, when you see an organization that just sort of implements employee resource groups or any sort of ERG from the top, very rarely are they successful. They have to come from the spirit and the innovation and the determination-

Julie Caldwell:

That's right.

Julian Lute:

... of the folks that actually want this and are going to put up their time and energy to make sure that it occurs. So thank you for your leadership in that. Stephanie, you also rose through the ranks at Marriott. What are some of the differentiators that propelled you forward? For the first part of the question, and the second part is can you talk a little bit about Marriott's efforts to create more diversity in hotel ownership and supplier diversity, supply chain, those sorts of efforts of Marriott?

Stephanie Linnartz:

Sure. Yeah, so I've worked for Marriott for 23 years so for most of my career, and I've done a lot of different jobs over the years, but what's so fantastic about Marriott and then I've benefited from is the ability to grow people's careers and to let people move around into different jobs and to experience different things and to really push people to take that next opportunity, which I've benefited from very much. The thing that I love the most about Marriott International is our culture and the culture is very focused on diversity and inclusion. We have 760,000 employees globally, roughly 96% of them work at a hotel, to give you a little context, and we're in 145 different countries now, a little bit less than... I think 140-something right now. We open new hotels every 18 hours, so it's hard to keep up with how many countries we're in.

Stephanie Linnartz:

And so diversity obviously has a lot of different meanings depending on where you are in the world, but there are some things that cut across the globe. Obviously gender diversity, diversity in terms of making sure that the LGBT community is supported around the world. And then obviously in the context of the United States, there's a lot of focus on making sure African Americans, Latinos, of course, Asian-Americans, all different diversity groups in the United States are an area of focus for us. And to your point across a variety of different areas. When we think about diversity, we think about it across all the different spectrums: race, gender, background, thought, et cetera. And we think about our associates of course, right? Having diversity amongst our associate ranks. I'm proud to say I think Marriott's one of the few companies in the world that has a subcommittee of our board of directors actually chaired by Debbie, focused on diversity and inclusion.

Stephanie Linnartz:

That's I think pretty rare to have that on and we make sure that we're focusing on these things, but we also I think are extremely rare, almost 50% of the C-suite is gender equity and also in the top ranks of the company there's a lot of gender equity. So associates and then all throughout the field too, to the point Julie was making. Then also our suppliers, do we have diversity in our supply chain? I'm happy to say that last year we spent almost $1 billion in the United States with minority and women-owned businesses and that's a big area focus for us.

Stephanie Linnartz:

Hotel ownership. We actually don't own our hotels. Most people don't know that or some people don't. We manage and franchise, So we have diversity in terms of the people who own our hotels. We have conferences in the United States, to mention the US since that's where we are today, on getting more diverse ownership; women, minorities owning our hotels.

Stephanie Linnartz:

And then of course, last but not least, and this is what I think about given my job is consumers and customers. Are we making sure that we have marketing and sales efforts that are focusing on diverse customer segments so that people know that everyone is welcome in our hotels? We are placed for all, our doors are open to all customers and do our marketing efforts and sales efforts reflect that that's our culture? So I think culture is the magic sauce in any company. And I truly believe in the case of Marriott International, it's our competitive advantage and it's why people like me and others have stayed there for so many years-

Julian Lute:

That is incredible.

Stephanie Linnartz:

... it's because of that focus.

Julian Lute:

That is incredible. I mean we see that growing trend that best companies and companies that treat their employees right, want to work with best companies and companies that treat each other right. Did you have something you want to say?

Debra Lee:

I wanted to add to what Stephanie said because she covered it so well but I've been on the board of Marriott for over 18 years. So I didn't realize till recently when I say that people go, "What? That's a long time."

Stephanie Linnartz:

That's a long time.

Debra Lee:

And I love the company and I love working with the executive team including Stephanie. But I just want to emphasize the point she made, because I use it as a best practices all the time, is that Marriott does have a board level committee that focuses on diversity and inclusion.

Debra Lee:

And it's not just in hiring, which is very important, but it's in areas that impact the business even more like hotel ownership or impact the people that are involved. So diverse owners are very important and families we've seen through the hotel owners that we know about family businesses have started up it's been a real way to support diverse families and supplier diversity. So I just wanted to emphasize that point because I've been on several boards during my career and this is the only board level committee I've seen. And when I talked to other CEOs that want to have an impact in this area, I always suggest that they form a committee. So it's at the board level, the CEO is involved, executives of the company are involved. We have what we call a score card. And every quarter they had to report to me on how much progress they've made and so that holds their feet to the fire.

Julian Lute:

You were actually going right down the road that I want to go down. That's perfect. We always talk about how this sort of commitment has to start at the top, right? But we always talk about it from the C-suite. When you have a company like yours that has board members, that's actually the next best place for it to begin. If board members are holding feet to the fire then the C-suite has to listen. And so for you, Debra, you've chaired that commitment to excellence, a committee which works very closely with the global diversity and inclusion council. What are your thoughts and let's talk about the accountability part of this. How do you all establish a formal accountability process and how have you seen it help Marriott in regards to empowering women? What has that done for the organization?

Debra Lee:

Right. Well, the scorecard helps a lot because every year the committee and the management team sets up what the goals are for the year. And so if they don't hit those goals, they have to explain to me and the CEO and other board members why they didn't hit those goals. So you can imagine that's not a pleasant situation to be in. So they work really hard to hit those goals. And we have the numbers in front of us and they're not quotas, they're not all the words that a lot of people shy away from, but their goals, and this is where we want the company to be at the end of each year. So that makes a big difference. And then I think diversity inclusion is part of the performance metric for executives at Marriott. So they know part of their performance bonus is based on that. So you really have to keep it front and center.

Debra Lee:

And we all hope 20 years ago we wouldn't still be talking about this, but it hasn't changed as much as it should. And when you see, going back to your point about boards, when you see what California has done by requiring that there one or two women on companies in California public companies, and you see what Goldman Sachs did by saying they weren't going to take any company public that didn't have a one woman on. You see that we haven't made a lot of progress. We've made some progress, but we haven't made enough. And so you have to keep talking about it. You have to have goals, you have to have a CEO and executive team that's committed to it and don't take their eye off the ball.

Julian Lute:

Yeah. I think Tina said yesterday, you have to have the stick and the carrot.

Debra Lee:

Yes. That's right.

Julian Lute:

Yeah. And I believe that you have to protest, you have to be able to protest, but you also have to be able to celebrate women as well. So let's go into For All Leadership, right? Because that's something that we've been talking a lot about over the last few days and on Sunday of course it's International Women's Day. I want to know what this means to you personally. So let's start with you again Debra. During your 32 year career at BET, one thing that you always loved was having people approach you and tell you that they got their first industry job at BET, whether it was in front of the camera or behind the camera.

Julian Lute:

And without a doubt, BET was at the forefront of diversity of employment, thought and content. So today when little girls look at your amazing career, they have proof that they could be anything that they want it to be. If you could go back in time and talk to the young Debra Lee in Greensboro, North Carolina, what would you tell her?

Debra Lee:

First of all I would tell her about boards and companies because that was something a lot of us don't know exist. I mean I still have women and men say to me, "Why should I think about a board? What's on the upside for me? A lot of companies don't encourage it. When Viacom acquired BET in 2001 and I was already on I think four boards at the time because as a black female COO at the time I was still pretty rare. So I always had several offers but Viacom didn't encourage their executives to be on boards and so they grandfathered me, which was great.

Debra Lee:

So if I was looking back at my high school self, I would explain how companies work and how that could be a great career. I went to Harvard law school and I wouldn't, I wouldn't take any corporate courses because I was like, well, working at a company is like selling out. I don't want to do that. And then I ended up being a CEO at a very capitalist company for 13 years. Also, majored in Chinese Communist ideology at Brown. So as I told someone, I've grown a lot since then.

Debra Lee:

So I think I didn't know enough about the world. I didn't know about corporate law firms. I didn't know that a company like BET could exist, a Company that was targeted on the African American community. So, yeah, I would give myself a good education.

Julian Lute:

Right, right. She would definitely benefit from your experiences nowadays. So thank you for that. Let's go to you Julie. As Marriott was co-founded by a woman, Sheets Marriott, and I don't know if you knew that Marriott was co-founded by a woman in 1927. She was the first bookkeeper, she was the first interior designer and when she joined Marriott's board of directors in 1953 she was only the third woman ever on the board of a Fortune 250 company. So Marriott went on to establish the industry's first formal DNI program 30 years ago and its women's leadership development initiative came 20 years later. What else more do you think Marriott can do to embrace For All Leadership?

Julie Caldwell:

Well, as a young graduate school student looking for opportunity, I did fall into meeting an executive with Marriott who spoke to me about the opportunity within the company. And I'll be honest, I did not know at that time that we were co-founded by a woman and the type of company that we are. But now looking back, as a woman and an HR professional, I could not be more proud to work for this company. And it all starts with our culture quite honestly, which is something that began at the very beginning. But our take care culture is all about respect and for all treatment. So the programs we've put into place have helped in these times to advance women and diverse leaders across the entire company. But it is a sort of natural progression Marriott has earned since the beginning. So I'm very fortunate I feel to be a part of that journey.

Julie Caldwell:

So what more can we do? Do you think you've got the foundation of a fantastic take care culture and you've got all the programs, resources, board support in place. So what more can we do? I think it is in continuing to enable our leaders and our associates in our hotels and our headquarters organization to all take accountability for For All Leadership. I sort of thought at the beginning of my career, well, one day when I get to that point I will champion other leaders and I will champion other women and other diverse leaders in the company. But that time is now for all of us. We all are responsible for For All Leadership and we all can benefit from For All Leadership. So I think just continuing to encourage our leaders and associates around the world to engage in that effort.

Julian Lute:

That's beautiful. I mean we see that as a key driver of the employee experience is this sense of empowerment and involvement makes a difference for anyone. It doesn't matter what industry you are, it doesn't matter what level of the organization that you're in. You come to work everyday wanting to bring your best 99.9% of the time and it's up to the organization to sort of give us that opportunity to do that. So I hear what you're saying about making sure that we all kind of step into that and live in that For All Leadership world. Thank you.

Julie Caldwell:

Thank you.

Julian Lute:

All right, Stephanie, you attended a all-girls high school and always believed that girls helping girls, women helping women, whether that's on the soccer field or in the corporate board room. I'll ask you the same thing that I asked Debra. If you could go back and talk to a young Stephanie in high school, what would you tell her?

Stephanie Linnartz:

Yeah, it's an interesting question because I have two teenagers and I think about what am I telling them that I wish I'd told myself or someone told me. Aid I think this is maybe going to sound kind of basic, but I think one of the things I'd tell myself as don't stress out and worry so much. And the most important thing in life is to be your authentic self and to give it your all and to try. I have a boy and a girl and I say to both of my kids, my son and my daughter just be your authentic self and try your hardest and life will work out. And for my daughter in particular, I'm focused on, I tell her all the time, be fierce. You can do anything, you can do anything a man can do.

Stephanie Linnartz:

And I tell my son the same thing, that he can do anything and that women can do anything men can do because I often think it's very important for young men to see whether it's their mother or other female role models. And so they grow up in an environment where they see equality in their own home and they see the way my husband and I partner, he works too to raise our children and to not only do our jobs, but to also give back to the community. So it's important to me that I've been very lucky at Marriott. Marriott is actually a company that's great about being on boards. I'm actually on the board of Home Depot the past couple of years, which I've really enjoyed, a fantastic company also. But I'm also on the board of several non-profits.

Stephanie Linnartz:

And to me it's very important. And I tell my children this and that your job is really important. It's a big part of my life, but it's not the only thing in my life. My family's number one, and giving back to the world's really important because you're going to be a better, whether you decide to go into corporate America and be an executive, if you decide to be a teacher, if you decide to be an entertainer, you're going to be a better at whatever you choose for your profession. If you're well rounded and you have balance in your life.

Stephanie Linnartz:

So I think I'd tell my younger self to be more balanced and that's what I tell my children and to make sure that your life is full of many interests and has many aspects to it, not just a job as important as jobs are. And I think particular today, teenagers have a lot of anxiety. I don't know how many of you have teenagers, but I think we live in a world that's highly anxious with a lot of tough stuff going on. So the message that I think parents and other people need to give teenagers today may be even more important than it was when I was growing up because it's a different world that we live in, so.

Julian Lute:

I think we can all take a little bit of that advice, get a little more balanced in our lives nowadays.

Debra Lee:

Right, it is.

Stephanie Linnartz:

It's hard.

Julian Lute:

It's very difficult.

Debra Lee:

I had an executive come to me once and say, "What kind of boards should I be on? What kind of non-profits should I be on?" And he had been an executive for a while. And I remember walking away from that conversation saying because I said to him, I said, "Well, you're not on any right now," because it was always so much a part of my life, whether it was not-for-profits, mentoring or whatever. I said, "What do you do after work"? He said, "Oh, I go home." And so the point I'm making is I thought a little less of him after that, that it was something that he didn't think should be part of his life, and at BET I had executives that were involved in politics or not-for-profits or corporate boards and it does round out your life.

Debra Lee:

And I remember when I first started serving on boards, I was COO. It really taught me how to be a CEO to see how other CEOs dealt with difficult questions-

Julian Lute:

Absolutely.

Debra Lee:

... and how they dealt with personnel issues or global warming or whatever. I mean, it's such a great experience. So I encourage folks to do that. And the other thing I would say, thinking about your last question, I would encourage a young girls and boys to find their own voice, especially if you're going into the corporate world you have so many things being thrown at you, whether it's what your advertising people think or in TV what the ratings think or what this special interest group is saying and I'm a big believer in taking that all in and listening well to other people.

Debra Lee:

But in the end, if you're that CEO, you have to make the decision and you have to live with the decision whether it goes well or it doesn't go well.

Julian Lute:

Absolutely.

Debra Lee:

You're going to get the glory and you're going to get the blame. So you feel much better about it if it's your decision. And that's a hard thing to do, especially it was hard for me being an attorney because attorneys are taught to research and find the right answer. Well, in the business world you can't find the right answer.

Julian Lute:

That's right.

Debra Lee:

So it took me a while to be quicker at making decisions and feeling good about it.

Julian Lute:

Yeah. So it sounds like the piece of advice that you would give to folks is number one, join a board, find a board, join a board, join a board.

Debra Lee:

Right.

Julian Lute:

And the second piece would be to find your voice.

Debra Lee:

Right.

Julian Lute:

And the other side of that is actually use it, right?

Debra Lee:

Yeah.

Julian Lute:

And be comfortable once you do with the decision, whether it goes in your favor or something you have to sort of just live with.

Debra Lee:

Yeah. And I think it's an issue for women early in their career.

Stephanie Linnartz:

Absolutely.

Debra Lee:

We listen well and we're a consensus builder and both of those are fine. But again, when you get to a certain level, you got to be responsible and you got, and you can't make everyone happy.

Julian Lute:

That's right.

Debra Lee:

You just can't.

Stephanie Linnartz:

Absolutely.

Debra Lee:

And we're raised to be the nice girl and make everyone happy. If you want to make everyone happy, don't go into business. Nine times out of 10, three, four, so the people aren't going to be happy.

Julian Lute:

That's right. I appreciate it.

Debra Lee:

But you got to do the right thing for the business.

Julian Lute:

That's beautiful. Thank you. So, Stephanie, let's ask a similar question. If you had a piece of advice to give to women leaders, it's 2020, what would you give them?

Stephanie Linnartz:

I'd say be your authentic self, take risk, have confidence in yourself. And I really like what Debbie is saying about finding your voice, using your voice because I'll admit I've struggled with that over my career and finding a way to do that and still be my authentic self. Not trying to be somebody I'm not-

Julian Lute:

That's right.

Stephanie Linnartz:

... and speak in a way that I'm not, and try to act like the guys, but do it in a way that's authentic to who I am. So I'd give this similar advice, find your voice, but do it in a way that's very authentic to who you are as a human being and reflects really your personality, your values, how you see the world. And it's hard to do, but it's essential. I think if you're going to lead a company or a group within a company. Or again, not just in corporate America, I think that this advice applies no matter what profession or what field you go into that you you need to do that.

Julian Lute:

Be your authentic self. Julie.

Julie Caldwell:

So we didn't chat about this ahead of time, but I would say exactly the same thing. And the reason is again, to put on a leadership style that is you; you can't wear somebody else's leadership style. And at the very beginning of my career I tried that. I was in epic fail. So looking back, I wish I would've known that. And I would say that you would find your lane, you would find your space, you would find your company while being comfortable in your own leadership style.

Julian Lute:

That's beautiful. Well, I'm honored to have been able to sit and chat with you all for the last 30 to 45 minutes. And it's not lost on me that as a man we have a certain responsibility in this fight to and it's not just joining the conversation, but there are some things that we can do to interrupt and disrupt bias when you see it, to advocate and be on the side of women when we know that things are not maybe moving in the right direction.

Julian Lute:

So I also challenge the men out there to talk to the women that are in our lives, but also to be a champion and as much as we can to do what's right for the women in our lives and for the rest of the world. Because our research shows that when women's experience improves in the workplace and in the world, everybody's experience improves in the workplace, in the world. So it's not a zero sum game, everyone wins. So thank you so much. Can you give my panelists a round of applause?

Stephanie Linnartz:

Thank you.

Julian Lute:

We really appreciate you all.