In this episode Tony Bond, SVP, Chief Diversity & Innovation Officer at Great Place To Work and Ellen McGirt, Senior Editor at Fortune magazine, share how important it is to stop fearing conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion. They share ways they believe you can safely bring up DE&I without having it come back on you in a negative way as well as their advice to leaders on how they must make these issues a top business priority. This interview also includes their sentiments on how under-representation is an embarrassing problem to have and how imperative it is that corporate leaders stop believing it's a competitive advantage to keep quiet about it. Their conversation will most likely make you feel frustrated on what hasn't been done, but will also leave you incredibly inspired that change can and will be made. Be sure to subscribe to McGirt's column "RaceAhead" HERE.
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Show Transcript
Chris Tkaczyk:
Welcome to Better, by Great Place To Work®. We're coming to you from the 2020 Great Place To Work For All Summit in San Francisco, and we're joined today by Ellen McGirt and Tony Bond. Ellen McGirt is a senior editor at Fortune, and Tony Bond is the Chief Innovation and Diversity Officer here at Great Place To Work. Ellen and Tony, welcome.
Tony Bond:
Thank you.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So what I want to talk about today is the Diversity and Inclusion Forum, which is a closed-door session that we have had here at the summit this year and last year. This is the second one.
Because I've been in the podcast booth, I have not had a chance to attend the D&I forum, but I just want you, Tony, to sort of explain why we do it. First of all, what it is, who attends, and why it's closed-door.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, absolutely. So it's an invite-only session where we try to bring maybe 100 CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers together.
It's really a chance to convene people. It's a difficult journey we're on to create great places to work For All™. So we want to create a space where people can come together, have courageous dialogue, leave with some things that they can take back to make their efforts even more impactful in the workplace. And as to expose them to some thought leaders as well.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So who attends? I mean, in terms of how many people are in the room, because it is closed-door.
Tony Bond:
It's closed-door.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And is it invitation-only?
Tony Bond:
It's invitation-only.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Okay.
Tony Bond:
It's probably 100 ... I think we had maybe 130 yesterday, so it was an even better crowd.
We have Ellen and I, who Ellen really helps facilitate and co-design the session. We had some speakers from some of our Best Companies. In each table we have some D&I champions, some people who are out there doing work with many organizations to help them get better.
So it's a mixed crowd, but mainly at a C-suite level, VP level.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Nice. So is there a sort of an open ... because the forum, is it an open concept where people can just ask questions at any moment of someone on stage? Or they have to sit and listen to someone give a speech and then wait at the end, like a regular Q&A, or how does it?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, we try to create the experience where it's a little bit of listening but also the chance to dialogue and connect at tables with others. So we feed information and then we have a chance for people to process that information, share it with others. So it's a combination.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen, last year was of course our first year doing this and you participated then too. In terms of your contribution is a moderator, what is the experience like? Are you coming set with a list of questions that you want to ask with the idea that you can get story ideas out of it or what is your mission with it?
Ellen McGirt:
Well, first I just want to set the record straight. Tony was very generous with me saying that I helped co-design it, but it really comes from his specific vision about what makes people comfortable enough to have the uncomfortable conversations.
The fun part for me as a person who established the race beat and the inclusion beat at Fortune is that it's a chance for me to not only acknowledge the work that people are doing. Every time someone in the room publishes a survey or makes a new announcement or starts a new program, I cover it and explore it. So it's a chance for me to understand where they're coming from and what their challenges are.
So from my perspective, I do come in with some questions that I think will be relevant for the audience, but mostly what I'm curious about is, what are they working on? What have they stopped working on? What are the barriers they're experiencing? And the tender part is when the barriers they're experiencing are people who are having trouble understanding how to hire and retain and be themselves welcoming to people who are different from themselves.
So we end up having ... and, Tony, I want to check your understanding of this. We end up always washing out into this incredible place of vulnerability where we're talking about what it feels like to talk with people who don't believe the same things that we do or for whom difference is a fearful thing. We end up talking a lot about what it means to be tired in the face of doing this work.
Once one or two people shares their vulnerable experience, where they are tired, where they are out of ideas, suddenly the room blooms into this cross talking vulnerable, "Here's some tips, here's some solutions," but mostly, "I hear and see you and I believe in you." So I always end up leaving, twice in a row, feeling hopeful and just ready, and ready to keep going.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's great. Tony, can you share a little bit about what was discovered or discussed yesterday?
Tony Bond:
Sure. It's sort of an off-the-record conversation, but I would say that Ellen -
Chris Tkaczyk:
We're not mentioning any names, but you can tell about what companies are dealing with, right?
Tony Bond:
Yeah. I think there's some consistency across each company. I think Ellen opened up the conversation magically by asking them, what's keeping them up at night. And there were so many similarities with all the panelists around what's keeping them up at night. We have the coronavirus, which is huge. We're all here, fortunately -
Chris Tkaczyk:
You don't have the coronavirus as far as you know. We're dealing with -
Tony Bond:
We're dealing with.
Chris Tkaczyk:
It's happening in the world right now, because if you have it, I'm going to keep you out of podcast booth.
Tony Bond:
I opened up with a story that was kind of scary. But yeah, that's one thing that everyone's facing.
But one key topic that came up right away is disappointment in the state of black people in corporate America. How do we get more, not just people in the pipeline, but create more opportunities for people of color. That's an issue that everyone's struggling with. So people were very transparent and open about that.
Also, there's this fear of even having conversations around D&I. How is it safe for you to say certain things without having it come back on you in a negative way? So that's one of the biggest challenges is I think we created that yesterday, because through the stories people share, we made a serious connection with each other, and I think that's probably the underlying thing that needs to happen. We moved quickly to try to figure out actions, but we don't have those stories that we share around commonalities and we can build those connections.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Okay. And is there one particular story that either one of you can think of from yesterday that stands out for you and that you can somewhat paraphrase or share without revealing too much?
Ellen McGirt:
Well, yes and no.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Because of the closed door policy?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
We should talk about this, because off the record is not something that comes naturally to journalists, and we want to be able to get things out into the world. Partly because it's how we make our money, but also it's partly how we keep conversations going, but it really is magic, especially for something that's a tender topic.
One of the jobs, and this is one of the reasons why I have such respect for Great Place To Work and all of the people that you assembled in the D&I forum, is that the world is challenging and awful for people who don't fit the definition of mainstream culture, whatever that is, wherever they live. They walk into work with these real heavy burdens on their shoulders — some of them are generations long about bullying and violence and danger, wealth and inequality, the wealth gap — and then they're out there, they're being required to be representative of wherever they are not part of mainstream culture and do their best work and be the business case for innovation and drive change in their organizations.
And now we're asking organizations and people who represent mainstream culture to care about them in a new way and understand what their lives are like outside of work. And that is ... I have empathy for everyone in that scenario. People who are really trying, assuming noble intent all around, who are really trying to bridge this gap and make a difference in their communities and the world at large. It's a big, big, big job.
So, people felt comfortable sharing stories of where they were diminished at work, where they struggled with and made mistakes within their own families. Understanding the changing identities of people in their own families and finding empathy for people who were struggling in the workplace out of those experiences, and I think the irony of not being able to share any of them is that the take away was share and disclose as much as you can as a leader, as early and as often as you can because it will build trust.
Tony Bond:
Yeah. There were so many great stories. I wish we could share those. One thing that really struck me is how the PWC's CEO actioning for diversity and inclusion. Mike shared it on stage, but there were people in the audience-
Chris Tkaczyk:
On the main stage you mean.
Tony Bond:
On the main stage. There were people in the audience who really just told stories of how that's had a significant impact on their ability to have meaningful conversations around D&I. So it just felt like this ecosystem, that one act of creating those, I guess what should I call them? A strategy to how to roll it out and have conversations has impacted so many organizations. So there were stories where people share how that's had an impact in the workplace. Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
I was shocked. It was a love fest. I mean, I was really shocked, and at the heart of it all it is really is teaching people how to speak to other people, which is something that just seems to be just not happening any place else in society.
We have to ask ourselves why that is, why this is such a surprising and welcome addition to the leadership marketplace or leadership conversation. Just stop treating people as assets and machines and start seeing them as people. It feels tremendously risky.
Tony Bond:
Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Earlier this morning I had Tim Richmond from AbbVie come in. He's the Chief Human Resources Officer. I remember him saying this morning that one of their sort of principles is that they treat everyone equally with dignity and respect, so it's the same exact thing you just said.
One of the things that I keep hearing yesterday and now today when we're talking about D&I, and there's a word that has been added to that, and again AbbVie adds the word equality. So they look at it as ED&I: equality, diversity and inclusion.
So how many more letters are we going to be adding? Is this going to become like the LGBTQ+?
Ellen McGirt:
I know. I guess I would ... Tony, what do you think? I feel like we're going to keep switching in words and letters until we hit on something. I think so last, last year it was welcoming, right? Which is a W, so we're going to need a new acronym there.
Tony Bond:
Yeah. There were speaking a lot about belonging, so there's so many different things we're referring to as-
Chris Tkaczyk:
And becoming.
Ellen McGirt:
And becoming, right. If Tony Prophet from Salesforce were here, he would say equity.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yes. Well, that's the other thing that I was going to bring up is that gender equity is a term that I hear a lot. We discussed it yesterday. We had Tina Tchen from TIME’S UP Foundation here and that's all we talked about, of course.
But when it comes to talking about equity, women in leadership positions especially as well as pay disparity, which I know we talked about this last year, what are companies doing actually to close that gap and to make sure that everybody is treated fairly and equally?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, I think it starts with ... it feels like we're doing a much better job of having parity at the entry level roles, but for some reason we have a difficult time promoting women, people of color. So I know a lot of organizations are really focusing on it.
Someone mentioned yesterday that we tend to allow a scenario to unfold where, let's say I'm coming into an organization and I'm a black male, I don't see anyone like me at the very top. So it's on me to figure out how to navigate and create opportunities for myself, and organizations who get are doing more to help that person. It's not, they have to figure out how to be successful. But, we realize the limitations and we're going to help you from day one figure out how to navigate and create opportunities for yourself. So I think it's shifting the responsibility off of the person to the organization to help people advance.
Ellen McGirt:
Exactly. And when it comes to pay, where it becomes a pretty tangible look at who treated and how they're being treated, it's way more complicated than people think it is to figure out who needs to ... where people are on the pay spectrum and if they're being paid fairly based on their male peers.
It's even more complicated when you break it down by race, which Citigroup did recently, and you have to do it repeatedly because as people leave and as you hire people, you have to check in where they're coming, and it's just create a system where you're constantly or continually checking to make sure people are being hired at the right level, pay level and being paid and promoted at the right pay level actually requires a certain amount of systemic change.
So, few people are really doing it and leading it and getting it right: Cisco, obviously, Salesforce and Citigroup has really made a splash in the last year. But when I talk to these CEOs and these leaders, I'm always surprised. It's a little bit like starting up an entire internal software or data collection engine, and if you don't have the budget or the stomach for that and you're not really committed to that process as a leader, it's just not going to happen.
Chris Tkaczyk:
One of the things that I find surprising is how many companies still will not share their demographics of their workforce. I've had this conversation a lot over the past few months with some of the folks that we're writing stories about as part of our Best Workplaces lists and the articles that we contribute to Fortune.
I'm wondering yesterday if that came up and if there was a valid reason for companies not to be transparent.
Ellen McGirt:
It didn't come up yesterday. We had a pretty woke group who wants to share as much as they can. I bring it up constantly, and if there's anybody out there and listening land who has an intern that they can share with me to help me with FOIA requests, this is something that we haven't been able to do for a long time, it would make such a difference.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's the Freedom of Information Act requests that journalists use with dealing with the government.
Ellen McGirt:
Correct. There's all kinds of reasons to use them and there's all kinds of pressing issues in the world, but I promise you, I think, what is it? 14% or 15% of the Fortune 500, the cohort that I most look at, makes their numbers public and I know they collect them because they're required by law to collect them and submit them to the EOC. This would not be hard.
Under-representation is an embarrassing problem to have, especially as corporate leaders are under pressure to comment on social issues, to think about how they are impacting their community in new ways as the world gets more complicated, it is a glaring problem that they have that's easy to see and I know that they resist sharing these numbers. The argument I've heard that is completely invalid in my view, is that it's a competitive advantage.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's all they ever say is they don't want their competitor to know.
Ellen McGirt:
It's proprietary. It's like, "If I publish my numbers and I have three black people, you're going to poach my three black people." It's like, "Oh my gosh, stop it."
Chris Tkaczyk:
Is that the only three that are ...
Ellen McGirt:
I know. Instead, I just have to spend all my time sort of scrolling through LinkedIn to find them. I promise you I will find them.
But just making that number public would give people a way to benchmark. They would be become more comfortable sharing best practices, what they've abandoned. I know there's a lot going on at Google right now and they're having all kinds of internal issues, but the greatest thing they did on this subject was make their numbers available, because suddenly all the tech companies did it, and it really helped.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah, I would agree that you hear the competitive advantage. I mean, we're all at certain points of our journey of creating inclusive cultures. So I would hope that people can be more transparent, but it seems to be a situation where we don't want to be embarrassed or show that we're not living up to it, so we keep that information in pretty close.
Ellen McGirt:
You know what I've learned to do? And actually Tim Ryan at PWC had really sort of walked me through some of the difficulties of finding pockets of resistance or people who are resistant who don't understand and walking them through it, is I've learned not to be snarky or negative when I review a diversity report. It takes longer than people think it does, and I may be upset that year after year the numbers aren't changing very much, but I've learned to ask why and just skip the snarky headline, and it really I think helps change the culture that, we're not here to trip you up. We're here to find out what will work.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Is there a headline recently from one of your columns that you use that you got a lot of feedback on? Just the headline alone.
Ellen McGirt:
Everyone is racist.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And what was said? The worst that was said and the best that was said.
Ellen McGirt:
When you talk about racism as a set of ideas that we don't examine, a culture that we walk through every day that affects all of us from different perspectives, it becomes a conversation that we can all have as opposed to a group that is being singled out for doing it wrong, and that makes a big difference I think.
And Dr. Ibram Kendi who wrote, "Stamped From The Beginning" and "How To Be An Antiracist" did the world such a service by framing these issues as a set of ideas that we accept without thinking or sometimes accept because we believe that they are true and haven't examined them.
In his latest book, he starts by talking about the insidious way that he himself had come to accept racist ideas, that that black people were just one bootstrap pull up from solving all their problems, and being rewarded for those ideas as a young man in his own community. It opened the door for me to think about how I can write about racist ideas in a way that we can all be invited to examine them. I do love a good call out as much as the next person, but I think that's more productive.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. Tony, you're meeting with some of our clients every so often and talking about D&I. Can you share with our listeners some of the advice you seem to be giving quite often when you're meeting with clients?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, it's a great question and we explored this yesterday.
Sometimes I use the analogy, sometimes it feels like D&I exists in this lake. It's like a confined area and we try to bring people into it and help them understand why it's important. Whereas, it needs to be a river. It needs to just move through everything that you're doing.
So some of the conversations are really, and we talked about this yesterday, how do you look at this not as something separate, but if you're putting a team together and you're trying to accomplish something, how do you do it through the lens of inclusion? If you're trying to create products, how do you do it through the lens of inclusion?
So let's not make it a standalone thing, but it's a part of everything. Whether you're hiring people, whether you're into corporate social responsibility or you're into product development or strategy. It's a part of every conversation. So, it's opening it up.
The other part is, how do you help leaders understand this? And it's difficult to get every leader to really lead as a For All leader, what we consider a For All leader. That's a journey. So we talk about how do we get all our leaders enrolled in being an inclusive leader. That's a big conversation.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. I wanted to sort of change the topic to some recent news that that Ellen has been working on in her raceAhead column, which I've said before, and I'll say it again and again and again. The last time she visited us I told all of our listeners to subscribe to her newsletter, which is I believe still free because they've put up some sort of paywall on fortune.com.
Ellen McGirt:
100% still free.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Excellent. So what you do is put your email address and every day, weekdays, she sends out sort of the most important news you need to know around the conversation around diversity, inclusion and race. It's a daily must read. So go to Fortune.com, sign up for it.
Tony Bond:
I would agree. If I read no other emails during the day, that's the one.
Chris Tkaczyk:
I mean, Fortune does a lot of newsletters, but it's my favorite one.
Tony Bond:
Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So Ellen, what are the biggest stories that you've been either breaking or telling recently?
Ellen McGirt:
It's a good question, and thank you for that. That really lifts my spirit.
Michael Bush just gave a shout out for raceAhead on the stage and he said, "You may need to watch something uplifting afterwards." And I totally understand that. I had a wonderful longtime reader send me an email a couple of months ago saying that she had done a WordCloud assessment of my last three weeks of columns and I'd used the word “grim” 32 times. Am I all right?
So one of the things I try to do is do a mix of evergreen things that I think are important for people to understand who are practitioners or who are just trying to be better at this in the workplace.
So we cover expert advice on things like microaggressions, what they are, new ways of thinking about what it means to be an ally. You can't give yourself the label of ally; somebody has to really give it to you because you have to take a risk on behalf of somebody else.
But then every now and then something happens, like a beautiful, beloved athlete falls from the sky. So, my Sunday column that was ready to publish on Monday had to go by the wayside. Then we had to talk about Kobe Bryant because he was a complicated person in our lives, and he was a complicated person for a variety of reasons. And rather than weigh in on, "You should care about him for this, and this is how I feel about the allegations and his apology for rape earlier in his career," was, "We are all going to be grieving a different part of what he meant to us.” He was highly compensated. He was very famous. He was part of a big engine that brings people into our lives, and he meant something different to different people. And he meant something to people who are going to feel triggered by the way that his story unfolded as opposed to the way his accuser's story unfolded.
So that was an opportunity to talk about what it means to be a person who grieves in a different way and who walks in the world in a different way that now has to walk into work and work together. So, I appreciated the opportunity to talk about it and I appreciated the opportunity just to encourage people to be gentle with each other. I mean, it was a legitimate shock. He was doomed in no particular way. He wasn't reckless or sick or experiencing any chaos in his life. So, the grief was pure and there was no one to blame.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen, in the course of you covering this for so many years now you have an amazing network of contacts and sources, which I envy just because, I mean, you seem to know everyone. You're a great networker.
In terms of how you get a story, is it because someone tips you off? Are there ever those kinds of emails or calls from someone who says, "Oh, I need to tell you about something." Do you ever get that kind of like secretive inside knowledge from people that you can't really write about yet?
Ellen McGirt:
Every now and then. Not as often as I would like. All tips welcome, all promises for off the record on background will be kept.
But I do think, and I know that this probably is part of your life too, your amazing transition into the work that you're doing now, is that showing up really matters. For something, this is a tender topic for people and seeing you and hearing you speak or just hearing you ask questions in person, the things that you disclose, impart in conversation, make all the difference in establishing this kind of beat.
I'm lucky enough that I'm able to ... I'm on the rubber chicken circuit every spring and every fall and I do get to go to a lot of conferences where I see people time again ... Now we're cautious not to touch anybody. It's been so hard not to hug people, because you see them every time, this time next year. It's like real relationships happen here.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen's referring to, of course, dealing with the coronavirus, being in the world today, and that at the summit this year we took many extra precautions to make sure that we're not shaking hands, there's no hugging, we're doing a little elbow bumps, some people are doing toe touches.
Ellen McGirt:
You took very good care of us this year, and it was not a natural thing not to just hug everybody I ran into. But for ... if you want to develop connections on the race and inclusion beat, you do have to show up in person and people have to get to know you.
One of the things that I'm very lucky for is that raceAhead really is in my voice. I wanted to make it distinct from some of the other Fortune editorial products that cover a sector. These are objective things. These are human stories. So the newsletter sounds like me, and I try to make sure that when I write about other people that sounds like them.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And that's why we read it.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you. I love you guys.
Chris Tkaczyk:
I love you too.
Ellen McGirt:
I love you, Tony.
Tony Bond:
I love you too.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So, one last topic that I have to address, which, because it is going to be in everyone's mind for even months after we first publish this episode, is the fact that we are coming upon this election in November and diversity and equality are not part of the conversation in the way that they need to be. I think that the media is to blame for a lot of that, because they're the ones who are going to be asking the questions, whether it be on the debate stage.
If you had an opportunity to moderate the next debate, what would you ask?
Tony Bond:
That's a powerful question.
Ellen McGirt:
Oh, my goodness.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Just one. Just one question, but it has to be around what we've been talking about.
Ellen McGirt:
Tony, would you ask about reparations?
Tony Bond:
I don't know if I would.
Ellen McGirt:
If you only had one thing, it is a way to talk about generation-
Tony Bond:
It's so divisive.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
Right? Yeah. Which is why, with the current crop, I think the answer would be largely unsatisfactory.
So what we would really be looking for, a question that would reveal their thinking. Where I find Sanders falls short is that, although he has interesting ideas about economic inequality, that is not the solution for the racism that people are experiencing in this country. And I think that's where he stops thinking.
Tony Bond:
I would have to find a question. I don't know if I really understand their views on this whole topic. Personal views-
Chris Tkaczyk:
Because nobody's asking.
Tony Bond:
No one was asking. So I would have to almost frame up the current situation, and then ask them how do they feel about it and how does that apply to them as a person — not even as a politician or potential President, but get to know them and their views. Because I don't at this point.
And I'm a little disappointed because I know that regardless of who I'm interested in, we've had some debates where women have shown up pretty good, even better than the men. And now we've gotten to a place where they're not even in the running anymore. So I don't quite understand that.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah, I know. I know what you're saying. One of the things I do want to point out though is that we did have the first out gay man running for President and get as far as he did, and because of that CNN hosted a town hall specifically about LGBT issues. I mean, that is another milestone where the media was doing the right thing.
Ellen McGirt:
And we need to celebrate that. And earlier on MSNBC partnered with She The People, and they had an entire forum just on issues facing black women and their families. Most of the candidates showed up then. That was a robust conversation about things like black maternal health and disparities and outcomes in schools. I mean they really did a great job there, but it didn't stick. It wasn't baked in. And we ended up talking about corn pop, and we're not getting anywhere. That was a Biden joke.
Tony Bond:
One of the things I learned yesterday, I knew this, but it was reinforced. We all have stories and our stories involve hurt, pain, feeling excluded. And just by hearing people's stories. Whether I even know you, there's an instant connection I have with you.
So I think we often have a conversation around how we're different and honoring the differences, but I think it needs to be a balance. If we can have more storytelling and hearing people's stories, it creates that connection, and that connection builds the right for us to have those difficult conversations, which ordinarily we wouldn't be able to. So maybe it's a question that helps the candidates reveal their story and just get to know them better.
Ellen McGirt:
Maybe it's a different format. I mean, I know we're on audio now. The pageantry of the way the debates have unfolded, if they were on audio and people were sitting down and had a chance to not worry about what their hair looked like or just how presidential they appeared and just were encouraged to tell stories that were meaningful. I think that might be ... we could listen to them, we can bring them into our psyche that way and not worry about the optics. I think that might be a better way to have a conversation.
Chris Tkaczyk:
The closest we got to someone being authentic on a debate stage was at the Nevada debate where the question was, what some misconception that people have about you? And Elizabeth Warren's was that she doesn't eat. I thought that was funny. She's very witty. But as a follow up, did you guys see the Colbert video with her where he took her to a restaurant in Charleston?
Tony Bond:
I saw some of that. Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's a must watch. It's so funny.
Ellen McGirt:
It was Scrooge McDuck has no pants. Is it that one?
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. It's so good. But I loved seeing how we didn't ... the presidential candidate who was not only very witty, but could match him joke for joke. So it would be nice to see someone who's that clever.
Ellen McGirt:
It would be nice. It'd would be nice to have someone who could just fold a fitted sheet, basic household competence.
Chris Tkaczyk:
If you know how to do it, you need to teach me.
Ellen McGirt:
Martha Stewart 2020, that's a good one.
Chris Tkaczyk:
This has been fun. It's a great way to end because we have to begin our next interview. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Ellen. It's always a pleasure.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you for having us on.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Ellen.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. All right.
Welcome to Better, by Great Place To Work®. We're coming to you from the 2020 Great Place To Work For All Summit in San Francisco, and we're joined today by Ellen McGirt and Tony Bond. Ellen McGirt is a senior editor at Fortune, and Tony Bond is the Chief Innovation and Diversity Officer here at Great Place To Work. Ellen and Tony, welcome.
Tony Bond:
Thank you.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So what I want to talk about today is the Diversity and Inclusion Forum, which is a closed-door session that we have had here at the summit this year and last year. This is the second one.
Because I've been in the podcast booth, I have not had a chance to attend the D&I forum, but I just want you, Tony, to sort of explain why we do it. First of all, what it is, who attends, and why it's closed-door.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, absolutely. So it's an invite-only session where we try to bring maybe 100 CHROs and Chief Diversity Officers together.
It's really a chance to convene people. It's a difficult journey we're on to create great places to work For All™. So we want to create a space where people can come together, have courageous dialogue, leave with some things that they can take back to make their efforts even more impactful in the workplace. And as to expose them to some thought leaders as well.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So who attends? I mean, in terms of how many people are in the room, because it is closed-door.
Tony Bond:
It's closed-door.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And is it invitation-only?
Tony Bond:
It's invitation-only.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Okay.
Tony Bond:
It's probably 100 ... I think we had maybe 130 yesterday, so it was an even better crowd.
We have Ellen and I, who Ellen really helps facilitate and co-design the session. We had some speakers from some of our Best Companies. In each table we have some D&I champions, some people who are out there doing work with many organizations to help them get better.
So it's a mixed crowd, but mainly at a C-suite level, VP level.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Nice. So is there a sort of an open ... because the forum, is it an open concept where people can just ask questions at any moment of someone on stage? Or they have to sit and listen to someone give a speech and then wait at the end, like a regular Q&A, or how does it?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, we try to create the experience where it's a little bit of listening but also the chance to dialogue and connect at tables with others. So we feed information and then we have a chance for people to process that information, share it with others. So it's a combination.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen, last year was of course our first year doing this and you participated then too. In terms of your contribution is a moderator, what is the experience like? Are you coming set with a list of questions that you want to ask with the idea that you can get story ideas out of it or what is your mission with it?
Ellen McGirt:
Well, first I just want to set the record straight. Tony was very generous with me saying that I helped co-design it, but it really comes from his specific vision about what makes people comfortable enough to have the uncomfortable conversations.
The fun part for me as a person who established the race beat and the inclusion beat at Fortune is that it's a chance for me to not only acknowledge the work that people are doing. Every time someone in the room publishes a survey or makes a new announcement or starts a new program, I cover it and explore it. So it's a chance for me to understand where they're coming from and what their challenges are.
So from my perspective, I do come in with some questions that I think will be relevant for the audience, but mostly what I'm curious about is, what are they working on? What have they stopped working on? What are the barriers they're experiencing? And the tender part is when the barriers they're experiencing are people who are having trouble understanding how to hire and retain and be themselves welcoming to people who are different from themselves.
So we end up having ... and, Tony, I want to check your understanding of this. We end up always washing out into this incredible place of vulnerability where we're talking about what it feels like to talk with people who don't believe the same things that we do or for whom difference is a fearful thing. We end up talking a lot about what it means to be tired in the face of doing this work.
Once one or two people shares their vulnerable experience, where they are tired, where they are out of ideas, suddenly the room blooms into this cross talking vulnerable, "Here's some tips, here's some solutions," but mostly, "I hear and see you and I believe in you." So I always end up leaving, twice in a row, feeling hopeful and just ready, and ready to keep going.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's great. Tony, can you share a little bit about what was discovered or discussed yesterday?
Tony Bond:
Sure. It's sort of an off-the-record conversation, but I would say that Ellen -
Chris Tkaczyk:
We're not mentioning any names, but you can tell about what companies are dealing with, right?
Tony Bond:
Yeah. I think there's some consistency across each company. I think Ellen opened up the conversation magically by asking them, what's keeping them up at night. And there were so many similarities with all the panelists around what's keeping them up at night. We have the coronavirus, which is huge. We're all here, fortunately -
Chris Tkaczyk:
You don't have the coronavirus as far as you know. We're dealing with -
Tony Bond:
We're dealing with.
Chris Tkaczyk:
It's happening in the world right now, because if you have it, I'm going to keep you out of podcast booth.
Tony Bond:
I opened up with a story that was kind of scary. But yeah, that's one thing that everyone's facing.
But one key topic that came up right away is disappointment in the state of black people in corporate America. How do we get more, not just people in the pipeline, but create more opportunities for people of color. That's an issue that everyone's struggling with. So people were very transparent and open about that.
Also, there's this fear of even having conversations around D&I. How is it safe for you to say certain things without having it come back on you in a negative way? So that's one of the biggest challenges is I think we created that yesterday, because through the stories people share, we made a serious connection with each other, and I think that's probably the underlying thing that needs to happen. We moved quickly to try to figure out actions, but we don't have those stories that we share around commonalities and we can build those connections.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Okay. And is there one particular story that either one of you can think of from yesterday that stands out for you and that you can somewhat paraphrase or share without revealing too much?
Ellen McGirt:
Well, yes and no.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Because of the closed door policy?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
We should talk about this, because off the record is not something that comes naturally to journalists, and we want to be able to get things out into the world. Partly because it's how we make our money, but also it's partly how we keep conversations going, but it really is magic, especially for something that's a tender topic.
One of the jobs, and this is one of the reasons why I have such respect for Great Place To Work and all of the people that you assembled in the D&I forum, is that the world is challenging and awful for people who don't fit the definition of mainstream culture, whatever that is, wherever they live. They walk into work with these real heavy burdens on their shoulders — some of them are generations long about bullying and violence and danger, wealth and inequality, the wealth gap — and then they're out there, they're being required to be representative of wherever they are not part of mainstream culture and do their best work and be the business case for innovation and drive change in their organizations.
And now we're asking organizations and people who represent mainstream culture to care about them in a new way and understand what their lives are like outside of work. And that is ... I have empathy for everyone in that scenario. People who are really trying, assuming noble intent all around, who are really trying to bridge this gap and make a difference in their communities and the world at large. It's a big, big, big job.
So, people felt comfortable sharing stories of where they were diminished at work, where they struggled with and made mistakes within their own families. Understanding the changing identities of people in their own families and finding empathy for people who were struggling in the workplace out of those experiences, and I think the irony of not being able to share any of them is that the take away was share and disclose as much as you can as a leader, as early and as often as you can because it will build trust.
Tony Bond:
Yeah. There were so many great stories. I wish we could share those. One thing that really struck me is how the PWC's CEO actioning for diversity and inclusion. Mike shared it on stage, but there were people in the audience-
Chris Tkaczyk:
On the main stage you mean.
Tony Bond:
On the main stage. There were people in the audience who really just told stories of how that's had a significant impact on their ability to have meaningful conversations around D&I. So it just felt like this ecosystem, that one act of creating those, I guess what should I call them? A strategy to how to roll it out and have conversations has impacted so many organizations. So there were stories where people share how that's had an impact in the workplace. Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
I was shocked. It was a love fest. I mean, I was really shocked, and at the heart of it all it is really is teaching people how to speak to other people, which is something that just seems to be just not happening any place else in society.
We have to ask ourselves why that is, why this is such a surprising and welcome addition to the leadership marketplace or leadership conversation. Just stop treating people as assets and machines and start seeing them as people. It feels tremendously risky.
Tony Bond:
Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Earlier this morning I had Tim Richmond from AbbVie come in. He's the Chief Human Resources Officer. I remember him saying this morning that one of their sort of principles is that they treat everyone equally with dignity and respect, so it's the same exact thing you just said.
One of the things that I keep hearing yesterday and now today when we're talking about D&I, and there's a word that has been added to that, and again AbbVie adds the word equality. So they look at it as ED&I: equality, diversity and inclusion.
So how many more letters are we going to be adding? Is this going to become like the LGBTQ+?
Ellen McGirt:
I know. I guess I would ... Tony, what do you think? I feel like we're going to keep switching in words and letters until we hit on something. I think so last, last year it was welcoming, right? Which is a W, so we're going to need a new acronym there.
Tony Bond:
Yeah. There were speaking a lot about belonging, so there's so many different things we're referring to as-
Chris Tkaczyk:
And becoming.
Ellen McGirt:
And becoming, right. If Tony Prophet from Salesforce were here, he would say equity.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yes. Well, that's the other thing that I was going to bring up is that gender equity is a term that I hear a lot. We discussed it yesterday. We had Tina Tchen from TIME’S UP Foundation here and that's all we talked about, of course.
But when it comes to talking about equity, women in leadership positions especially as well as pay disparity, which I know we talked about this last year, what are companies doing actually to close that gap and to make sure that everybody is treated fairly and equally?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, I think it starts with ... it feels like we're doing a much better job of having parity at the entry level roles, but for some reason we have a difficult time promoting women, people of color. So I know a lot of organizations are really focusing on it.
Someone mentioned yesterday that we tend to allow a scenario to unfold where, let's say I'm coming into an organization and I'm a black male, I don't see anyone like me at the very top. So it's on me to figure out how to navigate and create opportunities for myself, and organizations who get are doing more to help that person. It's not, they have to figure out how to be successful. But, we realize the limitations and we're going to help you from day one figure out how to navigate and create opportunities for yourself. So I think it's shifting the responsibility off of the person to the organization to help people advance.
Ellen McGirt:
Exactly. And when it comes to pay, where it becomes a pretty tangible look at who treated and how they're being treated, it's way more complicated than people think it is to figure out who needs to ... where people are on the pay spectrum and if they're being paid fairly based on their male peers.
It's even more complicated when you break it down by race, which Citigroup did recently, and you have to do it repeatedly because as people leave and as you hire people, you have to check in where they're coming, and it's just create a system where you're constantly or continually checking to make sure people are being hired at the right level, pay level and being paid and promoted at the right pay level actually requires a certain amount of systemic change.
So, few people are really doing it and leading it and getting it right: Cisco, obviously, Salesforce and Citigroup has really made a splash in the last year. But when I talk to these CEOs and these leaders, I'm always surprised. It's a little bit like starting up an entire internal software or data collection engine, and if you don't have the budget or the stomach for that and you're not really committed to that process as a leader, it's just not going to happen.
Chris Tkaczyk:
One of the things that I find surprising is how many companies still will not share their demographics of their workforce. I've had this conversation a lot over the past few months with some of the folks that we're writing stories about as part of our Best Workplaces lists and the articles that we contribute to Fortune.
I'm wondering yesterday if that came up and if there was a valid reason for companies not to be transparent.
Ellen McGirt:
It didn't come up yesterday. We had a pretty woke group who wants to share as much as they can. I bring it up constantly, and if there's anybody out there and listening land who has an intern that they can share with me to help me with FOIA requests, this is something that we haven't been able to do for a long time, it would make such a difference.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's the Freedom of Information Act requests that journalists use with dealing with the government.
Ellen McGirt:
Correct. There's all kinds of reasons to use them and there's all kinds of pressing issues in the world, but I promise you, I think, what is it? 14% or 15% of the Fortune 500, the cohort that I most look at, makes their numbers public and I know they collect them because they're required by law to collect them and submit them to the EOC. This would not be hard.
Under-representation is an embarrassing problem to have, especially as corporate leaders are under pressure to comment on social issues, to think about how they are impacting their community in new ways as the world gets more complicated, it is a glaring problem that they have that's easy to see and I know that they resist sharing these numbers. The argument I've heard that is completely invalid in my view, is that it's a competitive advantage.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's all they ever say is they don't want their competitor to know.
Ellen McGirt:
It's proprietary. It's like, "If I publish my numbers and I have three black people, you're going to poach my three black people." It's like, "Oh my gosh, stop it."
Chris Tkaczyk:
Is that the only three that are ...
Ellen McGirt:
I know. Instead, I just have to spend all my time sort of scrolling through LinkedIn to find them. I promise you I will find them.
But just making that number public would give people a way to benchmark. They would be become more comfortable sharing best practices, what they've abandoned. I know there's a lot going on at Google right now and they're having all kinds of internal issues, but the greatest thing they did on this subject was make their numbers available, because suddenly all the tech companies did it, and it really helped.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah, I would agree that you hear the competitive advantage. I mean, we're all at certain points of our journey of creating inclusive cultures. So I would hope that people can be more transparent, but it seems to be a situation where we don't want to be embarrassed or show that we're not living up to it, so we keep that information in pretty close.
Ellen McGirt:
You know what I've learned to do? And actually Tim Ryan at PWC had really sort of walked me through some of the difficulties of finding pockets of resistance or people who are resistant who don't understand and walking them through it, is I've learned not to be snarky or negative when I review a diversity report. It takes longer than people think it does, and I may be upset that year after year the numbers aren't changing very much, but I've learned to ask why and just skip the snarky headline, and it really I think helps change the culture that, we're not here to trip you up. We're here to find out what will work.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Is there a headline recently from one of your columns that you use that you got a lot of feedback on? Just the headline alone.
Ellen McGirt:
Everyone is racist.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And what was said? The worst that was said and the best that was said.
Ellen McGirt:
When you talk about racism as a set of ideas that we don't examine, a culture that we walk through every day that affects all of us from different perspectives, it becomes a conversation that we can all have as opposed to a group that is being singled out for doing it wrong, and that makes a big difference I think.
And Dr. Ibram Kendi who wrote, "Stamped From The Beginning" and "How To Be An Antiracist" did the world such a service by framing these issues as a set of ideas that we accept without thinking or sometimes accept because we believe that they are true and haven't examined them.
In his latest book, he starts by talking about the insidious way that he himself had come to accept racist ideas, that that black people were just one bootstrap pull up from solving all their problems, and being rewarded for those ideas as a young man in his own community. It opened the door for me to think about how I can write about racist ideas in a way that we can all be invited to examine them. I do love a good call out as much as the next person, but I think that's more productive.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. Tony, you're meeting with some of our clients every so often and talking about D&I. Can you share with our listeners some of the advice you seem to be giving quite often when you're meeting with clients?
Tony Bond:
Yeah, it's a great question and we explored this yesterday.
Sometimes I use the analogy, sometimes it feels like D&I exists in this lake. It's like a confined area and we try to bring people into it and help them understand why it's important. Whereas, it needs to be a river. It needs to just move through everything that you're doing.
So some of the conversations are really, and we talked about this yesterday, how do you look at this not as something separate, but if you're putting a team together and you're trying to accomplish something, how do you do it through the lens of inclusion? If you're trying to create products, how do you do it through the lens of inclusion?
So let's not make it a standalone thing, but it's a part of everything. Whether you're hiring people, whether you're into corporate social responsibility or you're into product development or strategy. It's a part of every conversation. So, it's opening it up.
The other part is, how do you help leaders understand this? And it's difficult to get every leader to really lead as a For All leader, what we consider a For All leader. That's a journey. So we talk about how do we get all our leaders enrolled in being an inclusive leader. That's a big conversation.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. I wanted to sort of change the topic to some recent news that that Ellen has been working on in her raceAhead column, which I've said before, and I'll say it again and again and again. The last time she visited us I told all of our listeners to subscribe to her newsletter, which is I believe still free because they've put up some sort of paywall on fortune.com.
Ellen McGirt:
100% still free.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Excellent. So what you do is put your email address and every day, weekdays, she sends out sort of the most important news you need to know around the conversation around diversity, inclusion and race. It's a daily must read. So go to Fortune.com, sign up for it.
Tony Bond:
I would agree. If I read no other emails during the day, that's the one.
Chris Tkaczyk:
I mean, Fortune does a lot of newsletters, but it's my favorite one.
Tony Bond:
Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So Ellen, what are the biggest stories that you've been either breaking or telling recently?
Ellen McGirt:
It's a good question, and thank you for that. That really lifts my spirit.
Michael Bush just gave a shout out for raceAhead on the stage and he said, "You may need to watch something uplifting afterwards." And I totally understand that. I had a wonderful longtime reader send me an email a couple of months ago saying that she had done a WordCloud assessment of my last three weeks of columns and I'd used the word “grim” 32 times. Am I all right?
So one of the things I try to do is do a mix of evergreen things that I think are important for people to understand who are practitioners or who are just trying to be better at this in the workplace.
So we cover expert advice on things like microaggressions, what they are, new ways of thinking about what it means to be an ally. You can't give yourself the label of ally; somebody has to really give it to you because you have to take a risk on behalf of somebody else.
But then every now and then something happens, like a beautiful, beloved athlete falls from the sky. So, my Sunday column that was ready to publish on Monday had to go by the wayside. Then we had to talk about Kobe Bryant because he was a complicated person in our lives, and he was a complicated person for a variety of reasons. And rather than weigh in on, "You should care about him for this, and this is how I feel about the allegations and his apology for rape earlier in his career," was, "We are all going to be grieving a different part of what he meant to us.” He was highly compensated. He was very famous. He was part of a big engine that brings people into our lives, and he meant something different to different people. And he meant something to people who are going to feel triggered by the way that his story unfolded as opposed to the way his accuser's story unfolded.
So that was an opportunity to talk about what it means to be a person who grieves in a different way and who walks in the world in a different way that now has to walk into work and work together. So, I appreciated the opportunity to talk about it and I appreciated the opportunity just to encourage people to be gentle with each other. I mean, it was a legitimate shock. He was doomed in no particular way. He wasn't reckless or sick or experiencing any chaos in his life. So, the grief was pure and there was no one to blame.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen, in the course of you covering this for so many years now you have an amazing network of contacts and sources, which I envy just because, I mean, you seem to know everyone. You're a great networker.
In terms of how you get a story, is it because someone tips you off? Are there ever those kinds of emails or calls from someone who says, "Oh, I need to tell you about something." Do you ever get that kind of like secretive inside knowledge from people that you can't really write about yet?
Ellen McGirt:
Every now and then. Not as often as I would like. All tips welcome, all promises for off the record on background will be kept.
But I do think, and I know that this probably is part of your life too, your amazing transition into the work that you're doing now, is that showing up really matters. For something, this is a tender topic for people and seeing you and hearing you speak or just hearing you ask questions in person, the things that you disclose, impart in conversation, make all the difference in establishing this kind of beat.
I'm lucky enough that I'm able to ... I'm on the rubber chicken circuit every spring and every fall and I do get to go to a lot of conferences where I see people time again ... Now we're cautious not to touch anybody. It's been so hard not to hug people, because you see them every time, this time next year. It's like real relationships happen here.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Ellen's referring to, of course, dealing with the coronavirus, being in the world today, and that at the summit this year we took many extra precautions to make sure that we're not shaking hands, there's no hugging, we're doing a little elbow bumps, some people are doing toe touches.
Ellen McGirt:
You took very good care of us this year, and it was not a natural thing not to just hug everybody I ran into. But for ... if you want to develop connections on the race and inclusion beat, you do have to show up in person and people have to get to know you.
One of the things that I'm very lucky for is that raceAhead really is in my voice. I wanted to make it distinct from some of the other Fortune editorial products that cover a sector. These are objective things. These are human stories. So the newsletter sounds like me, and I try to make sure that when I write about other people that sounds like them.
Chris Tkaczyk:
And that's why we read it.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you. I love you guys.
Chris Tkaczyk:
I love you too.
Ellen McGirt:
I love you, Tony.
Tony Bond:
I love you too.
Chris Tkaczyk:
So, one last topic that I have to address, which, because it is going to be in everyone's mind for even months after we first publish this episode, is the fact that we are coming upon this election in November and diversity and equality are not part of the conversation in the way that they need to be. I think that the media is to blame for a lot of that, because they're the ones who are going to be asking the questions, whether it be on the debate stage.
If you had an opportunity to moderate the next debate, what would you ask?
Tony Bond:
That's a powerful question.
Ellen McGirt:
Oh, my goodness.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Just one. Just one question, but it has to be around what we've been talking about.
Ellen McGirt:
Tony, would you ask about reparations?
Tony Bond:
I don't know if I would.
Ellen McGirt:
If you only had one thing, it is a way to talk about generation-
Tony Bond:
It's so divisive.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah.
Ellen McGirt:
Right? Yeah. Which is why, with the current crop, I think the answer would be largely unsatisfactory.
So what we would really be looking for, a question that would reveal their thinking. Where I find Sanders falls short is that, although he has interesting ideas about economic inequality, that is not the solution for the racism that people are experiencing in this country. And I think that's where he stops thinking.
Tony Bond:
I would have to find a question. I don't know if I really understand their views on this whole topic. Personal views-
Chris Tkaczyk:
Because nobody's asking.
Tony Bond:
No one was asking. So I would have to almost frame up the current situation, and then ask them how do they feel about it and how does that apply to them as a person — not even as a politician or potential President, but get to know them and their views. Because I don't at this point.
And I'm a little disappointed because I know that regardless of who I'm interested in, we've had some debates where women have shown up pretty good, even better than the men. And now we've gotten to a place where they're not even in the running anymore. So I don't quite understand that.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah, I know. I know what you're saying. One of the things I do want to point out though is that we did have the first out gay man running for President and get as far as he did, and because of that CNN hosted a town hall specifically about LGBT issues. I mean, that is another milestone where the media was doing the right thing.
Ellen McGirt:
And we need to celebrate that. And earlier on MSNBC partnered with She The People, and they had an entire forum just on issues facing black women and their families. Most of the candidates showed up then. That was a robust conversation about things like black maternal health and disparities and outcomes in schools. I mean they really did a great job there, but it didn't stick. It wasn't baked in. And we ended up talking about corn pop, and we're not getting anywhere. That was a Biden joke.
Tony Bond:
One of the things I learned yesterday, I knew this, but it was reinforced. We all have stories and our stories involve hurt, pain, feeling excluded. And just by hearing people's stories. Whether I even know you, there's an instant connection I have with you.
So I think we often have a conversation around how we're different and honoring the differences, but I think it needs to be a balance. If we can have more storytelling and hearing people's stories, it creates that connection, and that connection builds the right for us to have those difficult conversations, which ordinarily we wouldn't be able to. So maybe it's a question that helps the candidates reveal their story and just get to know them better.
Ellen McGirt:
Maybe it's a different format. I mean, I know we're on audio now. The pageantry of the way the debates have unfolded, if they were on audio and people were sitting down and had a chance to not worry about what their hair looked like or just how presidential they appeared and just were encouraged to tell stories that were meaningful. I think that might be ... we could listen to them, we can bring them into our psyche that way and not worry about the optics. I think that might be a better way to have a conversation.
Chris Tkaczyk:
The closest we got to someone being authentic on a debate stage was at the Nevada debate where the question was, what some misconception that people have about you? And Elizabeth Warren's was that she doesn't eat. I thought that was funny. She's very witty. But as a follow up, did you guys see the Colbert video with her where he took her to a restaurant in Charleston?
Tony Bond:
I saw some of that. Yeah.
Chris Tkaczyk:
That's a must watch. It's so funny.
Ellen McGirt:
It was Scrooge McDuck has no pants. Is it that one?
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. It's so good. But I loved seeing how we didn't ... the presidential candidate who was not only very witty, but could match him joke for joke. So it would be nice to see someone who's that clever.
Ellen McGirt:
It would be nice. It'd would be nice to have someone who could just fold a fitted sheet, basic household competence.
Chris Tkaczyk:
If you know how to do it, you need to teach me.
Ellen McGirt:
Martha Stewart 2020, that's a good one.
Chris Tkaczyk:
This has been fun. It's a great way to end because we have to begin our next interview. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Ellen. It's always a pleasure.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you for having us on.
Tony Bond:
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Ellen.
Ellen McGirt:
Thank you.
Chris Tkaczyk:
Yeah. All right.
