Leading with Purpose: Soyini Coke, Principal at Annona Enterprises & Host of Capitalism Done Right

Welcome to another episode of The Brand Called You (TBCY)! In this inspiring conversation, we feature Soyini Coke, Principal at Annona Enterprises and Host of Capitalism Done Right. Soyini takes us through her journey from Atlanta to Harvard, McKinsey, entrepreneurship, and her mission to make business a force for good through conscious capitalism. Soyini shares candid insights into navigating corporate America as a Black woman, building high-impact teams, the importance of values in leadership, and how conscious capitalism can align profitability with positive social impact. The conversation also explores the challenges and opportunities created by AI and automation, the future of work, the impact on entry-level jobs, workforce redeployment, and the need to rethink how businesses and society respond to technological change. Whether you are a business leader, entrepreneur, professional, or someone passionate about creating meaningful impact, this episode offers valuable perspectives on leadership, equity, purpose, conscious capitalism, and the future of work. Subscribe to TBCY for more stories and conversations with purpose-driven leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers from around the world.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  All right, I'm particularly excited about this after meeting you. So you need to get you to be on our Leaders Who Care series and share why you are a leader who cares. I know already, but the rest of the people need to know that that's the answer. So welcome, welcome to the series.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so very much. I'm delighted to spend the time with you.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Thanks. Best ways to start, which we always do is if you could, and I usually have to clarify this, mind you, you have to clarify usually more for men than women. Women seem to understand it faster than men. Can you introduce yourself? Tell us about you, where you are originally from, where you are now, maybe about family as much as you want to share, maybe something you've never told the world, you want to reveal to the world now, that's always fascinating to hear if there's anything like that. And then we'll get into the business stuff. Does that work?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So I was not born in Atlanta, but I like to think of myself as an Atlanta girl. We've been here since I was in third grade. And I, and after going away to college and working for a few years at McKinsey in New York, I came back home. So I'm a strategic advisor, management consultant. Don't hold that against me.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  I promise.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  As I mentioned, former McKinsey, Harvard alum, Harvard undergrad alum. And I've got my practice around two.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm gonna time you out. I'm gonna time you out. We can get into that in a minute. I want to know more about you and not the business you. Like your family, siblings, you know, things about that we should know about you that aren't the business part.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Ah, I see. So as I mentioned, I live in Atlanta. I am single, you know, single, single, not married, kids, no kids.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Single, single, like air conditioning.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Single, single, like three singles, right? And, and no kids. And so I like to think of myself as a bit of a free spirit. One of the things that you mentioned, like people don't necessarily know about me, is that my, my family's from the Caribbean. So both parents are Jamaicans. So, you know, there was a kind of growing population of the Caribbean people in the east, east side of the metro in Atlanta. And my mom and I came here. And I am a longtime meditator. And so next week, I'm gonna go to attend a silent retreat.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  And looking forward to that, especially in these very fraught times. You know, it's great to have a little bit of internal quiet and internal peace, is what you were just talking about. And yeah, that's a little bit about me.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  That's cool. I love Jamaica. I've been to Jamaica many times when I used to live in Miami, Negril, Rose Hall, Montego Bay, you name it. It's so much fun and love the food and everything. So I kind of miss that because it was a hop, skip and a jump from Miami to, you know, to get there and stuff. And so that's, that's super cool. Do you eat Jamaican food? Do you cook Jamaican food?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I both cook and eat Jamaican food.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  Nice, really good.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  I'm a, I'm a, I am a decent cook, but let's be clear, that is my only domestic skill. Like, don't count on me for anything else. That's the only one. But I've been told if there's one to have, that's a good one.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I'll stereotype, I'm Jewish, I'll stereotype us that, you know, we're not good at a lot of those things either, the domestic stuff, but we, we do love food. There's no doubt about it. So, so thanks for sharing that. You know, it'd be nice to bring some of the world's leaders to that meditation, if you can gather them up and bring them out there, and that would be, that would be very helpful.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Really fun.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  What were you like as a kid? Did you grow up as a kid in Jamaica?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  No, so I did my growing up on, you know, in Atlanta, in a suburb called Stone Mountain.

• 4:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  And, oh my goodness, I was a total nerd. So I'm gonna date myself. There was a show called Family Matters, and there was a character called Steve Urkel. I don't know if you remember, you know, this.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Super nerdy guy with the big glasses and, you know, the, you know, very not particularly well dressed. I was the female version of Steve Urkel. So short, you know, big glasses, super nerdy.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  But he was loved.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  He was loved, right? Like, he was loved, but yeah, yeah, so I was definitely a nerd.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  That's, that's hilarious. Well, did you, I was talking to a guy recently, said he played with Legos as a kid all the time. What, what were you interested in? Was it music, sports, reading? What were you?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  I was a big bookworm. I was a big bookworm, and I was like a fantasy sci-fi bookworm. So I read the J.R. Tolkien series a whole bunch of times, Weisenberg, you know, Wrinkle in Time, a little bit of Ithaca's of, you know, some of those very classic, Ray Bradbury, classic sci-fi fantasy type.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Nice. Any particular music you liked?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I played the viola, so, and I was in the DeKalb Youth Pops Orchestra for a while, so.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I had to pull that one out of you. That's like super cool. Well, you're hiding stuff. What else? Did you play any sports or you put mostly the, the other side of it?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  No, I was definitely a bookworm. I was, I was actually both a bookworm and a couch potato until my, until my mid twenties.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. So, you know, it's interesting, I saw something with a kid a few months ago, they were showing a two-year-old a book.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Trying to slide like on a computer on the book.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  Because the times have changed, right?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Type of thing. So funny and kind of sad at the same time in a way. So, you know, education wise, as you said, you went to Harvard, bachelor's, applied math and economics.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Why, why that major and what were you envisioning for yourself?

• 6:28Speaker 01

  So I thought I was gonna be an engineer. I liked math as a child, you know, bookworm, nerd. And, you know, somebody said, well, you should be an engineer. So I had, I thought I was gonna, I had to start off with engineering major, thought I was gonna be an engineer, did, went to an internship after my freshman year and was totally bored, like totally bored. And I was like, okay, this isn't, clearly this isn't for me. But I was thinking about where could I, what was I interested in? Definitely interested in business and where could I apply the math, math skills? And Harvard does, does not or did not have an undergraduate business degree, but people

• 7:12Speaker 01

  who were interested in business did economics at Harvard. And then the people who wanted to do an honors track, which I did, did math and economics. So that's how I ended up there. And for me, it felt very intuitive. And the reason why I've always loved math is for me, it feels like it's, it's God's language. Like, I can go anywhere in the universe and math applies.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  True.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I can go anywhere in the world and, you know, people understand and can universally communicate through numbers. And so I've always loved math in that way and for that reason.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  And did you go through college and whatnot? Did you have any, any stand, any things that stood out, any inflection points as to where that would lead you to at the time?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  I always, after that internship, I knew I wanted to pursue a business career. And I actually found McKinsey pretty early. Like, when I started asking about what does one do after college in business, everybody's like, well, if you can, if you can get into McKinsey, go there. And so I started researching them and ended up in a, a summer internship program at McKinsey and then got hired out of college from there.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Super smart. That's good advice to young people. You get in something like that, you're in, and then show your stuff and ever. You can't go wrong with a career start at McKinsey. I, you know, I was at Deloitte. I mean, bottom line is you have the name and you have the experience, so it's, it's good foundation, right? So with, at McKinsey, you were involved, you were involved in, correct me if I'm wrong, in recruiting tools for the company, you were involved in, you know, saving millions of dollars, product offerings, statistical analysis, I mean, and a bunch of different types of clients, I believe, just by looking up some stuff.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Any specific experiences stand out for you that, that just like amazed you or you just were more excited about or particular companies?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Certainly some of the larger, larger, you know, Fortune 20 companies that I worked with certainly stood out. And just coming from, you know, my mom was a, this is another thing, right, I'm holding on you. My mom raised me as a single parent. So, and she's a nurse. So, you know, pretty humble beginnings. To go from that to like being on the inside, deep on the inside of companies that were so big was really transformational for me.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I bet.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And just really getting the firsthand inside look on how large corporations work, I think was, you know, absolutely foundational for the rest of my career. And certainly regardless of, you know, whether or not it was, you know, certain companies that are public, like American Express that have worked for McKinsey for a long time, or the other companies that people don't necessarily know, or, you know, their relationship with McKinsey is confidential. I'm just being really able to understand how corporations work, I think, across the different corporations is incredibly helpful.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  I think some of them work good and some of them actually don't.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Unfortunately.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  But it's, but it's the reality of how, this is, this is what business looks like.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  And I think that what you raised is a great point, too. Sometimes we take for granted when we're in it that everybody understands how that works. And even, even the simple things of, of talking, talking on the phone, talking, engaging with people, presenting yourself, et cetera. People have to be exposed to those type of things to know, because you, you don't know. A lot of people don't know. And so, I mean, what a, what a, what a great opportunity. And, and a great opportunity when, and I'm not saying McKinsey's like this, but there's not always equal access and equal opportunity to, for people to have some of those experiences. And that's why I was asking if there's any that stood out. Was there any, you don't have to name names, but any company or any project that like

• 11:14Speaker 00

  blew you away type of thing in any way?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Well, certainly the, the time I spent in South Africa was life-changing. And I had the opportunity to work with the. Private, private-public partnership that manages all of the ports in South Africa, or managed all of the ports in South Africa. So I literally got to go to like all of the coastal cities in South Africa. It was stunning, right? Just the visual, visual experience of being able to go to all those amazingly beautiful places.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Well, you know.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  It was meaningful. And then, you know, the experience of going and, you know, understanding how to cut costs across all of, all of those ports was really, really important as well.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Were you the Elon Musk of South Africa?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Not at all, not at all.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Of like those type of thing.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Were there, or let me ask you this way, have you been able to take forward, or what experiences were you able to take forward to assist your clients currently in your own, I don't know, enterprises?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Wow. So certainly, the very rigorous structured approach to problem solving, I use that like every day. You know, and I think across, you know, all consultants, you know, former McKinsey consultants, they'll talk about how, you know, we've learned how to solve problems, you know, we really, we really do. And I think also you mentioned just the business acumen and learning to communicate and think in a particular way that is very, very precise, it's very efficient. Like, you know, I don't know that they still do this, but certainly in the first month in McKinsey, you were trained to distill any communication down to like three points

• 13:07Speaker 01

  that you can communicate within thirty seconds. And, you know, that's incredibly helpful now as I, you know, engage with executives because you have, like, scientists have shown, you get eleven seconds, basically, to make an impression on somebody and being able to really captivate somebody and grab their attention very quickly with a very precise business communication is something that I use, you know, more than, more than once a day.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Certainly. Was it Freud or somebody said that if you can't explain it for a baby to understand, then you're not explaining it properly or something?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Right. You know, and being able to build high-impact performance teams is also, you know, been really, really huge for me. Like, you know, being able to put together a task force or a team, whatever, you know, whatever word you want to use for a group of people that can mobilize against an issue and being able to do that effectively and put them together in a way that, that they perform, I think, is huge. And then finally, just really understanding the executive mindset is, is, you know, huge. Can't be overstated.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and there's different mindsets of executives too, but I know exactly what you mean. Did you, I think it was McKinsey, some people in McKinsey had told me this at one time, I don't know if they still do it, but there would always be, and at Deloitte, where I was, we didn't have it officially, but we encouraged someone to challenge whatever way forward the people were talking about in the meeting. In other words, you know, go against the, challenge it basically, kind of like, kind of like in school, you were put on a debate team to debate the other side that you didn't believe in, but you had to debate it anyway on the other side. Did you find that at all differing points of view to then come to a proper plan of action or stuff like that?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yes, certainly. And I mean, McKinsey, it does a lot of internal discussion around a non-hierarchical, non-hierarchical approach to problem solving, that they really want the best solution to the issue regardless of whoever it comes from. So I think that certainly, yes, that's, I would say that's the case.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  So with that, you know, our firm was actually launched on, at the UN, about six and a half years ago, at the UN headquarters on International Women's Day, because that was one of our first focuses, was women leadership, equal access, equal opportunity for women. I mean, our very first event was actually in Delhi, India, young women entrepreneurs and engaging them in entrepreneurship and different things like that. And so, as a woman, as a black woman, did you, how did you, how did you describe your journey as a woman? You know, there was diverse partnerships, there's different people in different businesses, different types of executives. How did you navigate? How did you thrive in that?

• 16:01Speaker 00

  And, and, and then be able to, you know, be able to, it has to be economically viable, the consulting you're doing, but you also want it to be sustainable, that it, for the client. How did you, what did you feel like as, as a woman and as a black woman in that world?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Well, you know, this is where, you know, this may not necessarily be palatable to your audience, but I'm gonna speak my truth, which is, you know.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  It's palatable, it's palatable to hear truth.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Right, for some people. So what I'll say is this, I jokingly say that, that I might be single-handedly responsible for the angry black woman stereotype, because, you know, I, you know, I definitely started off as a very, very angry black woman. But I would tell people, like, if you're a black woman and you're not angry, then you probably don't have a pulse. You know, for real. And, you know, we can have a conversation about microaggressions, we can have a conversation about institutional racism and all of that, right?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  And what I've found is, there's a point in my career where I even approached a mentor and I was like, how do you get through this without just becoming overwhelmingly bitter? Right? And I was like, if this continues, I'm just going to end my career and my life completely taken over by bitterness. And I don't want that. That's not my, that's not my true nature, that's not who I really am. But one does, and I did, sustain a whole bunch of impacts, right? Like, that's just the reality of being in a hierarchical business environment, right? And what I've found, which will lead to, I think, some other things that we're gonna

• 17:53Speaker 01

  talk about, is that, you know, there's a way to turn, you know, even spiritually, a way to turn even the most difficult experiences to something that's useful and meaningful. And for me, I've gotten a lot of meaning out of conscious capitalism, because one of the pillars of conscious capitalism, if businesses do really turn to that kind of holistic stakeholder-oriented approach, an approach from a higher purpose and really looking at culture and values, is inequity will be dealt with, because it's inevitable. And that, you know, you can't have a values-based system of human beings and have inequity. Those things are, are not compatible spiritually.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  And so, you know, learning through my own journey to use some of the things that happened to me, to then turn it to a higher purpose, which for me, my higher purpose is that every single business on the planet will begin to operate along conscious business principles. That's my higher purpose. And so, to be able to take that, you know, negative karma, if you will, and turn it to something useful is, is my, is really my journey.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  No, no, I love it. And it aligns very well with why we trademark the term leaders who care and why we, why we, you know, we, we ask clients questions before they become clients, a lot of questions, but also what do they care about? And, and it's, and it's about economic and social impact, both, you know? It's not a bad thing to make money, and it's not a bad thing to make a difference. Why can't we do them both at the same time? Because for years it was, you go to a nonprofit to make no money because you want to make a difference, or you go to a company and you're greedy but just making money, you don't care about anything, basically. Little extreme, but that's what it was, that would seem to be the model.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  And, because I love what you're saying, because the leaders, we work with the leaders we engage with around the world are, really do care about making money, because they know they need to, to be able to make a social or environmental impact, and they care about their employees, and they care about their communities, et cetera, et cetera. So it sounds like to me that kind of aligns. And, and did you, you know, after McKinsey, what you've been doing, what you've done and what you've been doing, is that the path? How did you define the path you wanted to, you wanted to follow after McKinsey?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Oh, this is exciting. So, yeah, I was doing strategic advisory work, and I'd always had a great interest in mid-market companies. So not, you know, super small companies, because they don't have really the scale or the budget to hire, you know, high-end consultants, but not big enterprise companies like the ones that I was working at, at McKinsey, because of all the things that we just discussed. But I found a great love for mid-sized businesses, because they're often still run by the founding team, and there was something about that part of the market that really fascinated me. And so I started a podcast called CEO Exclusive, where I was interviewing the CEOs of, a lot of them were in 5,000, fast growth, fast growth companies.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And they kept telling me about this phenomenon, about how they were using their businesses as a platform for good. And this like holistic approach to, you know, including employee concerns and thinking about the business more, you know, kind of in this broader frame. And after about a hundred interviews, I interviewed JB and Consulting. And one of their partners was like, word for that. It's called conscious capitalism. And I just lost it. I was like, oh, my God, like, this is it. Like, you know, tell me everybody. And he's like, who's who's involved in this? And I found out there was a chapter and there's people and there's a movement and there's books and like all this stuff, right? Um, because I just never know that knew that other people felt that way.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I was had grown up business wise in the blood sucking part of capitalism. Remember, like, I was in McKinsey and like, oh, it's like, that's what it means to be capitalist. You just suck blood and extract and whatever. So to find out that there's this whole other point of view and a whole other paradigm was just very exciting to me.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So, um, you know, fell in love with the conscious capitalism chapter. We started a budding relationship. Covid hit, delayed, blah, blah. So most recently, um, we've had a joint partnership called Capitalism Done Right. Where, you know, I basically am still interviewing and having conversations with that same group of mid-market companies, but we're focused more narrowly on cap conscious capitalism. But Mark, the capitalism side of conscious capitalism, which is what you're talking about, which is not only is it great, not only does it take care of the broadest group of stakeholders, but it also makes more money.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And that's the thing that we have to, when I say you, I mean, we, I mean, you and me, people who are interested in a greater adoption of this kind of way of doing business, have to reinforce that it actually makes more money. It's not that just that it's good.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And I love the way you phrase it. You know, we found time and time again that the leaders who really did care about the financial, physical and mental wellbeing of their people and their communities and whatnot, did better in every aspect, people, consumers, being able to attract the best talent when they were doing good at the same time. It's and it's not even rocket science. The great people we talk to that are open to great opportunities um, want to go where they can make great money and have purpose at the same time. They want to have experiences, not just years of experience, but actual experiences that that, you know, either

• 23:36Speaker 00

  you know, are treasured or cherished in their life, whether and it's from business and from people that they meet. They want to live and and make money at the same time. And why would we want it any other way? Right?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  But the challenge here, because one of the things, the questions I love to ask is, well, if it's so great, why isn't everybody, why isn't it that's already had reached full adoption, right? Why don't, why aren't we already doing business this way? And the the challenge is, Mark, that there are some short term trade offs that in this market, a lot of companies are not willing to make, or especially if they're publicly traded, they're not able to make, because in many cases, they have to, companies have to trade off short term profit in order to do some investing to get the longer term, higher, you know, higher profitability, lower employee turnover, et cetera, et cetera, right? All the, all the financial benefits that come from doing business this way. So it involves a little bit of the delayed ratification

• 24:30Speaker 01

  that if a company is in the public markets, typically they're not able to to do. So it's not, it's not necessarily as straightforward as it might sound.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Oh, it never is, but um, for some, but um, not but, and I, um, the number of of C suite people I've talked to that talk about how, um, how not hate, that's not the wrong word, how they dislike, you know, the emphasis put on quarterly reporting all the time. I mean, three months is is a blip um, in in in things and how sometimes they're not able to make happens in a lot of businesses, a decision that they know would be great, but they can't make it because of the quarterly reporting and and stuff. Even people, even talent, maybe Joe or Jane didn't make a sale this quarter. Um, and and the evaluation sucks because she didn't make a sale, but she's going to make three huge ones

• 25:24Speaker 00

  in two quarters that she's working on. That's something, and just that's a simple example of what needs to be looked at, you know, and and stuff like that. And uh, and even even in the community, what what is the, what is the brand of the company in the community that makes people, consumers say, hey, that's the type of company we want to, we want to buy from and these things. And, you know, and um, you're right, they are, they are hard decisions. Sometimes they're decisions made just to keep their jobs. You know, and then things of that nature. And uh, so it sounds like one of the common points we're talking about is maybe we're not looking at the long picture enough um, to to be able to have everybody, like you say,

• 26:04Speaker 00

  jump on, there's been a lot more, when we first started Leaders Who Care, it was thought of super soft, you know, it's infamous soft skills at the beginning and fluffy care, schmear, you know, type of thing. But uh, but, you know, um, more and more and more, we're seeing why it's important, you know, to to have it and uh, because that's where you do get the best talent and and so on. But yeah, it's, it's not easy. But like you said, if it was easy, everybody would do it. Um, so, um, I want to ask you something also, times are changing so fast. You know, they said the the the fourth industrial revolution has been clearly defined as AI and technology.

• 26:46Speaker 00

  AI leading the way there, you know, incredibly fast and furious. First they were talking, well, it's been around, AI has been around for decades, but now it's really been hit and marketing is up. But they also say the fifth is potentially about humanity. Um, share how you and and all the entrepreneurs and corporate people that you talk to, how you see it, they're strategically utilizing AI. How are they looking at it? How are you looking at it with respect to creativity and imagination and and the impact it's going to have on on employees and their families and community in general? What's your thoughts on that?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  I think in the short term, it's relatively straightforward. So, you know, in my observation and from what I'm hearing, if you look at any entry level white collar job, whether or not it's paralegal or being an analyst at McKinsey or working in an accounting firm, et cetera, most of those jobs at the very low, very lowest levels are gathering information and synthesizing it in some way.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  AI is going to completely wipe that out. And I think, you know, I was sharing an article a couple of days ago, maybe like a week ago, about how McKinsey has already developed its own internal AI to like replace, you know, some significant portion of their incoming analyst class and associate class. Um, that is either happening or has happened. And so what's going to happen, I expect, um, you know, is it'll be like the self checkouts at the supermarket where, you know, six, if you had six cashiers before, you go down to one cashier that's supervising the machines. I think it'll be very much the same with the AIs. Instead of having an analyst class of sixty, which is what I was in at McKinsey for my first year in New York, it's going to go down to five, maybe ten.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  And then, you know, they'll supervise the AIs that are doing all the work. So the the question that I don't really know, and I think is a societal question, and I would be interested to hear if you have something to say about this, is then what happens with the five, the five people that now paid for a Harvard education and like, can't get a job? You know, like, what happens with them? Um, I don't know how those resources will be redeployed and like what the workforce will look like, but I mean, that's happening.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's happening. And and um, Amazon is, and Amazon is just laying off a lot of people because AI is going to take over and things like that. And um, accounting and legal and all, all a lot of things will be taken over. I mean, we're having discussions and um, you know, kind of like we say in LA, we'll uh, you know, we we want to leave the audience wanting more, so we'll have to do a sequel, but I'll just make one comment on it. Um,

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  We're having discussions a lot about um, certainly upskilling and certain people will be able to be upskilled. But we're also having discussions on the people you're talking about. How are they going to get to those next positions if they don't have the experience of those positions that are being eliminated? Where, how are they going to jump to management positions? Because sometimes it's not just what you've learned, you know, in in those positions, it's what you've learned of how to be in those positions, where things are derived from having matured, I mean, so many things to get you to the next levels. And um, I think that's going to be important. And and this is a bigger discussion. One of the things we're talking to certain executives about is

• 30:05Speaker 00

  what responsibility do corporates have to keep certain people that maybe can't even be upskilled, pay them a salary, which is now called universal income, and but I think we we make decisions too much on titles and not on solutions. And maybe have those people work in the communities as as uh, teacher aides or caregivers or doing planting gardens in every school across the country or cleaning up parks or whatever people want to do to make a difference in their community and feel good about themselves. Rather than the cost it's going to have to have everybody on unemployment, not being able to afford healthcare, get sick, need money, steal food, whatever, it's going to all sorts of things happen. Maybe there's going to be a mindset change that is about good business

• 30:49Speaker 00

  to keep those people on, because if you don't, you'll have to pay higher taxes to support all the people anyway that are on unemployment. And think of a a big mindset, it's a hard thing to do of we are about making money and this is actually good for business to do it, and that type of thing. So.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that hasn't historically been the case. I mean, what has happened and what you're talking about is the, it's coming from the mind of somebody who's clearly a conscious capitalist. What has happened with, you know, coercive capitalism or extractive capitalism is when you have productivity gains like this, it doesn't get, the productivity gains do not get distributed throughout the population. What happens is it is it accrues to the people, you know, the the economic shareholders of the business, right? So I don't, I don't anticipate that those McKinsey partners who are choosing not to uh, hire that class of analysts are now all of a sudden going to be like, oh, we're going to go out and we're going to hire a bunch of people to plant trees and help. No, they're not doing that. They're going to take that, you know, ten, twenty, thirty million dollars and they're going to take it to the bank. That's what they're going to do, right? They're not going to help nobody with that.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  I I can't disagree. I can't disagree. However, when it's felt that how much it's going to cost them, and not McKinsey only, we're not focusing on them, but um, how it's going to cost them more if more and more people can't be upskilled and are out there and and and in the community, what's what's going to happen? And maybe there's an in between there. But it's, it's a big topic to think about because um.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It's huge, everything. Because what do you think, I mean, in the doomsday, post apocalyptic version of this, you think about a whole, not so much women, but whole class of men, right? A million men who are not unemployed, you know, with no future, no, that's a recipe for for civil unrest.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  We're seeing it, we're seeing it already a little bit.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Right, for sure. But the the people who are the economic stakeholders at the top of the the food chain. They're gonna go to Mars with Elon, right? Like, they're not necessarily invested. What has historically happened, not that it's going to happen, what has historically happened, is they try to pull some sort of escape hatch rather than reinvesting in society. But, you know, this is me being a little bit of the angry, sorry, the angry black woman escaped just for a second. Sorry.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Why don't we just let them go to Mars? Okay, last thing I'll say on this is, I was at a conference, it's called like No No What Not, and Jeff Bezos was there, and Bill Nelson of NASA was asking him questions, and they were talking about, they ended up talking about leadership and leaders and whatnot, and getting a different perspective. And a founder of our company is, one of the founders is an astronaut, and somebody said there, maybe we should send them up in Jeff's space rocket or something, to take a different perspective of what the world looks like from up there, which was interesting, but then a few people yelled out, and maybe we should leave them there for a while, actually.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  And so when you say all of them go to Mars, that could actually be not a bad thing for us down here, but it's all thought, and it's happening so fast. I do think AI is going to have a lot of benefit for a lot of things, especially healthcare. We just have to figure out how to work together on that, but that'll be on our sequel. So I have one last question here for you, that's more Maya Angelou, you know, make everything, you know, everybody always remembers how people made them feel, type of thing. I had a client once told me, in 2021, he told me, he said, you know, the year 2020, the pandemic was the year that flew by slowly.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  And I thought, pretty well right on, and now it feels like COVID was yesterday and years ago, all the time, for a lot of people. We're in the second half of 2025 already. With all that said, what are you most grateful for, and what are you most hopeful for?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Thank you. I think I'm most grateful for my relationships, certainly, and maybe that's a little bit of a cliche, but it's just

• 34:49Speaker 00

  Never a cliche.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Right? And in particular, I'll say that sometime around 2021, I started to really synthesize all of the learnings and the experiences that I'd had interviewing CEOs, and I was in, I would say, a bit of an existential crisis about the future of my career, and I started to really think about my own values, because I'd been hearing all this stuff around, like, so what are my values? And I made a decision that was, I thought was hard, which is like, I only want to work with companies and with leaders whose values are consistent with mine. Because I had noticed, like, all this disturbance in my, you know, my previous years about,

• 35:33Speaker 01

  like, working with companies and leaders that just, that were misaligned, and I was like, wow, I'm never gonna work again, you know? You know? Especially because I didn't realize how many people were starting to really evolve to this way of thinking. And, you know, it wasn't the case. Like, I, my last project, where I was more or less functioning as an interim chief of fractional, chief of staff, was with a beautiful conscious leader. Like, I just was so amazed and impressed with how she handled her people. And before I made that decision, like, I didn't think it was possible to work with somebody like that.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  I'd only saw, seen the more extractive kind of capitalism, you know, from my earlier career. So people like that, that really deeply inspire me about what is possible through business still. Like, business actually can be a force for good. And the people like you, and the people like, Patricia's her name, and the people like the folks at Conscious Capitalism, both the National Organization, John Mackey, Kit Tindall, folks in Atlanta, Chris Hooper, Jeff Bond, like, both excite me, that's the hopeful part, right? And I'm grateful for them, because they make my business life, like, good, like, I'm having

• 37:01Speaker 01

  fun, like, this is not a hardship being with you. It's not a, it's never a hardship being with them. And this is what work should be like, you know? Work should be life-giving.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. Thanks for sharing that, and that is totally aligned with us, and, you know, the leaders who do care should be able to be the ones that do the best, and why shouldn't we care? You know, it's not a job, it's life, it's part of our life, a big part of our life, and why shouldn't we be able to do good in making money and in social and environmental impact? So, so thank you for sharing, for sharing that. Thank you for being a leader who cares. Thank you for being a new friend, I'm grateful for that, we have a new friend, and I'm actually hopeful for all the same stuff, that you are a leader who cares and a new friend. So, we're gonna make the future bright, thanks for being on the series.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Awesome, thank you so much.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Thank you for listening to The Brand Called You: video cast and podcast, a platform that brings you knowledge, experience, and wisdom of hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. Do visit our website, www.tbcy.in, to watch and listen to the stories of many more individuals. You can also follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Just search for The Brand Called You.