Leadership Next

The changing public expectations for how corporations should honor Pride month has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride over the past decade. Pressure from both the public and from employees to support the LGBTQ+ community has been vocalized and well documented. That pressure was followed by some corporate missteps and accusations of pinkwashing, but this year’s corporate pride celebrations have been the most conflicted in recent memory.

Right-wing backlash led Target to pull its Pride merchandise from stores and AB InBev to yank ads featuring a transgender influencer. Those companies have made a lot of headlines, but they are not alone in facing backlash and needing to figure out how to respond. These responses have impacted both the public perception of companies and their bottom lines.

In this episode of Leadership Next, GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis joins hosts Alan Murray and Michal Lev-Ram to discuss how the country's political atmosphere has impacted this year's Pride, and why it feels different from previous years. She shares advice and guidance for companies in supporting the LGBTQ+ community and explains what happens when CEOs listen to the needs and desires of both shareholders and stakeholders to guide these sorts of decisions. Ellis also talks more about GLAAD's transformation under her leadership from a media watchdog to a consultant and advisor to media, advertising, social media and business industries on representation and support of LGBTQ+ people.

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Ken Frazier is currently Chairman, Health Assurance Initiatives, at General Catalyst, which is just the most recent leadership position on an impressive resume. Frazier served as CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck for 10 years, stepping down in 2021. He is also co-founder and former CEO of the OneTen initiative - aimed at connecting underrepresented talent with corporate jobs - and, until last year, was the Lead Independent Director of the ExxonMobil Board of Directors.

Frazier has also become known for standing by his principles. He first made a name for himself as a young lawyer in the early 1990s, when he represented a wrongfully-convicted death row inmate and worked to get his conviction overturned. In 2017, he resigned from former President Trump's Manufacturing Advisory Council after the president's ambivalent comments following the Charlottesville rally. The move prompted a number of CEOs to follow in his footsteps. And in 2021, spurred by a new law in Georgia, Frazier urged corporate America to vocally fight for voting rights for all Americans.

In this episode of Leadership Next, recorded live in Washington D.C. at a Deloitte Next Generation CEO event, Frazier tells host Alan Murray why these decisions were a matter of principle not politics and why he thinks CEOs can and should stand for every American's right to vote regardless of their political views. He also discusses the challenges he faced in his first few years as CEO of Merck and the shareholders who trusted his vision enough to support him. Finally, Frazier talks about starting the OneTen coalition after the murder of George Floyd and the need to find a common language to talk about ESG and DEI.

Leadership Next is powered by Deloitte.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff believes business can improve the state of the world. And as the world has grappled with the realities of the coronavirus, he’s used both company and personal resources to attempt to do just that. But now he says we are preparing to enter the second phase of this pandemic: returning to work.

In this episode of “Leadership Next,” Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt ask Benioff what that return looks like. They discuss his challenge to companies to retain employees for at least the first 90 days of this crisis. They also ask if company devotion to issues like diversity or the environment falls by the wayside in the months to come. Benioff’s answer: CEOs who remain committed to stakeholder capitalism will ultimately find the most success.

Linda Rendle is one of just a few women to be running a Fortune 500 company. She took over the top job at Clorox early in the pandemic when the company was scrambling to meet unprecedented demand for its cleaning products. That demand has subsided but inflation has skyrocketed, handing Rendle yet another challenge. On today's Leadership Next, she tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt how she's approached these hurdles and why she strives to take care of her employees and the planet.

"(It) has nothing to do with the idea of being woke. it has to do with this is the way that we actually create value," Rendle explains. "And we've been under leveraging it as a society for many years. And now I think it is the way and the path forward to continuing to create good growth, and really a more comprehensive view of capitalism."

Zoetis is a Fortune 500 company that makes medicine, vaccines and other products for pets and livestock. When the COVID pandemic hit - just weeks after Kristin Peck became CEO - animals still needed those products, and Peck had to figure out the best way to support her team to enable their work to continue. This ultimately led her to reimagine how she operated as CEO - details she shares with Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt in this episode of Leadership Next.

"My big saying was, we may all be in the same storm but our boats are pretty different, so let's find out what your boat looks like ... What was it that was making it challenging for you? And how as a CEO could I create policies, benefits and leadership that supported you?"

Also in today's episode: why Zoetis cares about sustainable agriculture, Peck's take on the future of stakeholder capitalism, and pandemic puppies.