The Botwinick Prize in Business Ethics Honors Matthew M… — Transcript

Columbia Business School honors Ben & Jerry's CEO Matthew McCarthy with the Bottwinnick Prize for ethical leadership and social impact.

Key Takeaways

Ethical leadership is crucial for business sustainability and success in today’s transparent environment.
Matthew McCarthy’s leadership at Ben & Jerry’s exemplifies how companies can integrate social justice and environmental responsibility.
The Bottwinnick Prize celebrates individuals who lead with integrity and make a positive societal impact.
Strong teamwork and partnerships are essential to advancing a company’s social mission.
Business can be a powerful force for good when guided by clear values and ethical decision-making.

Summary

The Bottwinnick Prize honors individuals exemplifying the highest standards of business ethics and leadership.
Matthew McCarthy, CEO of Ben & Jerry's since 2018, is recognized for advancing social justice, environmental sustainability, and ethical business practices.
Ben & Jerry's origins and commitment to ethical sourcing and social causes are highlighted.
The prize was established by Bessie and Benjamin Bottwinnick, Columbia Business School alumni and founders of the Bottwinnick Wolfensohn Foundation.
The award ceremony includes recognition of the Bottwinnick family and a tribute to Elaine Wolfensohn, a passionate supporter of the prize.
Matthew McCarthy emphasizes the importance of business ethics in company survival and thriving in a transparent world.
He credits his team, partners, and the independent Ben & Jerry's board for upholding the company’s values and social mission.
The video underscores the role of business as a force for good and the need for proactive ethical leadership.
The nominating committee included students, faculty, alumni, and family members, reflecting broad community support.
The event is hosted by Columbia Business School’s Stamford C. Bernstein and Company Center for Leadership and Ethics.

Chapters

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In 1978, two friends named Ben and Jerry opened the doors of their very first scoop shop. Their beginning was our beginning, and right from the get-go, our goals were simple: to make the best ice cream possible, use our business to do good,

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and have fun. Because if it's not fun, why do it? Our euphoric flavors, packed with generous chunks and swirls, are made using the best ingredients we can ethically source from fair trade growers, local dairy farmers, and a bakery that changes lives.

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We don't always voice what's popular or easy, but we always speak up for what we all believe in: that love is love, the earth is worth protecting, and success tastes sweeter when everyone benefits. Dig it, then dig in. Maybe even bite off

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more than you can chew. Let's stand up and be heard, and let's have fun doing it, because it's pretty amazing the problems we can lick when we're all in this [Music] together. Yes, that is indeed Ben and Jerry's,

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a company we've all grown to love and a company whose CEO Matthew McCarthy is being honored today with the Bottwinnick Prize. Good evening, everyone. My name is Madupa Akanola, and I'm a management professor at Columbia Business School, and I'm also the director of the

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Stamford C. Bernstein and Company Center for Leadership and Ethics. So thank you for joining us because you are in for a treat, and I mean that both literally and also figuratively. So what is this Bottwinnick Prize that

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you're here to see bestowed upon our special guest? This prize was established by Bessie and Benjamin Bottwinnick. Benjamin Bottwinnick was a class of '26—that would be 1926 CBS grad—very well-respected CBS CPA at the Benjamin Bottwinnick Company,

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and also founder. Both of them founded the Bottwinnick Wolfensohn Foundation. And so who does this prize get awarded to? An individual or representative of a business organization exemplifying the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct, as well as ethical

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decision-making and leadership. And so there have been many wonderful past recipients of the Bottwinnick Prize, people who have stood up for what they believed in and made huge differences in their companies from a purpose standpoint and also from a profit standpoint.

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And many of them are really ahead of their time. So I want to recognize and acknowledge former recipients of this prize. I also want to recognize the Bottwinnick Wolfensohn family. Bessie and Benjamin Bottwinnick are no longer with us, but the support of their family, when I

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say it's been unwavering, I really mean it. This includes their son Edward Botnick, his spouse Vicki Brown, and numerous grandchildren, some of whom are with us tonight. So thank you all for joining and for your continued support. But I do have to also make sure that we

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start with taking a moment to honor Elaine Wolfensohn, who was the daughter of Bessie and Benjamin Bottwinnick, who passed away last year. And I can't tell you how much of a supporter Elaine was of this

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prize. I really used to love seeing her at this annual gathering, hearing how much the prize meant to her and her family, and hearing more about her parents' legacy. Not only would she come here annually, but she was

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also a proud alum of Teachers College of Columbia's Teachers College and also a trustee. So we will and continue to miss Elaine's spirit and her passion for making this world a better place, and we are dedicating the 2021

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Bottwinnick Prize to her, and I ask that you join me in a moment of silence in her honor. Thank you very much for that. So who decides who is going to win the Bottwinnick Prize, this coveted prize? This year's nominating committee

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included students, faculty, alumni, members of the Bottwinnick Wolfensohn family, and the dean's office, and they unanimously agreed that Matthew McCarthy's lifelong pursuit and commitment to ethical leadership and social impact made him incredibly worthy of this prize. He joined Ben & Jerry's in 2018, and since

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then he has accelerated the company's global programs and social justice, refugee and immigrant rights, environmental and agricultural sustainability. Clearly, he has expanded the brand well beyond its yummy ice cream flavors. Many would say that Matthew is a rule breaker, and he shows

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how business can be a force for good in the world. He sees his role as steering a global team of aspiring activists, and from this, it's pretty clear that Matthew exemplifies a proactive approach to leadership and ethics, and he promotes a very clear

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understanding of the importance of giving voice and energy to causes that can lead us all to thrive personally and economically. So it is such an honor to virtually present the Bottwinnick Prize to Mr. Matthew McCarthy, CEO of Ben & Jerry's.

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Congratulations, Matthew. I am going to turn it over to you now. Thank you very much, Medupe. You set a very high bar, and it's good to see you, and it's really a treat to be here with everybody.

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My comments will be brief, but first I want to give a big shout-out of thanks, a huge thank you to Columbia University, to the Bernstein Center, to the staff, alumni, the students, faculty, and of course the Bottwinnick

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Wolfensohn family and all the staff who've worked on this. This is a big deal for me personally, but also for my team. I don't put a ton of stock in industry awards and things like that. I

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take them with a bit of a grain of salt, but this one is a special one. This is a big deal. And I think it's, for me personally, a big deal because the topic of business ethics, operating

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your organization, your business, your company ethically, I've come to find and I believe strongly is at the heart of whether your company is even going to survive, let alone thrive. We're in a moment of hyper-transparency, and that's a good thing, and some

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businesses will thrive and some won't make it, and business ethics is very much at the heart of that. And I've come to learn that, and I see that every day regardless of the business that you're in. This is also recognition.

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Again, I'm the guy that gets to have his name on the award, but the reality is this is a recognition for the entire Ben & Jerry's family, and the fact of the matter is I wouldn't be getting this

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recognition if it weren't made possible by all the tireless work of my teammates around the world and in our family. Their vision, the commitment of our team around the world to our shared values, their hard work, their

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creativity, and their own rule-breaking is what's recognized here tonight as well. And I also want to give a shout-out to all the people of the Ben & Jerry's family. So I talk about people both that

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are within our company but also the people that are in our extended family or our value network, from our farmers and all the farm workers who help supply the things that we make ice cream with, to all the folks in

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our manufacturing teams who come to work every single day here and in other parts of the world making the Ben & Jerry's ice cream every single day, all of our scoop shop owners, all of our franchisees that are in the joy business

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every day, and all of our scoopers. They are also our front-line workers, bringing joy to our fans every single day. We've got teammates from Ben & Jerry's across over 30 countries now and also our NGO partners. So much of the

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work that we do in what we call our social mission space is really powered by, enabled by our partners in the civil society space, people who are the experts in the grassroots organizations, in civil rights,

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in social and climate justice spaces. We couldn't do what we do at Ben & Jerry's without them. And obviously, there are a few other folks I want to give a shout-out of thanks to. We have an independent board of directors at Ben & Jerry's

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that was established by Jerry and Ben over 20 years ago, and our independent board of directors is somewhat unique. Their remit is to help ensure and preserve and protect the things that we try to do every day, and the independent board helps guide us

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and keep us on track as we go forward. Certainly, I gave a shout-out of thanks to Jerry.

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jerry's family is certainly a prize for and a recognition for their vision uh that we try to carry on and live up to and certainly a big thanks to all those uh folks who have helped me get where i

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am today my wife lisa and my mom and my dad lisa's dad yeah my brothers and my sisters and all of my my friends and colleagues both at ben and jerry's ed unilever and uh and all the way back to when i

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was a kid i'm grateful for the support and the encouragement and sometimes kick in the pants that i get from the people that support me and i suppose that the last thing i would say here and this hopefully will

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be a lead into um our q a madupe is this is not only a moment for some maybe some celebration and some recognition that i and my team are grateful for but also this is a moment of urgency and i'm speaking specifically

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to the students when you think about business ethics um think about some of the challenges that we're facing in our communities around the world not only here in the united states but everywhere around the world business ethics is linked directly

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uh to justice and if something is unjust it is unethical by uh design uh by definition as far as you ask me and so we are in the urgency business we're not just in the business business um and i really want to encourage

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all the business students to make um make it a priority uh business ethics is not just how you do your business as i mentioned at the beginning it is central to the definition of the business that you're in it's not just a course on not getting

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in trouble with the law or getting called out in a pr scandal but business ethics is directly related to justice and it's critical that business leaders be directly involved in solving the biggest challenges that we have in our

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communities here and around the world so i'm thrilled to be here tonight on behalf of uh ben and sherry's family and um thank you medium team well thank you matthew for being here for accepting the the award and for all the things that we

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are about to dig into because you just you you already started you just like you know what let let me end my speech by just you know going there so before we get started with our talking about some of these topics to discuss um

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i want to encourage everybody to put questions in the q a box and as a fun reminder i told you that this would be a treat literally and figuratively the first five questions chosen during the q a session will win a free pint of ben and

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jerry's ice cream courtesy of math so put in those questions and make sure they're good we're gonna only choose good ones so that you're very deserving of your free ice cream okay matthew so many students are on here

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aspiring to be ceos they will be ceos they're excited about being ceos and on leadership teams and you are one and i'm sure they're curious how did you get there like what was your path to ceo uh it's uh that's a long one i'll try to

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make it uh brief i didn't you know when i got out of undergraduate i went to umass amherst and i really didn't know what the heck i wanted to do i was a bit directionless to be blunt i was a liberal arts student and liked

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the things i was studying but i didn't have any sort of inkling that business was the direction i was going to go um and i'd always worked in the food service industry so um always had jobs when i was a kid

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scooped ice cream one summer that was a lot of fun had no idea decades later that i'd be in the ice cream business but i was always in and around uh the food business um and um i was really fortunate to work

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with my dad my dad worked in a big company and they uh left that to really run his own smaller company and i was a teenager at the time so going to work with him was really where i cut my teeth on

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what an entrepreneurial business is all about and even though i later went on to a larger company that got bought by a multi-billion dollar company that's global i tried to hold on to a lot of those uh lessons around

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entrepreneurialism um and the importance of taking personal responsibility for the stuff that you're doing um and then as first further i went in business i just love the marketing side of things i love the consumer side of things i

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in hindsight i'm uh really curious about why we humans do the stuff that we do um and particularly as it relates to commerce and so i went off and found my way into best foods and which later got bought by

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by unilever and so i've been with unilever for almost 24 years working in a range of brands and businesses in the cpg consort package goods world um big brands and small brands and everyday brands and i've really loved that i've really relished that

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opportunity to be in business and be where your day job is to stay connected to the people that you serve in some way and your ability to be effective as a business person um in growing your business and having a

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positive impact is linked directly to uh the consumer and that's one thing i like about fast food consumer goods is the minute you're not relevant you know it and so you're kind of always on the edge and wanting to

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to serve your consumers and you know compete and then as i progressed uh through the marketing side of things the general management piece was always there i think i kind of caught the bug when i was working with my dad

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but just always wanting to progress towards more of an overview of a business i worked in sales for a number of years before i went into marketing and i absolutely loved it and a lot of my career work was through lateral moves in fact i

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know i probably could have gone vertically faster uh if i hadn't taken so many lateral moves but i had a little bit of a sense of where i wanted to go and taking those lateral moves into jobs where i wasn't the expert where i had a

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steeper learning curve where i could challenge myself really kind of gathered steam and uh i think helped me get where i am today i think the other thing is that you know things don't always make sense when you're going forward but when you

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arrive at a location and you look backwards things make a bit of sense probably 10 or maybe 12 years ago i just started getting much much more interested in the sustainability and the the impact side of the business in addition to

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growing brands and growing businesses and that really started with sustainability environmental sustainability and the more i um really opened my eyes to the opportunity and the urgent need for businesses to take responsibility for their externalities not only was that a good thing for

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communities people the planet but also was becoming more central to brand identity and my ability to compete and so that intersection between what you stand for and what you do a little bit so i alluded earlier just grew for me and so while i love

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growing businesses and i love and i've loved working for unilever over the years i was also getting hungrier for leveraging the business to do more things and when you have the privilege of working on some large businesses or some

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large brands you know small changes can have a big impact big changes can have an enormous impact and so the opportunity to drive change contrary to what some people think which is like is it profit or is it purpose i think that's actually

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a ridiculous and outmoded comparison uh that needs to be frankly challenged uh and i just kept progressing in a way where businesses that were more purpose-oriented but businesses that were really bringing their values forward just were more and more

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attractive to me and about three years ago i found myself with an opportunity to join ben and jerry's and um it's a kind of it's a super thrilling i never would have imagined if you talked to me 10 years

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10 years old when i grew up in massachusetts that i'd worked for ben and jerry's i'd say you're crazy but it's a tremendous privilege and an honor to be part of what is as much an experiment in business as a company

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it's fascinating because i love the idea that you not only you found yourself in an organization where you could make lateral moves that was big right because sometimes people are kind of like i'm not going to go to a

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conglomerate i'm not going to be because they think they might get lost or something but that means that opportunities for you to learn more so what would be your sell to students who are sometimes like oh you know

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somewhere small not somewhere big i'm gonna get lost in a big company like this what was the true benefit for you yeah i think um i i first thing i'd say and i'm going to speak primarily from my experience working at consumer

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package goods if you think about the businesses that are part of unilever most of them were started by a founder most of them were started by a person who had a vision had a goal had an idea and then they came together they got

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acquired or they joined up over time and so the dna of those businesses is always there and so to go work for a big company often you're working for a small company within a big company and now it's true big companies do have

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a certain level of bureaucracy and that's just the way it is that's true and there are also positives a big part of the big company resources the ability to move around to your point and i think probably most importantly is

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clarity about the skills that you want to gain clarity about the impact that you want to have and i would say that it doesn't necessarily mean you should go to a big company or a small company but i think that clarity will

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give you the opportunity to be stronger in your decisions about what you will accept and what you won't accept in in any business and i have found that even a big company like unilever the change has been incredible

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over the past 15 years if you think about the number of businesses that unilever has divested and acquired has really reshaped the business so our senior executive team has done i think a really an outstanding job continuing to keep our core businesses

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healthy while reshaping the business uh in terms of either um divestitures or acquisitions so you never really know today uh there's no there's no one sure thing you join a company that company may not look the way it looks

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in a few years and i find that really exciting can you give us an example of one of the lateral moves that you made and what inspired and motivated you to make that move or you know because sometimes you talk

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about social networks was it that someone saw an opportunity and told you it was right for you or you were seeking what was your balance on those sure uh one pops out is you're asking the question one popped out immediately

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and i was in marketing so i said brand management you get into kind of cpg brand management management at least when i was starting out that was a really big deal and got in and there was a management

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development program one of the tenets of of it was to to move around and to get experience and that was of interest to me and i remember one of our vice presidents uh the vice president of our unit she said to me she sat me down and

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she said are you sure you want to do this i said what do you what do you mean i mean it's going into sales that's a great experience because your peers are gonna pass you they're gonna move beyond and you're going to be

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out there doing this other assignment are you cool with that and you know to this day that's uh that was really great advice because i'm not sure really what her intent was right so i was just junior i was kind of nobody in the business and

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she was this you know one of the most senior people running our business unit and it doesn't actually matter why she said it to me whether she really feared for me or she was just trying to give me a

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little bit of stern advice like don't go out to this assignment and then be wondering why some of your peers get promoted ahead of you and i'm really glad i got that advice and i'm glad i made that move

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and there were plenty of times that i was in my sales assignment um uh doing unglamorous work i thought to myself man you know did i go to school for this and whatnot but all of it really paid off and i think that that's

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important i think that you know the higher you go in some ways the fewer questions you can ask to a certain degree and so i think that uh you know getting promoted and advancing vertically in an organization or within

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your profession is great you know titles and maybe more money or whatnot but in fact your ability to serve your company your teammates and your staff is strengthened definitely to the degree that you understand how your business or your

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unit or your expertise fits into the system and for me that that's in hindsight uh what has helped me is to have a better understanding i don't i i haven't worked in procurement but the time that i spend understanding how

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our procurement team and the professionals whose life work is in procurement has helped me understand their see their view of things so when i come at them with an idea or a thought or challenge or a problem um empathy matters empathy matters

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within a business so the learning perspective now i thought you were gonna say and then when i became ceo i called her and i said you know what i can go lateral and i can eventually beat ceo what are my peers

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doing what are then i'm just kidding um tell me more about that moment though the moment when you knew you were going to be ceo oh it was an interesting moment where my boss at the time um said he called me up you know we get

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the call from your boss and it's like spontaneous you're like all right this is either really good or really bad and i need 10 minutes with you so i could get a quick call with him and he said all right bad news is we're

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eliminating your job and i was like oh i'm just getting good at it i've been in a role for maybe a year and a half or so i was really loving my role i was actually running the foods business for

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for unilever north america and i really i tremendous respect for for for my boss at the time he's a bit of a mentor to me and he said but we don't want you to leave there's a couple of other things

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let's take a look at your individual development plan we call those idps kind of where you write out what you want to do you want to grow up in the short term immediate term in the long term it's not rocket science

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and uh and this opportunity was coming open and i i thought about it for i said well i chatted with him on a friday there was a few other opportunities and it just you know i just remember thinking to myself yeah this is exactly

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where i'm supposed to be that's exactly what i'm supposed to eat yeah that was it then i went home and i told my wife it's just ah that's it you know like is it kind of like hey you

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know dummy yeah that's it and so uh so yeah they're there there it was that's that was the moment there you go and then so you there is alignment it's clear that there was alignment that made it easy to make

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this decision about being at ben and jerry's partially because of some of the things you mentioned you value and they value or the company had valued so what did you decide three years ago what values did you decide

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were going to matter to you in your leadership of the company boy that is a that's a big one um you know um at different points in my career and i don't think i'm unique in this regard you feel more or less connected to your

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employer sometimes you may have a great boss sometimes frankly you may have a crappy boss or something that you don't get along with and then those those kind of moments where things are going great versus those moments where things are not going

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great in fact those moments where things weren't going great were in hindsight some of my most valuable moments let's say i had a co-worker who we just didn't get along at all or let's say i had a boss it just was

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blocking my career you know those things were painful and difficult at the time and maybe questions should i stay part of this company should i stick it out you know what's the right thing to do here and whether i stayed or i left is

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not the point the fact that i've learned more from my difficult experiences much much more than my successes or my victories um and i know that may sound pretty basic but adversity um is a very powerful teacher um and success is great but then after

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success you kind of move on you know okay great we did that thing and now we need to move on and so i would encourage people to really move towards adversity and when you're in moments of adversity give yourself the

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give yourself the the gift of asking why is this challenging what do what can i learn from this moment how can i take what could be considered a very painful or difficult situation and reinvest that into my future

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it's by reinvesting those learnings that i've been able to uh i think move forward and then and then learn how to help other people move through adversity a lot of organizational work you know we we do our best work usually in teams

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most of the biggest accomplishments we have in our lives in our careers we don't do by ourselves we do with others and so moving through adversity is a natural part of accomplishing things things through relationships with other people so

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i really encourage people to if you're having something difficult don't run away from it run towards what's can you give us an example of one that was your like oh my goodness i cannot believe we made it through that one

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oh gosh um well you know there was one time where we wanted to change the formulation of some of our products that was not going over very well with uh with senior management and without getting into all the details

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suffice it to say that we were trying to make a real nutritional improvement to some of our products and we knew that we could do it we had the technology um some of our some of the nutritionist community were

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not agreed as to the right way to do it but we found a path for we decided on the problem was that not everybody in management was sold on this wow is it really that big of a deal and

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the team and i felt hell yeah this is a big deal and it came also the price tag that was the second barrier yeah but this is really expensive is it going to matter to our consumers is it going to matter and a lot of our

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job in business is to make stuff matter if you know it's right if you know it's the right thing to do particularly when it comes to things like nutrition or health or safety you got to do it you

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got to do it and it often will cost more it's our job to actually to make those calls and so and i was scared i'll be honest with you one of the most senior people in the business unit i had known going into it

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was like total thumbs down on this idea it had been brought up before and i just made up my mind that it was critical for the business that we had to do this and frankly i created a little bit of an

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internal conspiracy uh you i think you have to conspire in organizations and i say that openly i don't say that with any sort of kind of hidden agenda big organizations have a certain momentum some of the momentum is good

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some of that momentum repeats things from the past that are not helpful for the organization the business of the brands to move forward and so sometimes you have to conspire with other like-minded folks within the organization to get stuff done

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and so i found a group of like-minded people and they said well can we do this and a lot of my job became saying we're gonna do this we're gonna do this i love that forming a coalition and if that happened to be vegan ice

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cream my niece thanks you with her many hours i'm so sad to go to ben and jerry's and we're like this and this and it's like oh we'll get you something later but now she always gets something for herself too i'm happy to

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hear that now you have been ceo at a time where a lot is going on in the world the world is very different now or a certain attention is given to things differently now than when you started a ceo

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uh be it the dual pandemics of cove in 19 and racial injustice so like what does it mean what is being ethical an ethical organization an ethical leader kind of mean to you in this context then you alluded to this a little bit in your

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speech but i'm curious to hear a bit more as a huge question i'll try to take a couple bites at it and guide me if if it's working for you uh when when i was more junior we talked about business

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ethics it was primarily things like how not to get arrested uh how not to do things that were you know unethical and illegal and that gradually expanded into more things around fairness in the workplace um but i don't know that when i was more

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junior that they went as far as i now see it today all right so now i would ask the question if something is unjust can it be ethical so so this conversation about business ethics is sometimes kind of talked about over here and then

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maybe a business or the senior executives or maybe the foundation or the social mission people within the business they're talking about a justice issue over here racial justice uh lgbtq rights uh marriage equality uh justice for the environment or for animal rights

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one i that's that's a false narrative let's just kind of call it out what it is is that business ethics is related directly to to justice uh and the second thing i'd say is that there is i think a uh

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a very misguided idea that business should not be engaged with its own values but businesses are groups of people that have come together to do something together all people have values it is completely irrational to me that we as

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humans are being asked would be asked to leave our values at home and so somehow come to the workplace and i don't do something else and i would argue that actually businesses for for for decades actually do express their

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values they do it usually through campaign contributions or lobbying and it's kind of quiet and it's it's it's behind the scenes and as i mentioned before we're in a moment of hyper transparency and there's no going back and so what you do is directly related

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to who you are and how you will be seen by a number of constituencies constituencies your consumers your own employees and so um bringing your values to work is not only okay it is essential it doesn't mean everybody needs to agree

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certainly doesn't mean everybody needs to um kind of be of the same mind we don't agree around my dinner table why would i ever expect that people are gonna agree when you put hundreds if not thousands of people together in a business

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but a business has to make its values clear um and then that's that's also an intersection my first point around business ethics you know business ethics is not avoiding doing bad stuff or getting caught doing bad stuff business ethics is

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driving ethical behavior yeah and where do ethics come from that's usually link to values the businesses values maybe the founders values for us at ben and jerry's we're we're really lucky that we have the values from jerry and ben

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that stick with us today but it can be any business in a business that hasn't done that work to find its values that's okay too that's work that those leaders and those that the team can do it now and um so i

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think for me there's a very direct connection now when earlier in my career if you would ask me the same question i would be like oh yeah business evidence it's like this module i took to i don't know not get in trouble and not

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do bad things now what how have you what are your values with regard to racial justice and how have you tried to address those particularly as a white male ceo in the world i take two i love this

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question i'd say two things in my remit is ceo of ben jerry's i am charged with advancing our three-part mission our product mission our economic mission and our social mission and those sit underneath this concept that we call linked prosperity a

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vision of linked prosperity the reality is that for decades most of that prosperity has actually gone to white dudes like me and so what's interesting if you think about it is that um is that it's business people are in the business of

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creating money growing things creating economic opportunity and economic expansion and one of the biggest byproducts of racism and structural racism in this country around the world is blocking people from opportunity blocking people from fairness blocking people from equity and of course

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blocking people from economic self-empowerment and so for me being a business person there is a very direct link and i didn't know this for most of my life most of my life is a white male a privilege i was like all right well i

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got my own problems and i had to work hard and i had to do this and all that other stuff these kind of white narratives over here and it started to really dawn on me that there was another narrative out there

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and what i had to do as a white person so my lived experience as a white male with a whole lot of privilege relatively speaking is to acknowledge that and to understand it and that's a process i'm going

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through so i may use some terms that sound fancier that sound like i'm knowledgeable but the reality is i um i'm not and that's okay what's not okay is to be to be someone who has privilege and just

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pretend you don't that is what i would say is uh is not acceptable and so for me the values that i try to bring forward are is my lived experience as a white man of privilege particularly somebody who has

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a lot of organizational authority i'm privileged to have the organizational authority that i have how am i using that so i don't try to pretend that i've got somebody else's lived experience what i try to do is to

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get right up close to okay what's the issue what can i do how can i leverage both my own actions the direct things that i can do things that i can impact and unlocking the energy of my organization

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team to actually understand and take take more action so for people you know out there who are white i would suggest that if you haven't been looking into some of these topics do it it is going it is

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already dominating the business world i mean you just literally cannot cannot if you're reading any business press if you're connected at all the topic around ethics things like voting rights and what does that mean what's going on george what's going on

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with the 361 pieces of legislation i'm not just talking like as if i'm kind of just some social liberal waving my arms up here in vermont these are directly related to the your employees your consumers your customers and so to not get engaged in

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these and to understand where your values sit in that space doesn't mean you have to agree or not agree but businesses that don't make their values clear i think are hiding them yeah yep uh you it's clear that you're a lifelong

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learner because you've said like ever you've said a lot about learning including in this domain not to trivialize this to like reduce anything to a book or something but what is something you have read in the past six months

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that really changed your thinking that has made you say everyone needs to read this or do this or try this to get greater insight into the dynamics underlying systemic racism and racial injustice well i um uh i'm wondering which one which one do

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i which one do i choose share a couple of them darn it share a couple uh how to be an anti-racist uh by dr ibram kennedy yeah get that book if you haven't read that book go read that book

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go listen to that book and it's incredibly powerful straightforward easy to read conceptually for a lot of white people it may be difficult to read because you're going to learn a bunch of stuff that you're like i can't believe that

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how's that even possible and i think uh books like that um education pieces like that that i that i seek out or people guide me i got a lot of people coaching me i'm an avid learner and i actively seek

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out input from others and let yourself be shocked and get over it there's also the coven pandemic though too and um lots of people gain the covet 15 eating ben and jerry's ice cream one question for you is what's your favorite

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flavor second question for you you have clearly as a company done well during this challenging time for others how are you addressing that disparity or whatever sure let me tackle the second one first because it's a bigger topic

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if i could if i go back um uh maybe 16 months ago 17 months ago we've got operations in asia and i remember having initial conversations with my team um my our asian team and we had a bit of a heads up you know

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it's it's and to say this isn't this is going to go a bad way and so i was able to scramble my team together and to quickly put together a team to uh to basically mobilize how we wanted to

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to basically keep ourselves keep our family safe to keep the the the team safe and healthy and we had no idea what the heck was going to happen remind people you go back um 12 months 13 months 11 months

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we had no idea really what we were dealing with and we had no idea what this is going to mean for our families our communities all of our workers and so what i learned through that process uh in in a bigger way than i had ever in

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uh in my career beforehand was the just the the the reality that compassion is a business imperative compassion absolutely central to um our business and um i think if you'd asked me a few years ago the idea about compassion and

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business being brought together in the same sentence i'd like wow maybe that's a poster outside of the human resources department or something like that and what i have learned in a big way is that if you don't take care of yourself

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and you don't take care of each other and your team may take care of each other they forget about that it doesn't matter what business you're in and that's such a simple thought but so many businesses got it wrong

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so many businesses did not uh take care of their people and i'm not going to say that we did it perfectly but prioritizing our people health and safety first and this is true not only for ben and jerry's but for unilever

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broadly has really been a huge part of all of our experiences over the past year and after people you know uh were able to get a hold of the necessities that they were looking for then secondary things like ice cream

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uh did uh did uh gross sales and that's what i'm saying is that's for our package business the pints people people know uh that might be bought ecom or um in your local store or supermarket also we've got a whole scoop shop

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business that has been hurt tremendously by all of this um we've got we're in the restaurant business basically and that we started as a scoop shop company about five minutes up the road from where i am right now in burlington

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vermont and all of our scoop shops have been hurt badly by this so working closely with our scoop shop our franchisees who are such an incredible part of of what ben and jerry's was as was founded and what it is today

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so we actually had a bit of a tale of two cities where the total business was has done um well uh thanks to the work of my team everywhere and even the parts that were struggling people came together in new innovative

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ways to support each other and uh yeah um i don't know if i answered your question you you absolutely did you what you didn't answer was what's your favorite flavor oh uh it is so tough uh it is

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i have to i'm not gonna pretend that it's not tough and every year it gets tougher because our flavor gurus and our teams keep coming up with all kinds of crazy wild flavors i'm a bit of a classic i love fish food

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my wife and i really love fish food we started loving new york super fudge chunk we met back in college and then at some point along the way we somehow stumbled into fish food and i have to say it's kind of a standby so

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i'm always trying new flavors and rotating through different things in the freezer uh but uh fish food's a bit of a comfort for me well it is a comfort food for my colleague dan long who also loves you

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know so how do you ensure that you keep innovating from the inside get these amazing flavors keep on taking things to the next level given how many other ice cream scoop shops and everything are popping up these days ah that's uh

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you're talking about the special sauce ben and jerry's right there um i think uh you know ben and jerry were two and they are two very unreasonable guys they had this crazy idea that they as two guys that didn't

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really have any business experience went to burlington vermont one of the coldest towns in the u.s and said let's start an ice cream business so that spirit of unreasonableness is really kind of in the ethos of what we do and what we try to stoke we

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want to kind of stoke that insurgent mindset that jerry and ben have brought to us and and left with us and that it directly informs our product philosophy and so we have chefs on staff and flavor gurus and also people who are really technical

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wizards uh if you think about a pint of ben and jerry's um a lot of that stuff doesn't want to go together you know when they came up with the idea actually a fan suggested the idea of putting cookie dough

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into ice cream we didn't have machines they could do it like so literally this idea of letting creativity and what would surprise and amaze our fans we like to say uh my cmo likes to remind me of this

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great phrase we try to love our fans more than they love us and so this idea of what you're dreaming and and imagining and using your creativity about what would be wild and awesome to our fans and sometimes it

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works out and you know sometimes it doesn't we may create a flavor that we liked and liked it on the bench and our flavor gurus liked it but maybe didn't become a commercial success and those end up in our flavor

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graveyard we actually have an online flavor graveyard which you where you can see every flavor we've ever launched and retired we try to celebrate our we wouldn't call them failures things that didn't work out and if you visit our uh

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our our factory in waterbury vermont you can actually visit the flavor graveyard up on the hill where we've got a selection of those flavors so i think the spirit of you know being willing to fail trying stuff and and giving people a level of freedom

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i will say that there's also a tremendous amount of rigor that goes into the work the team does i don't know people may not have that in their mind's eye about ben and jerry's approach but there's a tremendous amount of consumer

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and market insights a lot of diligent market research consumer research qualitative quantitative understanding where the market's going understanding where culinary trends are going conducting trend tracks there's a tremendous amount of diligence and rigor that goes into supporting the business of

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making euphoric ice cream so bringing joy means bringing human capital to help bring joy but it's also not cheap to do and also to operate ethically is not cheap either so curious about the trade-offs between you know as you think

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about csr and esg and all those things and doing things in a sustainable way doing things ethically how do you figure out what trade-offs to make yeah that's a great question and actually i get asked that a fair amount

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is you know profits as i mentioned before profits or um i don't know great products or you know how do you handle that um and then to a certain degree being in business is the business of managing pricing

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uh it is it's it's it's not a surprise shouldn't be a shock to everybody that at the end of the day commerce is enabled because we park with our money right uh or if you're in a barter system

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you part with something in order to get something else and so uh you know commerce depends on people uh building being willing to pay money for what you do and sometimes there's a race to the bottom lots of promotion

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or cost cutting ben and jerry's is kind of in the other business which is we're kind of trying to find a race to the top uh and and raising the bar of what a super premium ice cream can be

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i can give you thousands of examples of where we can make it cheaper i can give tons of examples if we can have a cheaper ingredient a cheaper way of making our ice cream that doesn't make it better and

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certainly we we want to make sure that we're always making ice cream that our fans want but the reality is our fans understand that good stuff does cost a little bit more and ben and jerry's is not something you

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should necessarily eat every single day you need to eat it with a bit of moderation but this idea of managing pricing in the price value relationship to a certain certain degree you could argue that a marketer's job is lowering price elasticity at the end

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of the day our people your family your friends people in your community are they willing to pay a little bit more for that thing or that service that you offer and if you're able to do that that's good business it doesn't mean

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that there isn't value in having price discounts or having a low-cost option but at the end of the day the reality is a lot of us are willing to pay a little bit more not only for great products but

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increasingly awareness about the social justice aspect market pricing is often one of the things that's wrong about capitals just because we can get it cheaper doesn't mean that's good for the farmer or the farm worker or the animal or the

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soil that was necessary for me to then make great ice cream or for us to make great ice cream out of it so again market pricing is something that should be viewed with a bit of skepticism i like to talk about justice pricing or

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dignity pricing but this idea that if people were all contributing uh to uh what's the real cost of something you know this idea of i like to i i believe and i like to share with other people that

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externalities are a dangerous fiction in the business world and this goes back to this idea of business ethics if there's something wrong about your supply chain if there's something wrong and unsustainable about how or what you're making it's just a

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matter of time before the people that you serve will find out about it it's just a matter of time before your employees will say i'm not proud of working on that i'm not proud about that and i'm gonna

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go do something else somewhere else so whether it's your employees your talent attracting retaining talent or your consumers your customers if there's something wrong go towards it deal with it address it don't just have a pr campaign just

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smooth it over deal with it and tell your fans about it you know we at ben jerry's we make screw-ups all the time and every year we pay to be independently audited audited on our progress on our social

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and environmental work we fall short all the time and we want our fans to know that we want them to know where we have failed to meet our ambitions and here's what we're going to do as a result

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i love you dropped some nuggets and terms justice pricing dignity pricing externally these are a dangerous fix um the everyone who's watching will kill me if i don't get to q a because there's some amazing questions for you so i'm going to start with one

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from jennifer merchant hi jennifer it's good to see you here in spirit although we can't see you matthew could you share one aspect of your personality that is not obvious on your resume but plays a significant role in your leadership style good one

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boy that's my personality yeah an aspect of your personality that's not obvious on your resume but plays a significant role in your leadership style yeah i uh well that's a that's a great question well thought through questions tell me i got to think about that one

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smart smoke smart folks watching you got some smart people here i'm not surprised um i uh i i thrive on working with other people uh that doesn't necessarily jump out for my cv uh my cv is a little out of date i

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gotta confess uh but i thrive on working with other people um and i hinted at i mentioned this a little bit earlier i um i believe that many hands make light work uh if you want to move a mountain

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get a lot of shovels um and at the end of the day um building trust with other people is essential to me it's um and and people that i haven't trusted in my life usually play a negative role either

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i didn't work well with them or i didn't want to work with them or i failed to build trust with somebody else i may have failed to build trust with somebody or did something that hurt trust so if you want to do big

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things in life um you know i think uh i'm a firm believer that my um pursuit of building trust i often fail my pursuit of trying to build trust with other people is essential to the stuff that's on my

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wrist all right from sasha schechter can you talk about the business community's response to georgia's voting laws ben jerry's has always been on the right side of social responsibility in business how can we hold companies and employees accountable for social responsibilities

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oh boy um listen i think that uh one of the beautiful things about business is that um as i said before the minute your consumers the people you serve don't like what you're doing think it's bad you may almost

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instantaneously be out of business and if i think about the last 30 years i've been in business i we've never seen the pace of big businesses being kind of flipped over or an upstart business coming in and disrupting the market

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whatever term you want to use from from a lot of business books but it's true and so that pace of change is um is fairly extreme um and i think that um i think businesses that don't that aren't mindful of how things that

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seem very small can actually grow exponentially and so i've learned to value the power of weak signals and a lot of business leadership kind of kind of your gut building and your intuition building as a business person is actually in

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seeing seeking out and finding the weak signals because if it's a big signal like all of a sudden when you're big customers cancels your promotion or all of a sudden you have a recall in your products that's a giant signal and you

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can't avoid it but in fact looking ahead looking ahead is our job as business people all of us regardless of our level within the organization and so this idea of looking for weak signals and understanding the characteristics of those weak signals

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that may grow exponentially it's the very definition of exponential growth that's been talked a lot about over the past decade is important because everything that becomes exponential starts really small and so you if you wait till it's big

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it's either going to run you over or somebody else is going to capture that opportunity so it's not only about kind of doing the obvious sometimes it's doing the stuff that's not so obvious and finding a way to convince those

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within your organization that this week's signal is different than the others you know this makes me smile partially because for all of you lead students out there which is all of you we talk about subconscious pattern detection that's a piece of what he means when

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he's talking about a weak signal just fyi you know um matthew we have a little bit of a special guest who has a question for you um who is going to come on the screen very short who's that there is that you

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dean mcglars thank you for letting me crash your q a uh i've been enjoying the event uh for the last 40 minutes this has been an incredible uh discussion uh and let me primarily start by congratulating you matthew

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this is uh we're honored to have you uh be on our deal our speeches uh uh with price which has been 30 years at the school and it always recognizes exemplary leaders and uh you are no exception your

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journey is pretty exciting uh i like the story of you scooping up ice cream in a summer job uh many many years ago and now uh being in a position of running one of the most beloved ice cream brands in the

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world uh this is a tremendous uh journey and an an interesting one uh i want to make i have a funny question in a bit but i want to make a quick comment uh and a plug for for the future uh

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your leadership the things you've been saying uh and actually uh the principles that ben and jerry's uh really stand for uh very sharply uh uh embodied two priorities of the school one that has to do with sustainability and climate uh and the other one that

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has to do exactly with that interplay between businesses and how businesses should be thinking about societal problems uh and what you called uh purpose-driven organizations uh earlier in this conversation and uh you know we've done quite a bit in this

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area here at the school over the years but we have so much more that we need to be doing and we hope uh that will keep you in our orbit as we're doing more of these things so we'll keep you coming back

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uh both to talk to our students but also to sort of learn from what you've done but also what ben and jerry's is doing uh because it is important uh in your comments about uh that you were making earlier it is

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truly important to recognize examples where uh organizations do well by doing good okay that these two things are not sort of fighting each other uh but actually can work together and uh and i think you've been sort of

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discussing that and pushing that idea for the last 40 minutes and uh and i think it's crucial that we learn more about it thank you i'd be really honored to continue to stay connected and uh thank you very much it's a real

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it's a real treat to be here with you your staff and your faculty and students so uh let me ask you two quick questions one is uh kind of uh semi serious the other one is more funny but you talked about

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the ingenuity and rigor of innovating ice cream flavors uh and out of curiosity uh oftentimes when you go to the store and you see the ben and jerry new flavors you're like we thought of like putting this type of

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ingredient into into an ice cream uh it's always like the most uh insane uh combination and i'm curious whether you start by identifying this sort of ethically short unique strange innovative ingredient and then building something around it or do you actually start the vision of

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the flavor and then you sort of go about figuring out things how does it work that is that is a great question i actually love that question and i we could probably have a whole session where i bring in my flavor girls we

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talked just about that what i would say is um yes and in fact giving the team the freedom to approach uh concept development and new flavor development from multiple avenues is part of the ben jerry's magic so yes sometimes

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we start with an idea and we fulfill it sometimes it may come from a culinary trend sometimes it actually maybe comes from a social mission trend so we've got this idea for a flavor that's linked to let's say

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the environment what might be in that flavor why would that flavor fit the concept and so being able to come at an idea where our fan is always at the center we want to surprise them and and wow them with a flavor and then

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really work outward from that so in fact the paths kind of go out away from the fan sometimes they go through a culinary route sometimes they go through an ingredient route sometimes they go through another trend route um or

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a con pure concept route like a social mission pint or a partnership and so actually it's the freedom of giving folks uh the opportunity to go at it different ways that really i think sparks this uh this kind of a virtuous approach to

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creativity i mean the names for sure are always surprising uh you know you you have to always have to take a double take when you're looking at the night uh the ben and jerry uh sort of new ice cream uh at the freezer

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of your local uh supermarket so if we were if we if we needed to come up with a new ice cream flavor for our school country business group well uh you know i i've been uh given some ideas and

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and i have to say none of them live up to the expectation of a ben and jerry uh flavor uh we have leadership a la mode uh at the very center of the leisure which really maps a little bit uh some

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of the things we've been saying roi screen uh that brings together your business school and business uh uh principles mba remix uh columbia chocolate falafel chocolate chunk uh i have to say everybody has shared their favorite uh flavor when i moved to this country

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a long time ago i got hooked into chunky monkey ice cream i don't know why it was so new and different uh you could never find it back home so give us your pick uh it's uh all right so first of all i'd

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say that weird is good so from the ben and jerry's lens if it's a little weird it's pretty good if it makes too much sense um maybe we then maybe that's not too it's too descriptive and if it's something our competitors

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could easily do so that's why chunky monkey i love you use that as an example it's just a kooky name but it tells you what a bit of what you're going to get at so you know i like that the the columbia

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chocolate chunk or chocolate crunch i would just uh i would encourage the um the innovators of that name to bring something wacky to it bring something unexpected that makes people smile you know you see a flavor name you go

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into the ice cream aisle and yeah there's a lot of flavors that describe what it is that's fine that's the ice cream i grew up with ben and jerry's we want people to smile we want the people to feel a bit of joy

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even when they're looking at it as you describe standing there deciding what to buy terrific okay thank you very much we we all smile when we read the ice cream label okay and we all have to read again because we don't

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understand exactly what is going on uh so it's fantastic congratulations thank you and i look forward to seeing you again uh on campus okay myself also thank you guys bye-bye okay man so you said a little bit of the

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secret sauce of in terms of how we get to flavors we have a question here um from anonymous from anonymous hey anonymous we got your question you're not getting ice cream anonymous um you're known at unilever for being a

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phenomenal leader especially when it comes to developing people and teams what's your secret sauce to building great teams first of all thank you to whoever asked that question that is a tremendously uh generous comment thank you um i at the risk of repeating myself i'll

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kind of go back to this this idea of many hands make light work um and what i have found and i've learned the hard way is this idea you're either building trust or you're destroying trust that may sound a little harsh but at the end of

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the day neutrality is a little bit of a mirage and and we're taking actions all the time we as humans are forming opinions and value judgments in every interaction and so um i'd say that building trust the second thing that i haven't spoken about

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but i'll add here is the idea that your intent matters your intent matters and i believe firmly that all those around me all of us we can we can pick up on each other's intent and if someone's intent doesn't rub

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doesn't doesn't rub me the right way doesn't sit with me if my intent if i say one thing really i'm meeting something else we pick up on that and you may be a good poker player but that catches up with you and so i

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think this idea of being clear about your intent i i believe firmly that clarity is power and the clearer we can be um the the more power we can bring to the things that we want to do in our lives and our families in our

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world and your intent matters and so if your intent is to i don't know screw someone out of a deal that's either going to go badly or it's a matter of time before it catches up with you and so it's a little

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bit of karma so i'm talking about something that could be perceived as kind of a karmic value but uh but i think at the end of the day people in order to trust you they need to have an understanding of what your intent is

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um and often difficulties and challenges between people and teams simply because they don't actually know where the other person's coming from what their intent is and so they're perceiving their words their questions questions maybe as interrogations maybe it's

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things that are destroying trust and so for me in working with teams what i have learned and a number of occasions i've learned it the hard way is that i need to make sure everyone around me understands exactly what the heck my intent is why

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i'm doing what i'm doing what i how i want to help them and ask them how do i help you and this idea of how do i help you and we talk about servant leadership lots of books have been written about

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servant leadership and it's a bit of a kind of a maybe an overused term but how can i help you is a very very powerful statement it says i actually care about you it says i care about working with you it

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says my success depends on me helping you succeed and it also says listening right you know there is i believe the added you know two years one mouth but a lot of times in business we got you know as if we had three

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mouths and a half an ear so i'd say is that is that is it asking people um how you can help them ah one other thing is the questions of their questions are the doorway the gateway to creativity

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when we ask each other when we ask ourselves how do i do this why is this like this what's so great about this and how do we replicate it or what sucks about this and how do we deal

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with it and those are questions that we know unlock our own creativity and then they're they apply to teams as well so questions and and and certain and showing people that i want to help them is the fastest way to get people to

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trust you and and just to see what you're all about so i would really encourage that space and and um and uh if i could do the earlier part of my career again i'd probably do a lot more of that

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i probably wouldn't work harder i would probably spend a lot more time building trust asking others how i can help and serve them something we always talk about with ceos is what their vision is down the line succession

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all that one question and one of our final questions or almost final question is what do you hope ben and jerry's will look like 10 years down the line boy um well it's uh it's both an easy question a

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difficult question uh the easy question part of the question is that what we've been doing we we turned 43 years old uh in april this this this uh this month so 43 years ago jerry and ben uh you know refurbished an old gas

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station up the road here and started selling ice cream and others and other snacks and treats um and what i hope is that we can keep um driving that that vision you know so living up to this idea with prosperity link

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prosperity is a very high bar and we may never get there but the the idea that um we talk about ben and jerry's is an aspiring social justice company we don't pat ourselves on the back we don't talk about how great we are or any

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of that mumbo jumbo we talked about as we're aspiring social justice company and this idea of linked prosperity um and injustice itself is often a journey not necessarily a destination it's what i hope is that ben and jerry's continues

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to do the work that it's been doing the second part of the the answer is that i hope it does it in ways and at a scale that the people today could never possibly imagine hmm oh and then you're just going to

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stop there you're not going to tell us what that looks like or anything just unimaginable it's unimaginable okay okay that's the thing i was like oh i can't i look cool we all look forward to hearing or seeing

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what that unimaginable thing looks like now a couple of uh lightning round questions for you i always like a little lightning round cats or dogs which do you prefer can't choose we have both we have both and they get along and just wouldn't be

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right it's like saying that yeah which child do i love you know that's not nope every every parent knows they have a favorite child but that's okay your cat and your daughter they could be watching right now i can't be watching

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you're right they're probably watching summer or winter winter texting or talking talking this is a this is this goes to the the animals question the ability to speak every language or the ability to have conversations with animals oh

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the latter animals i give anything to have conversation animals what's one thing you'd want to ask that you want to hear responses to uh uh what do we what how do we actually get it right as humans in terms of our

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treatment of animals how can we treat you better that's good giving presents or getting presents all giving giving cake or cookies cake climbing a mountain or scuba diving tough probably climbing a mountain i find a bit more awe in the vistas at the

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top of a mountain than when i'm scuba diving this used to be beer or wine but i changed it to gin or juice i go with jen early bird or night owl night owl vermont or massachusetts no did you have to ask this question

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you had to uh i'm i'm gonna say uh vermont so all my massachusetts friends don't hate me even as a kid we came to vermont a lot and i fell in love with it when i was a kid growing up in western mass so i

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love my massachusetts and i gotta say i love vermont maybe a little bit more i'm sorry folks that's the truth it's that maple syrup it's that maple syrup the tonight dough or american dream americo uh tonight though i'm a little bit more

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partial to the dough than i am the chocolate covered pretzel waffle chips well i think that's a great way to end this gathering and of course want to thank you for spending time with us thank the botwinnick wolfinson family for your

Speaker A

support um big congratulations to you and thank you for bringing us so much joy tonight truly and to the audience members who were here wouldn't be what this scavenge was without you and your question and your time and attention so thank you

Speaker A

matthew and congratulations thank you thank you very much greatly very grateful to be here with you same to here in terms of having you all right everyone have a wonderful night and we look forward to seeing you in the

Speaker A

future and this is a ppil event so thank you again all of you for joining tonight take care

Topics:Matthew McCarthyBen & Jerry'sBottwinnick Prizebusiness ethicssocial justiceenvironmental sustainabilityColumbia Business Schoolethical leadershipcorporate social responsibilitybusiness awards

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bottwinnick Prize?

The Bottwinnick Prize is awarded by Columbia Business School to individuals or representatives of business organizations who exemplify the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct, leadership, and decision-making.

Why was Matthew McCarthy honored with the Bottwinnick Prize?

Matthew McCarthy was honored for his lifelong commitment to ethical leadership, advancing social justice, environmental sustainability, and expanding Ben & Jerry's global social mission.

What role does business ethics play according to Matthew McCarthy?

Matthew McCarthy emphasizes that business ethics are central to whether a company can survive and thrive, especially in an era of hyper-transparency, making ethical leadership essential.

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