Social Justice Lessons Learned with Ben & Jerry's

Webinar with Ben & Jerry's and Pet Sustainability Coalition on social justice, DEI, and sustainability in the pet industry.

Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.

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Key Takeaways

Sustained, intentional action is required to address systemic social justice issues.
Small, consistent actions by individuals and organizations can collectively drive significant impact.
Education and resources tailored to DEI are critical for empowering industry-wide change.
Corporate leadership, like Ben & Jerry's, plays a vital role in modeling social justice commitments.
Community engagement and open dialogue are essential components of advancing equity and inclusion.

What the video covers

The Pet Sustainability Coalition (PSC) hosts a webinar featuring Ben & Jerry's discussing social justice lessons and DEI efforts.
PSC has launched an action plan to promote justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and dismantle racism in the pet industry.
The 30 Days, A Thousand Actions Challenge encourages small actions and education on DEI topics, surpassing 2,000 actions in early September.
Ben & Jerry's shares insights on their long-term commitment to social justice, climate change, and corporate responsibility.
The webinar emphasizes the importance of intentional, thoughtful, and sustained efforts to advance equity and inclusion.
PSC offers tools, resources, and modules developed by DEI experts to support individuals and organizations.
Rob Maholic from Ben & Jerry's highlights challenges and successes in operationalizing social justice within a corporate context.
The session includes Q&A and encourages active participation through chat and ongoing engagement.
PSC provides recordings and encourages continued learning and involvement in social justice initiatives.
The webinar stresses the importance of embedding social justice values from the start in organizations and communities.

Chapters

What is the 30 Days, A Thousand Actions Challenge?

It is a free challenge launched by the Pet Sustainability Coalition to encourage individuals and organizations to take small, educational actions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion over the course of September.

How does Ben & Jerry's approach social justice within their company?

Ben & Jerry's commits to long-term, thoughtful, and intentional actions to address social justice issues, integrating these values into their corporate culture and operations.

Who can participate in the Pet Sustainability Coalition's social justice initiatives?

Anyone in the pet industry or the general public can participate in PSC's initiatives, including their DEI challenges and educational programs.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our webinar this morning or afternoon, wherever you happen to be calling from, with Ben and Jerry's. We're going to give people just a few minutes to start, and then we'll get started around two or three after. So thank you so much for joining us, and we'll start shortly.

Speaker A

we'll get started around two or three after so thank you so much for joining us and we'll start shortly good morning my name is melissa bauer i am the director of sustainability at the pet sustainability coalition we will be starting just a minute with

Speaker A

Good morning. My name is Melissa Bauer. I am the director of sustainability at the Pet Sustainability Coalition. We will be starting just a minute with our webinar with Ben and Jerry's. Thank you so much for joining us. In the meantime, we have PSC team members manning the chat box, and we would love it if you would just jump in that chat, introduce yourself, let us know what you're calling in today, and where—excuse me—where from you'll be calling in today. Then we'll get started really shortly. So thank you for joining us.

Speaker A

you're calling in today um and where excuse me where from you'll be calling in today um and then we'll get started uh really shortly so thank you for joining us um welcome so let's get started um just a few

Speaker A

Welcome. So let's get started. Just a few housekeeping things to make sure we're all level set before we begin. All attendees have joined the call on mute with their video off, and we're going to stay that way through the remainder of the call. However, we do have PSC team members monitoring the chat room, and I would really encourage you all to be involved and chatting along with the conversation. We're going to leave plenty of time at the end for Q&A, but don't feel like you have to wait till the end to answer those questions. So feel free to be shooting those along the way.

Speaker A

however uh we do have pse temp uh pse team members uh monitoring the chat room and i would really encourage uh you all to be involved and chatting along with the conversation uh we're gonna leave plenty of time at

Speaker A

Everybody who is on the call and registered for the call today will be getting a copy of the recording of this webinar. So you'll have that within 24 to 48 hours after our call today. So a brief introduction to the organization: we are the Pet Sustainability Coalition. We are a non-profit industry association working in the pet space with over 160 different companies working together to move sustainability forward in the pet industry. We have companies all over the supply chain and all over the world.

Speaker A

registered for the call today we'll be getting a copy of the recording of this webinar um so you'll have that within 20 to 40 24 to 48 hours after our call today so a brief introduction uh to the organization we

Speaker A

Earlier this year, the Pet Sustainability Coalition announced our action plan to educate, equip, and empower ourselves, our organization, our members, and our industry to actively work on justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and to dismantle racism in the pet industry. Last month, we kicked off this work in a webinar, and our executive director Caitlin Dudash did a beautiful job explaining why this mission was important to the organization and why we had chosen to get involved in that space.

Speaker A

over the world earlier this year the pet sustainability coalition announced our action plan to educate equip and empower ourselves our organization our members and our industry to actively work on justice equity diversity inclusion and to dismantle racism in the pet

Speaker A

Caitlin's beautiful message is available on YouTube, and if you haven't seen that, I'm going to really strongly encourage you to check that out. Our action plan covers many different areas and is rapidly evolving. It includes creating tools, resources, projects, and services for ourselves and also the industry as well. We kicked this off last month in a webinar with WeSpire, starting with our 30 Days, A Thousand Actions Challenge. This challenge runs during the month of September and encourages anyone in the pet industry or anyone really in the public at large to take small actions and educate themselves in six different modules related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Speaker A

caitlin's beautiful message is available on youtube and if you haven't seen that i'm going to really strongly encourage you to check that out our action plan covers many different areas and is involving rapidly evolving it includes creating tools resources projects and services

Speaker A

Those six modules you can see on the screen and range from everything from why diversity matters to environmental justice, all the way to how to be actively anti-racist. The original goal was to inspire a thousand actions over the month of September. What I am absolutely thrilled to announce today is that we have more than doubled that goal, and as of yesterday, we have reached 2,139 actions taken just in the first part of September. So I want to put out a huge congratulations to everyone who is participating in the challenge and encourage everyone who isn't to get involved. It is a free challenge.

Speaker A

industry or anyone really in the public at large to take small actions and educate themselves in six different modules related to diversity equity inclusion those six modules you can see on the screen and range from everything from why diversity matters

Speaker A

It is developed by justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion experts and involves a wide variety of actions and education pieces that you can take optionally at your own pace. So we have currently six modules, but a seventh one is launching today, and I will tell you more about that later. But on a personal note, since we announced our action plan earlier this year, I've been having a lot of conversations with our team, with myself, with our members around this work, and I've been having a lot of conversations with people who feel motivated to get into this work but don't necessarily know where to start or are scared to make the wrong move or say the wrong thing, or we think we want to head in this direction but we're not sure and are feeling in a vulnerable place, which is why I'm really, really excited to have our conversation today with Rob from Ben and Jerry's.

Speaker A

yesterday we have reached 2139 actions taken uh just in the first part of september so i want to put out a huge congratulations to everyone who is participating in the challenge and encourage everyone who isn't um to get involved it is a free challenge

Speaker A

Rob is the Special Mission Special Project Director at Ben and Jerry's, and I'm sure all of you know, but Ben and Jerry's has been such a leader in having difficult conversations and providing actions in difficult subjects such as social justice, climate change, and more. So I am thrilled to pass this conversation over to Rob Maholic. Rob, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker A

one uh is launching today and i will tell you more about that later but on a personal note since we since we announced our action plan earlier this year i've been having a lot of conversations with our team

Speaker A

Thanks, Melissa. It's great to be with all of you. You know, for me, it's kind of a return trip because I had a chance to visit all of you when we were in Boulder not long ago, and so great to be with you. And I know from the first time we were together that this is a very thoughtful, committed group, and of course, that's what's going to take when we're talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a long journey. You know, it took centuries, and if you really look at history, millennia to get in the shape that we're in, and so it's going to take us some very thoughtful, methodical, intentional actions to move forward.

Speaker A

or say the wrong thing or or we think we we want to head in this direction but we're not sure and are feeling in a vulnerable place which is why i'm really really excited to have our conversation today

Speaker A

Now, we've been very impressed with your pet industry's plan and what PSC has been putting together to engage you to take these actions, and that was just great news to hear that you've already doubled the actions. It's going to be interesting to see just how far you can go with this. I mean, let's go for 10 times, 10x. And so what I'm going to do today is I'm just going to share with you Ben and Jerry's own journey. Hopefully, you'll be able to take from that how it might apply to you, and maybe there's one thing that is either reaffirming or maybe there are a couple of ideas in this. Then we'll also talk about a fun challenge we have just to continue to make this journey. You know, you should have a little fun along the way. It's hard work, so sometimes you gotta smile when you're doing it. And then we'll have some time for some Q&A towards the end.

Speaker A

difficult subjects such as um social justice and climate change and more so i am thrilled to pass uh this conversation over uh to rob maholic rob thank you so much for joining us uh today thanks melissa it's great to be with all

Speaker A

So I'm going to now, being an analog guy in a digital world, I'm going to try to go digital here. All right, so I am going to share my screen. Let's see. And Melissa, if you would just give me the signal that you can see this, I will go into presentation mode.

Speaker A

first time uh we were together that this is a very thoughtful committed group and and of course that's what's going to take when we're talking about diversity equity and inclusion this is a this is a long journey you know it took

Speaker A

Yeah, we can see it. Thanks, Rob.

Speaker A

industry's plan and what psc has been put putting together to to engage you to take these actions and that was just great news to to hear that you've already doubled the actions and it's going to be interesting to see

Speaker A

Okay, so hopefully, there we go. Okay, good widescreen TV. So, and you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, is one way we say it, of course, and I'm just going with something that's a little bit more contemporary now. This whole idea of adding justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion because it makes such a really fun acronym of JEDI. And so today we'll just talk about our own journey.

Speaker A

from that how it might apply to you and maybe there's one thing that is either reaffirming or maybe there are a couple of ideas in this then we'll also talk about a fun challenge we have just kind of continue

Speaker A

Now, some of you may know this from the last time we visited, but some of you may not have been there and may not know this, but way back when Ben and Jerry's was building our business model, when we were 10 years old, we actually wrote down a social mission into our full business model and business mission. And why I share this, I always share this, is because that mission statement is still active. It's still our north star. And for any organization that is trying to make some movement on social purpose and values-led decisions, whether it's a business or a non-profit, your mission statement and your value statement are really important to keep alive. So way back in 1988, we were some of...

Speaker A

towards the end so i'm gonna now being an analog guy in a digital world i'm gonna try to go digital here all right so i am gonna share my screen let's see and uh melissa if you would just give me the signal that you can see

Speaker A

this and i will go into presentation mode yeah where we can see it thanks rob okay so hopefully uh there we go okay good widescreen tv so um and and you know diversity equity and inclusion or dei is

Speaker A

is uh one way we say it of course and and i'm just going with something that's a little bit more contemporary now this whole idea of adding justice equity diversity and inclusion because it makes such a really fun acronym of jedi and so today we'll

Speaker A

just talk about our own journey now some of you uh may know this from the last time we visited but some of you may not have been there and may not know this but way back when when ben and

Speaker A

jerry's was building our business model when we were 10 years old we actually wrote down a social mission into our full business model and business mission and why i share this i always share this is because that this

Speaker A

mission statement is still active it's still our north star and for any organization that is trying to you know make some movement on social purpose and values-led uh decisions whether it's a business or a non-profit you know your mission statement and your

Speaker A

value statement are really important uh to keep alive so we way back in 1988 we we were some of the you know ben and jerry and some other business leaders at the time had this vision of putting a

Speaker A

social purpose alongside the economic and product purpose and so that actually helps us to get to the place that we are today because it's part of our mission statement and then when we were 20 years old we actually wrote this progressive value

Speaker A

statement which really started talking about things like capitalism and the wealth that it produces does not create opportunity for everyone equally and so we wanted our business to be about supporting new economic models that included people who are

Speaker A

marginalized in the global economy so these two statements our mission statement and our value statement have been really critical for us in in pushing us to to be progressive and to move forward now today uh we are expressing our own working

Speaker A

values a little bit more explicitly where what we want in our business is to reflect this idea of human rights and dignity social and economic justice environmental protection restoration and regeneration and i know uh from psc and and the psc

Speaker A

community in the pet industry that i've met that this is something that you know aligned values that we share and it's really important to to again have these as your foundational principles or you know some whatever would make sense for your organization

Speaker A

and uh and help them guide you to make decisions in your business rob this is melissa i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt we're still on the cover screen panel do you want us wow and you've missed all this lovely stuff i think

Speaker A

uh there's something that i forgot about uh where let's see um [Music] uh this has happened to me once before and i was trying to remember somehow my my screen is moving really well swappers interview and slideshow i'm not

Speaker A

sure if this is it let's see what happens do you see it now or do you see that we now see the statement of mission slide is that where you're at yeah and do you see like the uh slide

Speaker A

that's coming up next or you just see the one slide we just see the one wow there we go okay hey well thanks for hanging in there with me you've got a little preview of these slides all right so so this was the mission

Speaker A

statement that i was talking about that we uh created when we were 10 years old and you know putting that social purpose in there and it was important to you know write it out and uh you know and then see it everywhere in our

Speaker A

organization it's in everybody's offices i guess now it's your virtual office but uh it's in the hallways and uh and it's it's meaningful and this was the other statement i was talking about was the progressive value statement that we did

Speaker A

we were 20 uh 20 years old and really this is this is what started to really propel us towards being a very progressive company because we were working for those new economic models that included those on the economic margins

Speaker A

and so uh and i'm assuming that now you're seeing these core values that we're working with today and the expression of how we're saying it today standing for human rights and dignity social and economic justice and environmental protection

Speaker A

restoration and regeneration which is all key parts now what i'm going to go to is our own ben and jerry's journey so these these mission and value statements uh um have been with us guiding us since we've been growing but you know

Speaker A

you've got to put these things in practice you can have theory you can have great rhetoric but you really have to to look at your organization and say but are we actually doing this and so ben and jerry's

Speaker A

asked ourselves that very question probably 2014 and what you've got here is an empty grid that we're going to fill up we said what about our internal practices are we really being diverse equitable and inclusive and let's take a

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look at our supply chain and then our campaigns and our and and can we be part of system change so the first part was to look at our internal culture and so what we did back in 2014 was we

Speaker A

invited a group of people who really were the thinkers and the doers and the visionaries in terms of civil rights human rights we invited them up to our headquarters in vermont and we really had a town hall that was just for us to listen some

Speaker A

of the the players that came up we were seeing philip agnew there who was the the founder of dream defenders after trayvon martin's death philip agnew has been a leader in this movement for a long time now heather mcgee is

Speaker A

over there to the left she was the head of demos at the time but now is with color of change and uh she was part of this group it was actually uh about a dozen leaders uh maya wiley

Speaker A

who's also if any of you watch msnbc she's often on some of those shows as a commentator a legal commentator but she also worked for the mayor of new york city at the time that she was coming up uh to visit with us

Speaker A

so we just listened we said what do we not know about our own culture and ourselves to even ask we you know we just left it wide open and this town hall gave us an incredible amount of insight an

Speaker A

incredible amount of input on and again this is 2014 you know things like well you have to start working on yourself things like implicit bias and these are terms now that we're more familiar with but we're we're so not totally new but

Speaker A

you know we're coming into into the you know public view at that time but also not only your own personal implicit biases but then how does that translate to your your own community so your departments your your company

Speaker A

and then you know externally your community so we got a lot of input and a lot of it was to say to us this is a long road and you you really have to be ready for quite a marathon and then

Speaker A

we looked at our supply chain now we do a lot of very progressive things with social enterprises and fair trade and stuff we'll just take a little peek at that as we go but what about some of the domestic cherries

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berries and nuts and other suppliers services professional you know consultants and contracts you know are we really diverse equitable and inclusive there then as we looked outside of our company you know we're an activist company uh we we like to lean in and and

Speaker A

talk about human rights and civil rights and so we started to work with different organizations on uh several campaigns externally and again color of change is a is an online organization i think it's really kind of the leading civil rights

Speaker A

organization online and we've been working with them for a few years now and and in that upper left you see race forward which is an ngo or a non-profit that has worked with municipalities uh non-profits and now for-profits

Speaker A

on really cultural chains and transfer transforming your culture so uh even though we've had a lot of players and stakeholders in our journey i'm just calling out race forward who's played a very key role for us in terms

Speaker A

of doing the company and cultural research uh they did a very extensive um you know survey of our they've they interviewed leadership staff and management they went through all of our you know documents and policies and so forth so they did

Speaker A

extensive research and then eventually came up with a recommended plan for ben and jerry's to move forward and again color of change has been critical in terms of some of our external campaigns advocating for you know the different

Speaker A

human rights voting rights civil rights that would actually help us realize the marvelous language of our founding documents in the us and i know we probably have some people on the call from canada but um you know the whole idea of you know

Speaker A

we have these great charters and constitutions and documents but um we haven't really met the uh the content of what we're trying to and uh that's that's what we're all trying to get to now is to really get there and transform

Speaker A

and then look at systems change um how can we actually change the world and work with for-profit not-for-profit government you know civil society how can we actually get the change that we need so that everyone is living in a more

Speaker A

equitable society where we're all honored and respected for who we are and not for the color of our skin so we went through a long process of really kind of mapping all this out and uh again i think part of the messages uh that i

Speaker A

want you to hear is that uh you know when you commit to this it's you're in for the long haul and uh you know be ready for that because it can be at times exhausting but if you think about it for those who have

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had to live with uh racial injustice and racism and structural racism um you know they live every day uh with that kind of exhaustion so if you haven't experienced that then it's it's good to be ready for that

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kind of a commitment and so we see woody the cow here we we call the cow's name is woody um woody the cow is saying hey you know you really have to be intentional with where you're going you need to be methodical and planned

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which is by the way something that we've been very impressed with psc and the pet industry's work in this particular 30 days 1000 actions it's just you know you've got you've got a plan ahead of you and it's

Speaker A

it's really well thought out and then be committed to that plan again it will be tiring you will get exhausted i mean just the whole you know watching the news every day and and you know the the uh the division in the country it

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can be just emotionally exhausting along with pandemics and fires and you know environmental stuff it's just uh you know it really takes a lot of resilience on all our parts to to be able to stay with this kind of

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stuff and this you know when we get into dismantling racism that's an effort is a lot of heavy lifting so for us the plan that race forward helped us to devise was we really needed to build transformational knowledge a lot of us

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don't know like i said about our own implicit biases but also the history of how did we get here um you know structural racism didn't start with the u.s and slavery in the uh you know 16 1700s and all the

Speaker A

way through to 18 63 65 depending on what years you're using for the the actual liberation of enslaved people it started long before that uh in in europe uh and uh north africa and you know other other places i mean the slaves

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have been around for like i said millennia and so um the thing is is in the u.s there is a whole kind of new take on this and uh it's something that uh specifically too and i'll call it out

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i'm a white male and i'm recognizing my own as a white male i'm recognizing my power and privilege and how the structure always benefited me specifically and didn't benefit people of color nor women for for many years and we still have a long

Speaker A

way to go on that so this building transformational knowledge is you really have to to lean into learning and you've got to learn a lot about yourself your history uh and how that translates into the through line you know a lot of

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people say well you know hey the civil war that was a long time ago you know i got nothing to do with that but there's a through line that that continued from the 1860s all the way through to today and um for us

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uh we we've put together a lot of workshops we've had a lot of facilitated workshops but we've also had a lot of self-managed curriculum and then we'll have meetings where we'll we'll convene with either departments or sites whether it's you know headquarters

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or we haven't we're still working with manufacturing it's always difficult if you're in a manufacturing environment because you you have to kind of you know make the widgets or in our case you got to make the ice cream

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and uh so we're trying to make sure that we can accommodate uh people throughout our organization to be able to you know attend workshops and or do the either online learning or other other ways to learn about this

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stuff and then we're sending performance measures if we're going to transform our company culture you know we really need to put in you know targets and key performance indicators so that we know if we're making progress against that now some of this might seem

Speaker A

logical but it's always good to kind of you know if you're going to do this get really organized about it and then you know set your set your plan forward and then stay with it and that way you

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can have a strong operational you know operationalizing your plan uh that's that's where it really gets tough is you know really putting things in place for example you know evaluating your your recruitment practices you know are you recruiting from a narrow pool or a

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wide diverse pool when when you hire people and they come to the to your company or organization do they actually feel included and welcomed um one of the things that we have discovered is that even though we've uh

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you know broadened our recruiting pool and we've you know we've hired people of color when they actually come to vermont which is a very white state uh and they come to ben jerry's which still isn't diverse it's it's gender balance

Speaker A

but it's not balanced in terms of people of color uh do people feel comfortable do they feel safe do they feel like they're actually included so that's a that's a critical thing to think about so what we did was we set in place four

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working groups and uh the four working groups uh have people from throughout the company uh from manufacturing and headquarters and you know from different levels management and staff the four working groups are looking at cultural transformation you know as just like i was saying

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before how do we transform our culture so that as we uh include more people of color are they feeling welcomed are they feeling included and you know are the relationships and the positions and the interaction truly equitable what how how do we measure this so what

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are the key performance indicators and the targets how we can actually what are the metrics that we're actually going to measure that that tells us that we're actually making progress on on all aspects of this excuse me then we really want to look at

Speaker A

supplier diversity even though we have some um kind of intrinsic supplier diversity because we we source from a lot of uh the emerging economies and what uh at one time we used to say the global south uh you know so we have we have kind of

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automatic diversity in our supply chains but you know is there kind of an intentional uh effort to supply from from either black indigenous or you know people of color owned businesses uh women-owned businesses you know do we have a um

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a policy in place so we need to look at that and then franchise diversity we have most of the ben and jerry scoop shops that you would uh see within your communities they're franchises so they're locally owned businesses

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and we actually don't have a large franchise network i mean we have probably just under 300 scoop shops in the us and then 300 scoop shops uh elsewhere in the world so you know just about 600 scoop shops

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i think that's just a city corner for starbucks in new york city so we're not as we're not as big as uh as some organizations but as we look at our franchise community how are we recruiting new franchisees are we you

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know are we able to diversify the the ownership of franchises and the communities where the scoop shops uh exist so you know as we as we start to operationalize a lot of this work one of the things we

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did in our dairy industry of course dairies about half of our ice cream pint and there is a lot of diversity and issues surrounding farm workers and so we were the first company to sign on with the milk with

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dignity program which is a worker designed worker-led program that that establishes labor standards within the dairy industry and so we signed on uh october 3rd of 2017.

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so the first full year that was 2018 in terms of operationalizing that and 2019 so now we've got about two to two and a half years of the program in place and we're learning a lot and it and it

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is uh designed to be a solution um a program that creates solutions for both the farmers and the farm workers you know you the idea is to support the farmers knowing that uh dairy farming and family farming is actually a very

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um at-risk business right now it's uh it's really difficult for family farms to stay in business and uh and then we you know we want to make sure that the farm workers are working in a dignified environment as we look through

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our business and some of you may know this story but i always like to point it out we we work with social enterprises graystone bakery in yonkers new york is is really probably one of the best examples of how

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the product mission you know making a great flavor like chocolate fudge brownie or half baked uh you know it takes care of the product mission and if it's a great flavor it's going to sell which takes care of the

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economic mission but we we want to be able to to see through on our value chain ways that we're able to utilize all this to create you know social benefits and the graystone bakery hires people that have barriers to employment they

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might have been in jail they might have dropped out of high school they might have been recovering from substance abuse they may be homeless and you know they it's very difficult for them to find a job but grayson says

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we don't care about that we don't care who you were we care who you are so if you come to us and you sign up and you get in the queue uh then you're next up for training and

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if you go through the training you know where you're reliable and and committed and uh you get through it then you're next up for a job and what i like about this is is that since uh 1989 when we got this

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all started to last year which is where we have the last you know full numbers this has created 3500 jobs for people who could not find jobs and that's over 70 million in payroll and one of the things i like to say you

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know a lot of us will say oh yeah ben and jerry's you're you're up there in the people's republic of bernie in vermont you know a bunch of crunchy granola socialists up there um well this is capitalism this is putting

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money into the community it's 70 million in payroll that's uh you know putting money in people's pockets to pay rent buy food buy clothing you know that's this is this is capitalism done well capitalism done thoughtfully and so uh and in this case it really

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helps with the diversity equity and inclusion aspects of what we're trying to do the other thing that i like about this is grayston is part of the grayston foundation community so there are there are other pieces there's the

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bakery there's also support services like such as housing and child care and over the years it's actually supported 19 000 families uh getting benefits through this whole network of grayston and yonkers and so that's a it's a great

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example of how this can work when we look out as i was mentioning a lot of our ingredients come from uh emerging economies uh coffee cocoa bananas uh almonds vanilla and so what we've been doing is in our fair

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trade community fair trade certified we have a thing the pdi on this that you're looking at is the producers development initiative and so what we're doing is we're we're asking how can we help uh what essentially are family farmers

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uh that are you know small holder agricultural producers in these supply chains to actually have dignified lives and sustainable livelihoods and so in each one of these supply chains we've worked with fair trade international and a couple of other uh non-profits

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that are really good at this kind of work to work with these producers to find out what can we do to help them actually achieve uh sustainable and dignified livelihoods in these supply chains so this is so far we've been talking

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about the internal work and now we're just going to take a quick look at our external work and so we have a lot of campaigns many of them you may have seen right now the external campaigns that we

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have going are in criminal justice reform voting rights of course in this election year uh refugee asylum and resettlement which is more focused in our european market but that's not something that we escape from in the u.s canada

Speaker A

mexico and all of that so in north america it's an issue as well but most of our refugee asylum and resettlement work is being done in europe where there is a much bigger issue right now climate justice around the world and

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then lgbtq rights in places where we can address those sometimes in some countries around the world lgbtq rights are too incendiary you know there may be legal uh policies and things and so we're we are careful and we try to

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honor cultures uh wherever we are around the world as we grow so some of these campaigns again justice remixed is a flavor that we launched last year it's it's a it's a limited edition flavor we are going to be bringing it back out

Speaker A

as we head into this election year but we've been very clear about our position on dismantling white supremacy i know there is a lot of debate uh about really is there structural racism well we subscribe to the fact that there is a

Speaker A

lot in in history and documents and court records and supreme court decisions and redlining and you know all sorts of ways to to prove the fact that we have structural racism and that especially for the people in power which would be

Speaker A

the white people that we need to lean into this recognize it and actually become a part of the solution because if we don't we're just going to be fighting this you know endlessly and in europe as i mentioned

Speaker A

we're working on the refugee resettlement and asylum and and actually we have a flavor over there called uh uh cone together and uh you know we like to go for the puns here but uh there's this picture that you're seeing on this

Speaker A

slide is that's actually ben and jerry in the center of the picture ben on the left jerry on the right and then uh a high-level official from the united nations to their right and then our ceo matthew mccarthy who's

Speaker A

uh all the way to the right he actually looks more ben and jerry's than ben and jerry these days if you if you can see that well enough so our our journey has been uh long we are we are humble in the fact

Speaker A

that we have a long long way to go we are really just really just understanding um you know really the root causes for a lot of like in our own business uh you know with our campaigns and with our

Speaker A

learning you know we've really gone deep into the root causes of like our own ben and jerry's culture like why why do we behave the way we behave why do people feel uncomfortable if they're people of color you know

Speaker A

why do we make decisions like where where our franchises are and so we've you know this is a key part of this work is you gotta really dig deep into the root causes which can be exhausting and sometimes it's like oh

Speaker A

do we have to just keep digging yes we've got to keep digging because you really want to understand why is this happening you don't want to solve for the wrong thing and if you if you don't go deep

Speaker A

enough you may be creating solutions to either a problem that doesn't exist or the wrong problem and so that can create issues and uh again in our in all of our supply chain work uh we're continuing to try to figure out

Speaker A

how we can express this idea of diversity equity and inclusion so that all of this is actually embedded you know in our product and in our company culture in in you know walking the walk-in and talking the talk all the same time

Speaker A

so that i now i'm gonna go to the next slide but it's a little premature because it says questions because we're not gonna ask questions right yet we're gonna we're gonna hand it off to melissa just to go over we've got a

Speaker A

little bit of a challenge this is hopefully gonna make this more fun for you as you you move on uh past 2000 to maybe 10 000 actions uh in 30 days so melissa you want to come on and

Speaker A

share what our little bit of a challenge is here with everybody yes rob thank you for uh that amazing talk um we've got questions pouring in um i'm going to encourage everyone on the call um to to keep those questions coming

Speaker A

we're going to get to as many as we can but uh to build on what uh rob was sharing we are really excited to announce um as you can all see this is our pet industry 30 days and uh at 30 days a thousand

Speaker A

actions excuse me um challenge that we launched september 1st this goes through the end of september um and anybody who logs onto the challenge from today on we'll see um we have a brand new uh campaign that just launched this morning

Speaker A

uh called the ben and jerry challenge this is uh brand new this morning oh my goodness somebody's already taking it which is amazing and these are um actions that are hand selected uh by rob which he thinks has most resonate

Speaker A

with the ben and jerry's social justice movement and renaissance with him so uh this is a brand new module all of you who have been a part of the pet industry challenge thank you but we've got even more actions and

Speaker A

education you can take and the exciting news is that uh the first uh 50 people that complete this particular module the pet industry challenge rob is going to very graciously send you some free ice cream as a congratulations

Speaker A

for your work in this journey so i uh want to make sure that we're getting uh to plenty of time uh for questions but i also uh want to just encourage you all thank you so much for joining our

Speaker A

our presentation uh today um as i mentioned we've hit a thousand actions as part of our 30-day a thousand actions we're raising that bar uh to now we're gonna go for three thousand so we'll hope you uh will be a journey part of that

Speaker A

journey i will get uh the information um for that challenge up but also would really love to just open it up for questions um we've got a bunch coming in so uh rob the first one that i'd love

Speaker A

i'd love to get your thoughts on are um around difficult conversations so i don't know do people ever come to ben and jerry's understand you know why are you guys talking about this we wish you would just kind of be quiet

Speaker A

and make ice cream and do you ever get those kinds of comments and if so how do you address them we do and we get we get that a lot we get it all the time part of it is you know to make sure that

Speaker A

you honor the person where they are uh you know a lot of people will not share these values and you know in in this kind of uh flash point uh moment that we are in history you know we really are

Speaker A

divided and people are you know pretty emotional about this kind of stuff generally um you know what we try to say is hey you know i can certainly respect your point of view um but you know i've been doing a little

Speaker A

bit of research on this and learning and i'm finding that i am uh coming up against uh bits of history and information that i was unaware of and and you know one way is to pick a couple of examples

Speaker A

one example that i've been using of course i'm uh my my father was in world war ii and you know part of the gi bill in world war ii and you know some some people on the call might want to pick a little bit

Speaker A

more contemporary example of this but i'm picking world war ii uh you know when my father came home he was he was based out of uh great britain in london and um when he came home he had all the

Speaker A

advantages of uh the gi bill and things such as that well the the black gis that came home from that same conflict who put their lives on the line as much as all of the white people did they did not receive the same benefits

Speaker A

uh they were not getting the mortgages in the suburbs like the white gis were getting and i didn't know this until i started to do the reading i didn't realize this and to me this was appalling i couldn't imagine

Speaker A

what that must have been like and so it was just one example for me how it woke me up to oh wait a minute there's more here that i need to understand and to be kind of empathetic that

Speaker A

hey you know what you may have your point of view and i can certainly understand that but you may just want to explore a few things here and and have a couple of examples that you can offer somebody

Speaker A

that might just open them up a little bit to it um it's it's a charged thing it's it's a very complicated thing so you have to really you can't you you can't act i was going to say pedantic like you know it all

Speaker A

because we don't and so you know it's really more of an empathy kind of open-ended thing um now that was a little bit of a personal thing now sometimes we will get people who will say hey you know what we're never buying

Speaker A

your ice cream again because you know you put up that black lives matter thing well doesn't you know don't blue lives matter don't white lives matter don't all the lives matter yes they do they do and what we're what

Speaker A

we do is say uh you know what we're trying to acknowledge right now is that you know the black lives matter message isn't quite the way you're understanding it and i'm not going to try to change your understanding of it but

Speaker A

our understanding of it is something that we're going to support and and we're sorry that we may lose you as a customer but these are values that we think are important and that we're going to stand up for

Speaker A

so there is a little bit of a moment where you might in some cases of your business you may lose some customers and it's up to you to make that decision right do you want to cross that line or

Speaker A

not and it's no judgment here it's uh it's a decision that you have to make and there are going to be different circumstances for all of us in making those decisions so hopefully those are just some examples that might be helpful i'm not sure

Speaker A

that's great rob thank you we've got another question that i absolutely love you talked about working with experts in the field like caller of change do you have any advice for companies looking to identify good partners to work with

Speaker A

well yes and you know um again this is the kind of thing what's so wonderful about uh technology now is you can actually google you you can make a decision on whether or not to you know do you want to work on a

Speaker A

national level or do you want to work on a local level and uh you know on the national level of course you've got you've got black lives matter and black lives matter actually have local chapters to where you are so

Speaker A

that's one thing color of change is national organization uh there are many other organizations like the n c double women naacp wow i almost went to college sports there for a second sorry about that but naacp uh aclu

Speaker A

um and uh there there are others and again they may have local chapters now what i wanna also recommend is just uh google like um wherever you are so i'll use an example as of vermont i googled uh vermont

Speaker A

organizations working on racial justice or vermont organizations you know working on social change and you can you can kind of you know refine that search and i ended up finding all these wonderful organizations that are actually working on racial justice in

Speaker A

vermont that i wasn't even aware of and the truth is in talking to many people who are in the movement you know color of change black lives matter aclu naacp they're actually getting a lot of national support they're getting a lot

Speaker A

of big donor support and that's not to dissuade you from supporting them but the local organizations that really need the local support may not be getting the attention or the support they need so if you were to just do a local search

Speaker A

you may end up finding amazing organizations locally and then just reach out and say hey you know um i see what you're doing i'm just wondering is there you know is there a way that i could either offer

Speaker A

now many of them will say well you can donate money but oftentimes they want you to donate time donate skills um or you know participate in collective action like going to the state house or city hall depending on you know what

Speaker A

level you're looking at and so um there's a lot out there that you can explore so i would suggest do a little google search have a little fun with it see what you can find and drill into the

Speaker A

different organizations i think you'll find some organizations that may match up with what you're looking for and may provide you something to to engage on at the local level which from what we understand is actually needed more now than ever yeah i love

Speaker A

that idea of focusing on on home and and our more general areas um i've got a great question um about suppliers the question is you talked about suppliers like grace and brakery that are doing some great jedi work

Speaker A

do you have any suggestions for steering existing vendors towards programs like this you know what um we're just looking at that at that ourselves and i do have a list and and i probably should have had that available to put in the chat i don't

Speaker A

have it in the chat but maybe what i can do is work through you melissa and then you can get it out to people i'll i'll send you we have a list of organizations that are are a little bit more oriented

Speaker A

to like ben and jerry's which is a food company i mean basically we're an agricultural food company um and so it may be more in the agricultural supply chain but i think we have some organizations that are you know diverse in terms of industry uh

Speaker A

and so it may it may line up really nice with the with the pet industry as well because a lot of the stuff is agricultural too so yeah anyways perfect yeah i will i will funnel that through you melissa

Speaker A

yes i'll make sure that we get that for everybody um on the call got a couple more questions we're going to try and get to as many um that we can but but keep coming um rob uh we've got a

Speaker A

question of any advice for our helping our company create a social mission so you know if a company's right at the beginning steps of this journey what do you think is kind of the 30-day 60-day one-year kind of best way to

Speaker A

start mapping that out well depending on uh the size of your organization um you know it would be good to sit and really share well what what are your primary values what are the values within your organization that you really

Speaker A

want to express through that organization and how might those values match up in terms of uh you know setting the criteria for what your social mission is so it's going to be different for you know for different organizations you

Speaker A

know different companies depending on where you are in that that spectrum and range but really i think uh from from your founders and then your your employees and management you know you might convene and and you could probably find some

Speaker A

good facilitation there are a lot of professional facilitators that can help again i think you could probably google at a local level or regional level and get some good facilitators for uh leading you through that discussion but have a thoughtful discussion about well

Speaker A

what are the meaningful values to you and then you know kind of boil that down into a couple or a few and then and then you can carry on for how you want those to be expressed through your business

Speaker A

great um that's a thank you sorry i have lots of questions coming um i'm gonna try like i mentioned we're gonna try and get to a couple as many i know we're starting to come up against time um i've got a great one as

Speaker A

a a company do you think it is easier to start from a place of with a mission around um social justice or do you think it's a bigger challenge to kind of if you're a company mid you know you're already established and

Speaker A

you're going to start a start a social justice campaign or do you think it's you know if we have somebody who's starting starting a company right should they incorporate that from the get-go or you know let's make sure we're actually

Speaker A

stay in business and then tackle that later that's an interesting question um i think if i were to be completely honest about it i think it's easier to start with the values in place however that shouldn't um uh

Speaker A

that shouldn't move you away from trying you know if you're already growing and you you want to to to make you know to establish that benchmark i think you just you know go through that process with your with your

Speaker A

company and your culture and try to be as inclusive uh with your management and staff in the process of establishing what that you know social mission or what your purpose is or what kind of values you know you want to lead

Speaker A

i i think you can make that transition i think um even if you're you know already uh you've been in business for a long time and and and you know you've got a timeline going what what's going to be hard is the

Speaker A

putting it in place and having your culture change and that's just that's just patience and follow-up and consistency and you know really leadership top-down and then if you can open it for uh leadership from you know the bottom

Speaker A

up too um but you can do it uh it's been done i've seen it done and uh you know uh quite honestly there are a couple of companies that we've worked with that didn't necessarily start out as purpose-driven

Speaker A

companies who are now extraordinary and they've they've totally become real leaders in a lot of uh different social and economic um initiatives so yeah it can be done it's just it's just a matter of again commitment and resilience

Speaker A

and patience and endurance you just you know these things take a long time yeah by the way two i just want to say and don't don't give yourself don't you know don't try to to leap over seven feet you know if

Speaker A

you're gonna do the high jump you know just start at two feet you know just set your bar at a place that you can achieve and get some accomplishments and then when you when you get that nice and strong then

Speaker A

raise it to four feet you know and do that that would be another suggestion that i would have perfect um we've got a great one we're gonna i think we got time for about two or three more um this is a great one

Speaker A

um has uh ben and jerry's journey as a more socially inclusive company impacted financial results and are you tracking that in any kind of way another good question and thank you for that um we have continually grown and continually been profitable

Speaker A

so our our performance as a business has just been kind of uh in a positive direction and we we do believe that a lot of that has to do with people um understanding that we are values-led business and that we're not

Speaker A

um [Music] we're not inauthentic about it we're not fake about it uh we're real about it and we're consistent and so uh that's important um [Music] so we've never been able to because we don't make decisions to sell

Speaker A

ice cream you know we don't make our values led decisions to sell ice cream we make those decisions because we think they're the right decisions to make as as a as human beings within society and what ben always said is

Speaker A

stand for something and the people who share those values will support you even more some of our own internal research does suggest that our customers are two and a half times more loyal than like other customers of other ice

Speaker A

cream companies because the other ice cream companies just stand for maybe good ice cream but nothing else and then we stand for good ice cream but also all these other you know social and environmental things and so the research suggests to us that

Speaker A

uh our customers are two and a half times more loyal which is important in a business sense because when you get into things like recessions and uh other things our you know our sales aren't like up and down like this they're nice and

Speaker A

smooth and we're able to kind of move through those uh more difficult times so there does seem to be some evidence that suggests that it helps with success and the b corp movement by the way a lot of the b

Speaker A

corp certified b corps are very successful as well and we think it's because people are changing and especially the younger demographics they want they want to support companies that stand for something perfect uh we have several b corps as

Speaker A

part of psc and if that's something you're interested in we can help you um with that i've got a great question on kind of a functional level um in your advice rob do you think that diversity and inclusion

Speaker A

should be put inside a an existing department like this should live within um hr for example or do you recommend companies you know start in a whole nother diversity equity inclusion department this is something that we still debate

Speaker A

internally this is a this is a really difficult decision um what you have to get to is it has to be real so what i mean by that is if if it you have to have leadership's commitment and follow through on this

Speaker A

so that everybody in the organization understands that it's a priority so you could do that in in a number of ways you could do that with having a you know a diversity director there are some companies where that has

Speaker A

not worked uh i think there was a wall street journal article out uh recently about how or um the harvard business reviewers or some something like that where it said uh you know diversity and equity uh and inclusion directors dei directors

Speaker A

have not been successful because because they actually haven't been accepted they've been sort of isolated it's kind of like their work well it has to be the whole organization's work so however you do that however you structure that

Speaker A

whether every director has a diversity equity and inclusion criteria key performance indicator so that it's part of their job that's one way to do it or you know you could have a dei director who helps to make that those priorities for the

Speaker A

organization and and have an operation have a plan for operationalizing it uh it it depends on your organization but um and i and i don't mean to be evasive here because we're actually we're actually discussing that now we

Speaker A

we have had the way we've done it is our we've made it an inclusive part of every director's job to determine how they're you know recruiting uh how their department is learning uh to be committed to this work

Speaker A

a lot of what has happened for us is that our most recent work has been working with race forward so you know having a contract consultant who is really good at this they've also subcontracted to a group called

Speaker A

equity and results which uses uh results based accountability models to help us actually operationalize this stuff so we are working with external uh experts who are good at this and you know do the they come in and do the workshops with

Speaker A

us and then the employees will do the work but that's another thing if sometimes it's difficult to have the budgets to do that but if you can then it's probably the best way to go is to have you know external experts help

Speaker A

you guide you along that path perfect i'm rob we've got one more question if that's all right um yep we'll go for it but speaking of leadership um we're really lucky to work with a lot of leaders here in psc but we've got a

Speaker A

great question as someone who is internal to an organization but might not be in a senior leadership position how does that person combat white fragility when they're talking to senior management who might you know not want this to be brought up

Speaker A

or are you know are very sensitive to the topic that's a tough one uh and i don't know if i'm necessarily qualified to answer it uh you know because that comes down to a trust factor how much do you trust

Speaker A

your leadership to be able to have that kind of a you know difficult conversation so i don't want to recommend something that i'm not really qualified for i know it just kind of goes down to your own gut instinct of

Speaker A

all right well how can i present this in a way that doesn't feel threatening but gets the point across i you know i've done that myself a couple of times here at ben and jerry's and you really have to kind of sit

Speaker A

write it out look at it write it out walk away from it come back to it you know that kind of thing and then when you feel like you know it's it's time to to bring it forward then bring it forward but

Speaker A

that probably is a better question for you know like a organizational you know human human resources type person who better understands the dynamics of that yeah well i appreciate this is a complex issue right and these things aren't easy

Speaker A

to talk about um on that note we are working with um jedi consultants here at psc so if you'd like to be put in contact with any of our experts we're happy to do that i also really want to encourage everyone on

Speaker A

this call if you aren't already actively involved in our 30 days a thousand actions challenge um as i mentioned we're tripling our goal and we can't do that without you but the new ben and jerry's uh module and challenge is a great way

Speaker A

to do that um and take these both organizational but individual actions as well um to build a more a diverse ecuadoral and inclusion pet industry um and and we will hope you will join us um we will also hope you will join us as

Speaker A

we further this conversation um past the challenge end on september 30th so thank you so much for for your leadership and your time and your expertise on this uh rob we really appreciate your insight and thank you everyone for joining us um

Speaker A

we hope you'll have a great rest of your day thank you

Topics:social justicediversity equity inclusionpet sustainability coalitionBen & Jerry'swebinarDEI challengecorporate responsibilitysustainabilityanti-racismindustry collaboration

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