Youth Activists Challenge CEOs to Re-frame Problem Solving

[Music] All right, hello and welcome to the Sea Change Winter Summit Brave Truths Conversations. My name is Raphael Bemperon. I'm a co-founder of BBMG, a brand consultancy in Brooklyn, New York, and a founding B Corp. I am very delighted to be joined today in conversation by my friends and colleagues Dave Rappaport and Joe Hobbs, who I'll introduce in a moment. But I just wanted to very briefly set context for the conversation that we're going to have today. It is no secret that a rising generation is expressing urgency and skepticism on pressing issues like never before, and young people want to take action and create positive change in society. At the same time, brand leaders are recognizing that what got us here won't get us to where we need to go. Today, the vast majority of young people around the world want to see radical change in our economy to address issues like inequality and climate. And Gen Z in the United States is more than three times as likely as boomers to say that they have personally been greatly affected by climate change in their own lives. And so the premise of our conversation today is that to regenerate the system, we have to regenerate the way we work together. And regeneration requires us to re-pattern how we think about the problems we face and how we can work together to solve them. And so our team at BBMG is super delighted to be teaming up with B Lab and the Sea Change team to champion intergenerational design as a way of uniting the wisdom, the passion, the creativity, and influence across generations in order to challenge assumptions and turn brave truths into leadership opportunities. And that is the inspiration for our conversation today with two amazing human beings and leaders in business and activism. So joining us today we have Dave Rappaport, who is the Global Social Mission Officer at Ben and Jerry's, and Joe Hobbs, an organizer and activist with Fridays for Future, which is both in DC, his role as well as in the United States and internationally. And Joe is also the Director of Operations for Climate Cardinals, which is an international youth organization working with six thousand volunteers to translate climate information into more than a hundred languages around the world. So welcome to you, Dave. Welcome to you, Joe, and thanks so much for joining in a Brave Truth conversation at Sea Change. Thanks for having me. It is our pleasure. We're very grateful for your time and your experience. So to begin, I would love to start a little bit less in the roles that we play and more as human beings. A great inspiration to me was a social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt, and he wrote an interesting book called The Righteous Mind. And he said, to get to know a person, try to understand what is sacred to them. That's how we can find one another, know one another, and meet one another. And with understanding what matters most to each of you as a beginning of our conversation, I'd love to understand what is sacred to you, what at the end of the day is most important to you. And as we talked a little bit before today's conversation, it would be glorious if you don't mind telling a story of what's sacred to you through an artifact or story that kind of captures that. And I guess, Dave, if you don't mind getting us started, that'd be great. And I'd just love to hear from you what is most important to you as a human being and what's behind that. Yeah, you know, I really gave that a lot of thought in preparation for this conversation, and I realized the thing that is most important to me is the trust, the trust that people have in me in my relationships, whether it's to a family or my business or activist relationships. And I think it's especially important in relationships where there's an imbalance of power. And what I've brought with me is this togwa nut. It's also known as the vegetable ivory. It's the endosperm of a seed of a palm tree that's very, very hard. You can't carve it with a knife; you have to use like a hacksaw. And I had several years ago, when I was working with Aveda, the real privilege of taking over a relationship that the company had long had with an indigenous people on the Amazon in Brazil, in the far western part of Brazil, the Yawanawa people, from whom Aveda has bought an ingredient. But more importantly, the relationship was really about working with the Yawanawa people to preserve their culture, the welfare of their people, and the forest, which are really all inseparable. And so trust was absolutely essential, and it really weighed on me as a responsibility to uphold the trust that they had in me. And I guess that's the way I feel about these trust relationships. It's really a responsibility, whether there are explicit commitments or just implied commitments. People count on us, and it's nowhere more poignant than in that kind of a relationship. And so I've kind of hung on to this nut as a reminder. You know, it's hard, it's solid. It really is such an essential key to have that solid sense of responsibility. But it's also a seed from which a huge tree grows. And I think that when we take our commitments seriously, we can grow a whole lot together. Right on, Dave. That's absolutely beautiful. And it reminds me, I think we are all feeling a sense of urgency for change. And at the same time, it's been said eloquently that change happens at the speed of relationship, and relationship happens at the speed of trust. And I really appreciate that's the core because it's doing the deep work in relationship that everything else becomes possible. Love it. Thank you, Joe. Over to you. What is the core of who you are and what matters most to you? Yeah, and you know, so I've been spending a long time these past couple days truly thinking about if there's a certain object or a certain thing that just represents who I am and that I hold sacred. And I think more so than an object, I think it's two things. I think it's hope and age. And I think that these play perfectly into the climate movement. I think one of the things that I hold sacred to myself is this hope. I think that this past year and even this past month, there's a lot going on around the world politically, and there's a lot of different things coming from all different angles. But I think one of the things that I've noticed, even with the pandemic happening, is I've yet to meet a climate activist that lost hope. And I think every year we're getting to a point where it's closer and closer to the point of no return. I think we're getting to that point very soon, but no one's lost hope yet. All of my friends are still fighting this battle. And COVID shut us down where we couldn't even do any in-person strikes, right? And that was the entire basis of Fridays for Future. We loved doing these in-person strikes. It brought people to the streets. It brought people together with other people who felt the same way, and it really had this motion to it. And I think one of the hardest things that we faced with this was how do we go online? But no one gave up hope. No one decided, oh, it's done, we got to do something else. Everyone decided, let's transition this all of a sudden change to online. Let's see what we can do. Let's hold these open discussions for anyone to join. Let's bring the entire world together online. You know, in-person strikes, you can only bring together the local group, but when you have online strikes, you can bring the whole world in on a discussion on a topic. And I think it's really beautiful. And then to my second point, I think age plays a big factor in this. And the reason I say that is I think all different ages need to come together. And I worry that generational, there are different generations that feel differently about this. And I think that everyone has the same thought of this is an issue, but everyone's combating it differently. And I think as a youth, my current way of combating it is to spe...

today in conversation by my friends and colleagues dave rappaport and joe hobbs who i'll introduce in a moment but i just wanted to very briefly set context for the conversation that we're going to have today it is no secret that a rising

generation is expressing urgency and skepticism on pressing issues like never before and young people want to take action and create positive change in society at the same time brand leaders are recognizing that what got us here won't get us to where we need to go

today the vast majority of young people around the world want to see radical change in our economy to address issues like inequality and climate and gen z in the united states is more than three times as likely as boomers to say that

they have personally been greatly affected by climate change in their own lives and so the premise of our conversation today is that to regenerate the system we have to regenerate the way we work together and regeneration requires us to re-pattern

how we think about the problems we face and how we can work together to solve them and so our team at bbmg is super delighted to be teaming up with b lab and the sea change team to champion

intergenerational design as a way of uniting the wisdom the passion the creativity and influence across generations in order to challenge assumptions and turn brave truths into leadership opportunities and that is the inspiration for our conversation today with two amazing human beings and

leaders in business and activism so joining us today we have dave rappaport who is the global social mission officer at ben and jerry's and joe hobbs an organizer and activist with friday's for future which is both in dc his role as

well as in the united states and internationally and joe is also the director of operations for climate cardinals which is an international youth organization working with six thousand volunteers to translate climate information into more than a hundred languages

around the world so welcome to you dave welcome to you joe and thanks so much for joining um in a brave truth conversation at sea change thanks for having me it is our pleasure we're very grateful for your time and your experience

so to begin i would love to start a little bit less in the roles that we play and more as human beings a great inspiration to me was a social psychologist named jonathan height and he wrote an interesting book called the

righteous mind and he said to get to know a person try to understand what is sacred to them that's how we can to find one another know one another and meet one another and with understanding what matters most

to each of you as a as a beginning of our conversation i'd love to understand what is sacred to you what at the end of the day is most important to you and as we talked a little bit before today's

conversation it would be glorious if you don't mind telling a story of what's sacred to you through an artifact or story that kind of captures that and i guess dave if you don't mind getting us started that'd be

great and i'd just love to hear from you what is most important you as a human being and what's behind that yeah you know i really gave that a lot of thought in preparation for this conversation and i realized the thing

that is most important to me is is the trust uh the trust that that people have in me in my relationships uh whether it's to a family or my my business or or activist uh relationships and i think it's

especially important in relationships where there's an imbalance of power and uh what i've brought with me is this uh togwa nut it's it's also it's known as the uh the the vegetable ivory it's a it's a the endosperm of a seed of a

palm tree that's very very hard um you can't carve it with a knife you have to use like a hacksaw uh and i had several years ago when i was working with aveda the the real privilege of uh

taking over a relationship that the company had long had with an indigenous people on the amazon in brazil in the far western part of brazil the yawanawa people from whom aveda has bought um an ingredient but more importantly the relationship

was really about working with uh the the illinois people to preserve their culture uh the the welfare of their people and and the forest which are really all inseparable and so trust was absolutely essential and it really weighed on me as a responsibility uh to

uphold the trust that that that they had in me and and i guess that's the way i feel about these trust relationships it's really a responsibility whether there are explicit commitments or just implied commitments people count on us

and and it's nowhere more poignant than than in that kind of a relationship and and so i've kind of hung on to this this nut as a reminder uh you know it's hard it's solid uh it really is such an essential key to have that

solid sense of responsibility but it's also a seed from which a huge tree grows and and i think that when we take our commitments seriously um we can grow a whole lot together right on dave that's absolutely beautiful and it reminds me i think we

are all feeling a sense of urgency for change and at the same time it's been said eloquently that change happens at the speed of relationship and relationship happens at the speed of trust and i really appreciate that's the core because it's

doing the deep work in relationship that everything else becomes possible love it thank you joe over to you what what is the core of who you are and what matters most to you yeah and you know i so i've been spending a long time these

past couple days truly thinking about if there's a certain object or a certain thing that just represents who i am and that i hold sacred and i think more so than an object i think it's two things right i think it's hope and its

age and i think that these play perfectly into the climate movement i think one of the things that i hold sacred to myself is this hope i think that this past year and even this past month there's a lot going on around the world

politically and there's a lot of different things coming from all different angles right but i think one of the things that i've noticed even with the pandemic happening is i've yet to meet a climate activist that lost hope

and i think every year we're getting to a point where it's closer and closer to no point the point of no return i think we're getting to that point very soon but no one's lost hope yet all of my

friends are still fighting this battle and kovitz shut us down where we couldn't even do any in-person strikes right and that was the entire basis of friday's future we loved doing these in-person strikes it brought people to the streets it brought people together

with other people who felt the same way and it really had this motion to it and i think one of the hardest things that we faced with this was how do we go online but no one gave up hope no one decided

oh it's done we got to do something else everyone decided let's transition this all of a sudden change to online let's see what we can do let's hold these open discussions for anyone to join let's bring the entire world together online

you know in person strikes you can only bring together the local group but when you have online strikes you can bring the whole world in on a discussion on a topic and i think it's really beautiful and then to my second point i think age

plays a big factor in this and the reason i say that is i think all different ages need to come together and i i worry that generational there are different generations that feel differently about this and i think

that everyone has the same thought of this is an issue but everyone's combating it differently right and i think as a youth my current way of combating it is to speak up and to speak how i truly feel right i was just young

enough to miss the last election by three months which was very disappointing to say the least right but i realized that you don't have to vote to have a say in the government but you do have to work harder without a

vote and i what i realized is we really need to bring together youth and middle aged people and older people all together around this topic of climate change and global warming and how we can fix this and that's really why i feel like two of

the things that i hold sacred to myself and just in general to the climate movement is the age and the hope that everyone holds and that these young people greta thundberg and all these united states activists have somehow lit

a fire and gone the attention of everyone from every age group and most of them are in the ages of 15 to 18. you know it's not like we have a bunch of people of a huge amount of money behind

them it's just truly the passion and the hope that burns of everyone so i would say those two those two terms those two words are really what i hold sacred to myself and the entire climate movement right on and i think that's a great

launching point for where we can find i'm literally just now thanks to my friend and mentor laurie hanno i've been reading this book active hope by joanna macy and the premise is that hope is not some weak hopeful wonder that something will

manifest but it's an obligation and a commitment to action and to tangibly working toward the change that you seek and so hope is an active muscle hope is something that is cultivated and created and manifest so i'd love to

to talk a little bit about your path to change so each of you could be doing many things in your life and with your time dave you've chosen a life inside of business as a as a pathway to making your

greatest contribution and your greatest impact joe um you are really committed as an activist and an organizer with fridays for future and climate cardinals and i'm just curious why did you choose this path as a way of making your

greatest contribution and dave if you don't mind starting obviously you're working within a global business that has a holding company unilever or you know parent company that's a publicly traded firm so you're in the belly of the beast you're

moving inside of markets and inside of capital and capitalism why that as your path to change well the truth is that this is only the my latest incarnation my my path has been been long and and meandering i

spent the the first 20 years of my career as an activist a lot of that time working with greenpeace and uh you know worked some on on climate um a lot of my focus was on toxic waste issues and i've

been in the business world for the second half of my career the last 20 years and and i've always seen myself as working for meaningful change and i think that at this point in my life uh being on the business side of the fence

um has has uh uh given me the opportunity to see how you can change the game from the inside um and and uh uh you know my when i was younger maybe uh i didn't understand how many roles

there are that are important to making change and uh uh at some point i began to be curious about um how you could make change beyond the policy arena the activism arena and uh you know they're both equally

challenging uh but there are are equal and really important opportunities on both sides for me at this point in my life having had that background being at ben and jerry's is just really uh the right place to be i mean we're an activist

company that sells ice cream uh and uh you know we uh we're guided by this three-part mission one of which is the social mission that i have the the honor to lead uh and it's really all about business as a force for good and

how we we can uh activate uh uh uh change uh through through fan facing activism as well as the the the direct impacts we have as a business or our operations and value change chain and so uh it just continues that path i've always

been on of of making systemic change uh and and certainly uh uh around around tackling climate issues no less than anything else so you have as levers the value chain the supply chain every relationship in the creation of and the

making of the product and you have the voice and the power of the brand and culture in order to influence people's awareness and activism in their own right we have a tremendous opportunity uh tremendous reach uh you know beyond our size you

know we're a billion dollar company with a 30 billion dollar megaphone and that fan facing activism is a really important component of what we can do to help create change awesome thank you dave and joe what comes to mind for you like of all the

things that you could be doing with your time looking at your you know your future you're committed as an activist and an organizer why that path to change for you you know when you say path i find it so

interesting because i'm only three or four years down this activist path right i'm 19 i feel like i've got forever to figure out what i want to do but what i did know is i want to do something that would help the earth

right and i think there's a lot of different ways you can go about that you can definitely commit from a business standpoint come at it from a political standpoint right you can even come with it from a very grassroots you know

volunteering standpoint but at the age i was at age of 16 when i first started this i realized i couldn't do any of that i can't join a business at the age of 16 you're a bit young to have any kind of

role there right i can't get elected to government a bit young for that too but what i did know is i can go into the streets and say my peace i can march on capital and say my peace right

and i realized that's the fit that i that i fit in right that's the place i can be and i think it was a constraint at the time but now i look back at it it really freed me to fully understand the

different levels and one of the reasons i love having these conversations is getting these different standpoints right i don't think you can approach this climate conference from just one angle i think you need to hit everybody and that includes the policy makers that

includes the business leaders and that includes the general public and i think even with activism we really target those three sectors but at the moment we target specifically policy and general people and i think one of the things i've kind of made my

mission is to figure out how can businesses fit into this right i think one of the biggest drives in an economy is business so how can we get those businesses to change and even if you look at the past two years three years

you're seeing these changes with publicly owned companies where their shareholders and their stockholders are saying you need to be responsible for this you need to figure out a plan what's your what's your carbon neutral goal right how are you

lowering your emissions how are you bringing voices in how are you being inclusive diverse and i love that and i think it's really holding businesses accountable but how can we bring more business to the table it shouldn't just be public

owned companies and i think one of the things i realized is this activist path i don't know where i'll be five years from now even two years from now but i do know that i'm going to continue to be an activist

until either i decide there's something else in the activism world that may help me or i just decide to continue doing that for the rest of my life and i think i i struggle to think of the future

because i'm so focused on the present right now of how do we fix this issue it's a struggle to think five or ten years in the future when you've really only got one or two years to really make

some big differences so the path is so short at the moment and it's so much at the start and i feel like i've got so many years ahead to just create a whole different path but right now i'm really trying to focus

on what can i do in this present day to make a difference personally and how can that difference affect the generation after me and the generation after that well let's double click on on where we are and what we can do

dave obviously ben and jerry's is probably one of the most iconic mission-driven brands in the world a pioneer at your scale of becoming a b corp your commitments to things like voting rights and racial justice obviously climate justice the lgbtq plus

community campaign finance reform really appreciative of the work that you've done on white supremacy and dismantling structural racism early early for companies in the conversation all the way back to 2016 when you really put out a first very strong statement

around race and justice i'm curious with all of that in play what is currently keeping you up at night like what's on your mind and what's keeping you restless and as a consequence of that um what is the work to do

and what might you see is the work activists can play in the work to do so let's start with what's keeping you up to night at night and then what can joe do about it what's your indication to

joe and his peers well you know i have to say climate change has literally been keeping me up in the night for 40 years um but currently the thing uh that has emerged which maybe it isn't as new as it feels but

it's the the attacks on democracy the attacks on our ability to make the changes we so desperately need whether we're talking about attacks on voting rights uh gerrymandering um you know the the the dog whistle politics that are attempting

to divide um uh poor and working-class white people from black people in order uh for those in power to preserve it i mean these are the things that you know we're moving towards an autocracy uh on a daily basis

and and so the preservation and and and winning back of of the the ability to really set the course uh is is uh is critical and uh you know we we we obviously see that as as as a real

crisis on a daily basis i think that uh you know what i hope joe will keep doing is what he's doing you know i think we all need to find one way or another to take it to the streets

and and withhold our cooperation in a system uh that uh is is uh is not responding uh to what we and the earth so badly need and there's lots and lots of ways to do that and we all have to look at our lives and

figure out what it is that we can do to contribute to that cause and i think that another key is the intersectionality understanding that you know whatever those issues are they're all interconnected in very meaningful ways uh and and we've got to

understand the common roots or at least see them in and work together uh beyond focusing on on the particular differences of the of our struggles but really really understand that what we're all trying to do is changing the way decisions are made

who's making those decisions and demanding the power uh in order to change course that's that's needed in such an urgent way apart from motivating or mobilizing fans of ben and jerry's to be aware of voting rights issues voter suppression issues

are there other things that the business is doing to try to very directly impact the dynamics that you're mentioning and you're at the core of all that is how we make policy what governs how we do business so i'm just curious

is it just the voice of the brand are there other things happening inside the company to address the crisis of democracy or naming well you know certainly raising our voice uh as uh you know in the leadership that we have as a

business within society is critical and and we try to do that uh in in very direct ways mobilizing our fans to take very specific actions around winning particular policy issues locally and nationally uh is also a big piece of

that but the other thing that we're really thinking a lot about is you know how do we uh use our voice to engage a wider range of people you know we're very successful at creating uh tremendous reach uh through social

media but you know we're just playing with the same algorithms that everybody else is through which you know saying things that are provocative rise to the top and uh i think you know i'm increasingly concerned that that allows us to speak to uh the choir

very often but there's a lot of people in the middle who haven't figured things out yet that we also need to be reaching and you know ice cream has always been a great way to bring people together over

difficult issues so how do we do that how do we do that more effectively particularly when most of our outreach is is no longer physical but but online and and so that's actually a question i wanted to ask joe uh you know what what you

know i mean you're a digital native uh uh you know i'm certainly not um uh but but how do we uh uh you know working within the constraints that have arisen around social media get beyond just saying things that get lots of

reaction but actually reach people um you know who the logarithms may not be playing towards and foreign you bring up the core issue to the climate movement moving online which is it's one thing to walk in a street where

everyone has to pass you right and they have to see you it's another thing when you're posting on an instagram account that's followed by people who already love the message is how do you reach these completely new people how are you

and i we haven't reached a solution yet but one of the things i did realize is partner with the people you least expect to work with partner with you know advertisers who advertise to a completely different demographic from who you think you

should target and it's a completely different approach to what we've ever done before which is you're approaching these different people who may not even believe in climate change and trying to convince them but it's the best way we've found to

really reach people who had no idea was an issue to start with and that's one of the biggest issues i've seen is a lot of people are like i knew it was a problem but i didn't realize it was as bad as it was and you

obviously have the people who just completely deny it who say it's false right and there's an education component to that and we always we never believe that anyone's past the point of education right it's up to them to

decide to accept it or deny it but we will always show them the numbers and the facts and the stats and give them that education that hopefully can prove to them that this is real but one of the things we've had a lot of

help of is when we partner with companies who their usual demographic the usual people they sell to aren't completely the people we work with and working with them to really reach a completely new audience allows us to reach people who would have never seen

our posts before would have never seen instagram before and then the other part of that is we try to have a grassroots effect where if our activists are posting on their instagram accounts each that's thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people

posting they are bound to reach people who would have never believed that before right i like to think that our activists are friends with people from very different walks of life and some may believe in the message they have and

some people don't but by posting about it everyone can see that so it's kind of that two-fold of primarily targeting a demographic we've never talked to before but also having this grassroots effect of just mass mobilization and mass

meeting people and i think those two approaches right now are working and allowing us to meet a new audience that we'd never have seen before but the true core of it is unless you're up in someone's face and they can't

avoid you you really struggle to reach those people who don't want to listen and then i kind of i kind of bring it back to you dave of ben and jerry's i've seen them do a lot of amazing work and i do i do think that

you guys have an amazing mission and amazing values but how are you including these front line communities in your decisions how are you listening to the people who these problems that you're addressing are actually facing on a day-to-day basis is

that something that you're physically having surveys are you bringing these people in to talk to your leadership directly or are you reading up on it from scientists you know who's really giving you those genuine opinions it's a great question so dave how are

you bringing folks in who are directly affected by the decisions you're making to make sure they have a seat at the table well it is absolutely critical and it's really been very much a part of our learning as as we have been on this

journey around racial equity uh especially over the last several years um understanding that um you you know it's not up to people with privilege to go in and do work on behalf of people who are marginalized everybody's got to

be the table and they've got to not just have a voice with power uh and so we try to do that in a variety of ways we certainly work very closely for example in in the global south uh in

communities where we source ingredients like cocoa from coffee uh and and uh we we try to actively engage with them and understand you know that's one way to understand the impacts of climate change another is through the work we do with

with refugee communities in europe or our activism has been focused on refugee and asylum rights in europe and you know many of those are climate migrants and so and the climate has played a role in many of the global conflicts that are

that are that are have been driving refugees to europe so those are ways we also through our work in marginalized communities in the us around racial equity issues uh we're actively engaging with those people with with organizations that are in the trenches

like the movement for black lives with whom we've been working for the past year on the people's response act uh color of change you know many uh the advancement project many others and we're increasingly working with front line communities as

we fashion our policies uh and activism around both climate and plastics before they come together and say a place like communities around the chemical corridor in louisiana where plastic is manufactured with the huge local pollution uh problems being caused as well as

contributing in many ways to the global climate crisis uh so we try actively to engage uh uh everybody in you know all of these marginalized communities and in figuring out what we're gonna do and how dave i think the awareness that the

company has about the communities that are impacted and bringing them in in conversations probably among best in class joe is also asking about power dynamics and have you been able to identify ways to actually seed power and some of the decision-making to

community members themselves well yeah absolutely i mean we don't view our role as coming in with a strategy or or you know a campaign what we do is partner with organizations ngos that are directly connected in those accountable ways in

those communities to bring the the the tools we have as a business to the table to assist them in their strategies and so from the beginning it's not about what we want to do it's about what they want to do and how we can help them

so joe on your side of the story here you are inspired by greta and joined the youth-led global climate strike that happened in over 125 countries i believe friday's for future is part of the next round which will be a global strike on

march 25th 2022. so what is it that is at the core of what you're focused on you're most concerned about and what is your invitation to business i once again i hate to box just one concern right but one of my concerns so i like to

focus on different concerns at different times but one of the biggest concerns i'm having right now is and this is this is a target to no company in particular but i'm seeing a lot of companies who are making the right moves or putting the

right effort behind it but the results aren't what they should be and and the the way to kind of describe what that looks like is there's a lot of companies who go we would like to donate money to an organization or we

would like to do this or that right but the choices the people who are making those choices as a cfo the ceo or someone within the company but they're not bringing these external voices to this conversation right and a

great example of a company that did this well was lush we talked to lush and they shut down all of their stores i believe it was in all of north america um for one day during the youth climate strike and that was a

move that they consulted with us they were like what could we do here's what we're thinking there was no advertising around it right there's nothing about oh we're working with these guys it was just for closing our store in solidarity

and that was a move that i think shocked the entire climate world especially as youth activists to see a company that sacrificed an entire day's worth of business which is quite a lot of revenue for a movement without any kind of

advertising or any kind of roi from it right it was just purely because they believed in the message they believed what they were doing and i think my call to action to businesses is involve activists involve people in your

decisions right if you're having a board meeting once a month with the board to talk about your numbers talk about the future plans have an activist at that meeting or if you have a game plan you're like we're thinking of completely

donating 100 000 to this organization have an activist go you could do that or your money could be better well spent here right or if you go we're thinking of for example ben and jerry's releasing an ice cream flavor right that really

highlights this and you guys do an awesome job with that i love the campaigns you guys do around that works very well have an activist join in and go you could do that but what if we change the messaging here what if we did

this differently right and i think that's that's what i've been telling a lot of my friends and a lot of the companies that i've talked to is instead of just deciding it allow an activist to give their voice to them

right and have an activist on board who can just give you a couple hours of month advice you go hey here's what we're planning what are your thoughts and that activist can just truly speak freely and i think it really brings a

completely different perspective from what any company thinks of right there's not a lot of companies where you've got a 17 18 19 20 year old climate activists giving you advice right you usually get the 30 40 year old people with the

graphs and the statistics that says this works but from a grassroots perspective involving that local voice allows you to be closer with the community so that's that's really what i've been trying to tell everyone i'm talking to is how are you including

those voices directly into the decisions you make or the ideas you have well dave does ben and jerry's have a youth council a youth activist council yet we don't um you know i think that as i said we're engaged in a lot of dialogue

but that's an interesting idea i will point out that our board is made up entirely of activists other than than one unilever representative and our ceo um but um you know getting the voice of youth more actively engaged is is a

great idea and uh i'll i'll be thinking about that thank you joe well right on um thank you both so much from you know your stories of trust and hope all the way through your respective experiences inside of business and inside of

movements um i think you've both been such an inspiring example of what's possible and we're just beginning the conversation about how we can start to work across generations in order to unlock new ways of solving problems and so

thank you for your time thank you for your inspiration we'll be continuing the conversation at the sea change sessions in person and we look forward to bringing both voice of business voice of activists together in order to create

the change that we seek so dave thank you joe thank you very much and i look forward to continuing the conversation and the work thank you you got it [Music] [Music]