S1E5: Deborah Benton

We revisit Season 2 with our prior guest and Yale Executive Fellow, Jon Iwata to assess where we're at in the Hunt for the How. Together, we discuss Jon's work at Yale and where it intersects with themes our guests employed, ranging from workplace culture, to transparency and systems change, to finding joy and meaning at the office. 

How do you build and maintain a healthy culture, even when you're managing a rapidly growing organization? In the latest Hunt for the How episode, we sit down with Ginger Hardage, Former SVP of Culture & Communications at Southwest Airlines to understand how she approached this challenge during her 25-year tenure at the company. Ginger points to many instances during her time at Southwest that demonstrate that “When you focus on your employees, giving them the right low level of training, organization, everything they need to do their jobs, that's when you start seeing a return on your culture.”

How do you create company culture with intention? In today's episode with respected HR leader Margo Downs, we explore how culture impacts not only the internal functions of an organization, but the ways in which a company operates on the global stage.  Margo Downs spent years helping build healthy, authentic cultures at Lululemon, Starbucks, and Stitch Fix, and uses her experience today to coach organizations through change and innovative practices. Margo joins us on The Hunt for the How to share what she's learned about organizational culture, and how it shapes the actions and impact a company has externally.

What are field builders, and why are they necessary to catalyze and implement systems change? With the help of Lija Farnham, Partner at the Bridgespan Group, we seek to answer that question and more.  With over 15 years' experience in nonprofit advising, Lija specializes in education, early childhood, and racial equity, and in today's episode we lean into Lija's work and the implications it holds not only for the philanthropic world but the business community as well. We make progress towards the "how" with an emphasis on what kind of policies, structures and changes could be explored and a deeper look at how large scale impact is approached.

In today's episode, Michael and Chris are joined by Alison Omens, Chief Strategy Officer for JUST Capital, a non-profit working to align the actions corporate America takes with the American public’s priorities. We discuss how Alison and JUST are evaluating when organizations are living up to their promises around stakeholder capitalism, and what sort of best practices should become common in order to build a more inclusive economy. In this conversation, we take a measurable step closer to the "how", as we gain greater perspective on the landscape as a whole, from the private sector to government and beyond.  

Michael and Chris sit down with the CEO of Syndio and co-founder of Smartsheet, Maria Colacurcio. As a pioneer in her field, Maria shares her pay equity insights and why it is no longer optional for business leaders to invest time and resources into it. Together, we foray into what "equal work for equal pay" truly means, and how Maria and her team are helping Fortune 500 companies measure it in a meaningful and actionable way. 

We kick off Season 2 with a local Seattle business and family man that has spent his career operationalizing purpose. Jeff Kaas, president of Kaas Tailored took a small family-owned furniture company and increased its size tenfold over a 10 year period through innovative marketing, product development and world-class lean manufacturing techniques. With his help, we seek to understand frameworks for implementing purpose into the fabric of an organization where it matters most-- the people. 

As Season 1 draws to a close, I sit down again with Jon Iwata, Yale Executive Fellow and former IBM Chief Brand Officer to review our guests thoughts and ruminate on what we've learned so far. We talk about translating big ideas into practical approaches, and how some notable CEOs of the last few decades have risen to the challenge. With an eye on the future, Jon and I consider what we should investigate next on the Hunt for the How. 

In this episode we sit down with Deborah Benton, co-founder of Willow Growth Partners to understand how CPG companies can successfully marry purpose with profit. In an industry notorious for placing the bottom line over sustainability and stakeholder needs, we explore how customers are changing the way brands operate by demanding a higher standard and what compels an investor to believe in a budding start-up. 

Today's guest is Shalinee Sharma, the CEO and co-founder of Zearn, one of the nation's largest nonprofit curriculum publishers. Shalinee and I dig into how and why her organization's goals and operations are steered primarily by the influence of their largest group of stakeholders-- their students-- even when some voices air louder opinions. We discuss the decision to incorporate as a nonprofit and how that vision became apparent to Shalinee after a decade working in the private sector.