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A host of top companies issued bold statements and significant financial commitments to advance racial equity in 2020. Now, the hard work really begins. “I commend the significant efforts companies have put forward and their tremendous commitments to racial equity,” said Gary Cunningham, president and CEO of Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on economic mobility for people of color and low-income people. “I would argue this is the first step, not the last step.”

Cunningham was one of five leaders to appear on stage at a March 3BL Forum: Brands Taking Stands - LIVE! event focused on racial equity and justice. We caught up with Cunningham, a respected expert in entrepreneurship, job creation and racial wealth equity, after the event to learn more about how companies can move past that first step and make measurable progress on advancing racial equity in their workforces and the communities where they do business. 

“The key here is authentic leadership —  in other words, walking the walk, not just talking the talk,” he told us. “It’s easy to say that you’re anti-racist without changing anything about how your organization operates.” He went on to detail four actionable steps every business leader can take to align their deeds with their words — and ensure those deeds make a real difference. 

Embed racial equity and justice into everything you do 

If your company has a stake in the economic success of the communities where you operate — and it does, if it plans to sell products and services in the future — then eliminating racial inequality is central to your mission. If your company has a values or purpose statement rooted in positive impact on society — and you should, because consumers increasingly expect it — then eliminating racial inequality is central to your vision. To be an authentic leader, start by making those connections clear and talking about them often, Cunningham advised. Keep your eyes and ears open. Embrace change. Celebrate the things you’re doing well, and own up to areas that need improvement.

“This work is more than just a slogan or a statement, and by that I mean this work must be reflected as part of the values of the business or organization. It has to be embedded from the C-suite to the ground floor,” he told 3p. “Make sure you’re talking to your own employees, that you’re open about what the opportunities are, and that you work with a diverse board and a diverse workforce,” he advised. “These are critical issues to be authentic in this space.” 

Understand you aren’t the expert in this work — and partner with those who are

“So often I’ve witnessed corporations and business leaders act as if because they are very smart and can solve problems that they can understand and know how to solve the complex problems of racial and ethnic inequality,” Cunningham said. “Just because you’re an expert in a certain field doesn’t mean you have the understanding or the lived experiences of those who have suffered from economic inequality. Therefore, trust the guidance of people who can help you learn, help you bring your work into the community, and help you understand the depth of the issues that you’re trying to contain.” 

Ellen McGirt, senior editor of Fortune, recently took a closer look at one of these successful partnerships: the R.I.S.E. (racial inclusion and social equity) program at professional services firm Marsh McLennan. Developed in collaboration with groups like the John Lewis Center for Social Justice at Fisk University, R.I.S.E. will embed Black and Afro Latinx second-year MBA students and graduates into the company for learning and client work, in tandem with an immersive social justice program.

Newly-appointed Inclusion and Diversity Officer Nzinga “Zing” Shaw said she was properly resourced for success and is optimistic about the future of the program, but the payoff is still years away. “This isn’t an ‘invest in diversity’ initiative,” she told McGirt in the latest edition of her RaceAhead newsletter (if you’re interested in how issues of race intersect with business, be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already). “The measure of success would ultimately be that in five to 10 years many of these fellows will be rising up through the ranks of Marsh McLennan and more broadly across the entire spectrum of the industry.”  

Other recent standouts include Apple’s work with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to establish a learning hub in Atlanta and a developer academy in Detroit, and Goldman Sachs’ investment of more than $10 billion in social change organizations, an initiative it says will be “led by Black women, advised by Black women [and] partnered with Black women.”

Measure success

As the old adage goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. “So often when we talk about this work of racial equity, there are no metrics behind what success looks like,” Cunningham observed. “I say take the same measures that you use in your business and apply that to your racial equity work. Set goals. Set standards.” 

In a December article in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Loyola University law professor Elizabeth J. Kennedy details how companies can leverage employee data to create more equitable workplaces and measure progress along the way, and nonprofit consulting firm FSG recently outlined 23 practices grounded in data that advance racial equity at work.

A growing host of resources are also becoming available to help businesses and other organizations quantify and qualify their progress: For example, the Boston Consulting Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Assessment for Leadership (DIAL) tool analyzes diversity and inclusion benchmarking data to help companies identify the metrics that matter most. 

Tailor your approach 

“It’s important to target your approach to actually reach the people that you’re trying to impact,” Cunningham said. He used the Paycheck Protection Program, meant to help small businesses keep workers on the payroll amid coronavirus shutdowns, as an example. “It’s a great program that is universal, but it didn’t reach communities of color,” he observed. “The same thing can happen in your company if you don’t have the knowledge to develop a targeted program that reaches the constituencies you want to reach.” 

This means developing equity programs that benefit those who are often overlooked, while being mindful about communicating how these programs can benefit anyone of any background. 

“Think about it as a targeted goal with a universal approach — meaning, we want our approaches to help everyone in the company, but we know not everyone is situated the same way in the company, so we want to target this in a way that it actually works,” Cunningham explained. “That way, employees that are not a part of this BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] community can still see why the solution is important. Without them being able to see themselves in the picture, you’ll continue to have a divide and what they call ‘white backlash’ to your well-being programs.”

Image credit: Clay Banks/Unsplash

The failed insurrection of January 6 exposed shortcomings in the ratings systems that measure corporate social responsibility, and now a new rash of anti-trans legislation has demonstrated additional flaws. The normal conventions of responsible corporate behavior are dangerously weak when civil rights, human rights and democracy itself are under attack from the very lawmakers who are supposed to protect and defend national principles of justice and equality. This year’s Pride Month revelations amplify those concerns.

A crack in the corporate social responsibility movement

TriplePundit and other media noted the curious lack of a strong corporate response following the January 6 attack on the Capitol Building.

After all, the failed insurrection was an organized attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power outlined in the Constitution, with intent to murder the former vice president and prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office. One would think that the corporate defenders of democracy would rise up with one voice to demand justice, retribution and accountability from all of those responsible.

Instead, the initial response seemed weak and uncoordinated. Following January 6, a smattering of business leaders did pledge to stop financial support for the 147 Republican members of Congress who publicly supported the insurrection, when they voted against the Electoral College results on the evening of January 6.

However, within just a few weeks, even that tepid show of spine seemed to wither on the vine.

Editor's note: Be sure to subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

The consequences of that lost opportunity for leadership are still rippling out. Those 147 Republican members of Congress used their votes to provide the false imprimatur of Constitutional legitimacy on a violent overthrow of the federal government. They opened the door for a flood of voter suppression bills in almost every state, aimed primarily at Democratic-leaning voters and supported almost exclusively by Republican legislators and governors.

Name-checking the insurrection supporters

However, it now appears that the corporate movement to exercise the power of the purse has had a greater impact than the initial response suggested.

Independent journalist Judd Legum has been tracking corporate donations to the 147 insurrection enablers following the events of January 6, through his Popular Information newsletter. In April, he observed that the corporate financial response could be stronger than first thought.

Among 170 companies that publicly pledged to withhold PAC donations to the 147 insurrection supporters in Congress, Legum found that “nearly all” kept their word.

“Further, the vast majority of other corporations — corporations who said they were reconsidering their PAC donations after January 6 or said nothing at all — withheld donations to the 147 Republican objectors,” Legum also reported. “There were 1100 individual corporate PACs that donated to the 147 objectors last cycle, according to Maplight. By comparison, only around 70 individual corporate PACs contributed to the objectors in the first three months of 2021.”

As Legum noted, the financial impact was significant. Media-savvy Republican office holders like Marjorie Taylor Greene were able to offset the loss of corporate funds by soliciting more small donors, but many others could not.

Pride Month and the media connection

To some extent, the loss of corporate dollars and the increased reliance on small donors may be responsible for the ginning up of GOP appeals to base issues this year. In addition to the voter suppression trend, recent months have seen a backlash against the fact-based 1619 Project and the red herring of critical race theory.

The LGBTQ equality movement has also felt the impact, partly in the form of new anti-trans legislation targeting children’s sports.

In that regard, corporate political donors could take a page from the insurrection response. They could enforce financial consequences on legislators who promote anti-trans bills.

According to Legum’s latest reporting, the impact would be significant.

Last week, Legum issued a detailed report on corporations that earned a 100 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign’s 2020 Corporate Equality Index, but which have donated significant sums to lawmakers who support anti-trans legislation or have garnered a zero rating from the latest Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional scorecard.

“This month, corporations are plastering their social media avatars with rainbows, sponsoring Pride parades, and declaring their unwavering commitment to the LGBTQ community. Many of these companies, however, are spending millions supporting the campaigns of anti-gay politicians at the federal and state level,” Legum wrote.

In terms of most dollars donated, Legum’s list of the top 25 is headed by Comcast/NBC Universal, followed by AT&T, Home Depot, UPS, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Verizon, UnitedHealth Group, Google, Amazon, General Motors, Walmart, Cigna, Ford, Anthem, JPMorgan, CVS, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Wells Fargo, Walgreens and the heath care firm McKesson.

The need for an American democracy index

Political observers are concerned that the long-term impact of Republican voter suppression tactics will exacerbate undemocratic features built into the U.S. Electoral College system. The Electoral College was a Constitutional compromise designed to provide a protection for slave-holding states against a direct popular vote. As it happens, the electoral system has only installed the loser of the popular vote a handful of times in U.S. history. However, in a disturbing trend, two of those times occurred just within recent years, among the two most recent Republican presidents. That includes former President Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016 by a margin of 2.68 million.

New voter suppression laws could ensure that trend becomes a permanent condition, resulting in an endless enshrinement of Republican priorities at the federal level that support and amplify state-based efforts to tear down the hard-won victories on LGBTQ issues, shred the rights of trans youth, and reduce a significant part of the nation’s population to the status of fund-raising pawns for politicians that have lost their corporate sponsors.

Pulling the corporate money rug out under anti-LGBTQ politicians is just the first step for business leaders who profess to care about human rights and events such as Pride Month. What is needed now is a new democracy index that recognizes corporate leaders who provide sharp, aggressive advocacy and more financial support in the fight for voting rights and equal rights for all.

Image credit: Courtney Coles/Unsplash

As the pandemic raged during the early months of 2020, Black business ownership across the U.S. plunged more than 40 percent, the largest drop across any demographic group, according to the U.S. House Committee on Small Business. Among the many impacts that disproportionately affected small businesses, Black business owners were less likely to be equipped with the tools needed to cope with mandated closures, largely due to the lack of access to such financial relief as emergency loans that otherwise could have provided them a lifeline.

One of those companies that had to scramble, and do so fast, was Our Favorite Things boutique, a business committed to fair trade showcasing winsome, beautiful clothing for all body shapes and sizes. Employees at the company’s two locations in Cleveland, Ohio, empower customers to “look, feel, and be absolutely amazing no matter what size they are via wearable art,” Our Favorite Things’ owner, Dr. Lisa McGuthry, told TriplePundit.

Dr. McGuthry added, “Our clothing is comfortable, stylish, and bohemian chic.” In early 2020, she had bold plans for her company to take it to the next level, as in selling at open-air markets and launching pop-up shops.

Then COVID-19 hit. “As a retail boutique, we were not an essential business, but that didn't stop us,” Dr. McGuthry continued. “We created The QVC in The CLE, via Facebook Live, two weeks after the pandemic hit.”

Despite the initial hardship, Our Favorite Things has grown. “We have gained access to 43 percent more customers as well our regular loyal customers,” Dr. McGuthry added. “We are shipping fair trade clothing and accessories all over the United States as far as Alaska and the Netherlands.”

The stores also became a lifeline for local designers, as to date, Our Favorite Things features well over a dozen entrepreneurs’ products in its stores.

Editor's note: Be sure to subscribe to our Brands Taking Stands newsletter, which comes out every Wednesday.

Adding to Dr. McGuthry’s grit, determination and creativity was assistance from SCORE, a nonprofit that bills itself as the largest network of volunteer small business mentors in the U.S. Through an agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the organization also operates programs for women entrepreneurs, runs a small business resilience hub and serves as a clearing house of SBA funding updates.

Dr. McGuthry had already been working with SCORE, which had assigned a board to work with her so she could find ways to expand her business.

That relationship became even stronger once the pandemic was in full swing. “My advisory board at SCORE has been amazing,” said Dr. McGuthry. “I am reminded of why I began my journey: It's definitely not easy but worth it. The impact of giving back to my community and providing quality products that are needed as well as inspire people are what business is all about. We have been able to hire more people due to our increase in sales and delivery. I am grateful to my advisory board for being available to help with questions and concerns.”

Part of that giving back involved new products. For example, Our Favorite Things found new opportunities in self-care and other products, as in selling masks and disinfectant. The company did whatever it could to help others by giving such products to those who could not afford them or who were working on the front lines. The stores also offered shipping options along with local contactless delivery. And because of those efforts, as well as being part of The QVC in The CLE, the business stayed afloat while also helping to build community.

Despite her successes, Dr. McGuthry voiced frustrations with the wider system. “I am still frustrated we have not received an EIDL [an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the SBA] or advance. We have private services that have helped us via the Cleveland Growth Collaborative, but no federal assistance,” she explained. “The money didn't get into the hands of the businesses that needed it most. I won't give up or give in. Entrepreneurship has taught me that you get out what you put in.”

Unlike other businesses that could not pivot in time, Our Favorite Things has emerged as a success story — but that unfolded despite the system, not because of it. “Today as a business we are continually growing and building community. I have appealed our SBA loan decision and was denied again,” Dr. McGuthry said. “Specific reasons are not available, but as an entrepreneur I am resilient, as well as our team, and we will continue the growth process: learning from our mistakes and striving to get better each day for ourselves and customers.”

Image credit: Our Favorite Things Boutique/Facebook

Among the rainbow-hued and eye-rolling shenanigans that companies roll out during Pride Month in support of the LGBTQ community are campaigns promising $1 from every purchase will go to a LGBTQ-centered nonprofit. That sounds nice, until one realizes the amount of donations is often capped and simple math reveals the company has reaped far more in profits through piggybacking on Pride Month sentiment.

Yes, we’re emerging from a pandemic, but not everyone is flush with newfound cash. To be blunt, we’re talking table stakes here, as more anti-LGBTQ legislation, especially laws targeting the transgender community using the same old arguments, keeps rolling out of state capitols across the country.

There’s a better way to show support for any community, including LGBTQ citizens – and that means buying from an LGBTQ-owned business directly.

While many LGBTQ business owners and entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future, the past year has been one full of hurt. According to one survey, 32 percent of LGBTQ small business owners said their revenues cratered by half during the COVID-19 crisis. As for the U.S. federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL), 35 percent said they were not able to access them; 28 percent revealed they received some assistance, but not as much as they said they had requested.

So how can you show your support of the LGBTQ community with your wallet, while avoiding any risks of falling into the “rainbow washing” trap? One option includes what are already curated lists of suggestions from various bloggers, from this one by Meredith Viera to one focused on queer Black entrepreneurs posted earlier this year by Nicole Akoukou Thompson.

For example, Northern California-based Equator Coffees, which dates back to 1995, ticks off many boxes. The company has been proud about its LGBTQ origins and has gone the fair trade and B-Corp routes long before other businesses jumped aboard those bandwagons. For those living afar, the company offers subscriptions for its various roasts.

And an afternoon’s drive south on I-5 in Los Angeles, Suay Sew Shop isn’t only talking about the circular economy – it’s cutting, sewing and shipping it. The company says it has diverted many tons of unwanted textiles from landfills, and have given them new life as apparel, home goods and even masks. And if money is tight, there are even no-cost threads on “The Free Rack” – available for shipping for no charge, an effort supported by the company and its customers who chose to round up or leave a tip upon online checkout.

So maybe the online shopping and shipping thing isn’t for you. Other ways of supporting LGBTQ businesses include simply taking a walk in a neighborhood and frequenting such shops and eateries; the NYC LGBT Historic Sites, project, for example, is documenting locations important to local and national queer history – a great idea if you happen to be in New York and you want to go beyond exploring the Stonewall Inn.

Finally, there is the old standby – enjoying a nightcap, or even a morning-cap, at a gay bar. That is, if you can find them. For a bevy of reasons, including the rise of online dating and apps like Grindr and Scruff (which some dispute), the number of gay bars across the U.S. has been in a freefall, with COVID-19 accelerating that trend. For the uninitiated, local gay business, chambers of commerce or event sites can keep you posted as to when venues finally open – drag bingo nights were a mainstay before pandemic hit, and in most cities they aren’t scheduled too late at night. The reality for many of these places is that despite everyone’s yearning to get out and party, it will be tough for many places to regain their business, and cash flow, as quickly as it disappeared last year.

For lesbian bars, the numbers have faced a steeper decline – in the late 1980s, there were over 200 across the country: at last count, there are now only 21.

Image credit: Paul Felberbauer/Unsplash

Mars operates under its purpose statement, “The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today.” In 2020, the company’s bold ambitions were put to the test as the world was faced with an unprecedented level of uncertainty and change. 

At the onset, Mars prioritized keeping its global employees, who it calls associates, safe and healthy – both physically and mentally – across its offices, factories, veterinary hospitals and clinics/labs, retail and field sales. The multinational consumer goods company leaned into its purpose to navigate the crisis and embraced technology to enable connections while ensuring safety, Angela Mangiapane, president of Mars Global Services, told TriplePundit. 

Centering purpose in response to COVID-19

Mars, a family-owned company, has long operated as a principles-led business, first codifying its Five Principles — which include mutual benefit for all stakeholders — in the early 1980s. 

About a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, Mars embarked on what it calls a “digital transformation,” with the aim of gathering timely and more relevant data about customer and associate experiences. This digital transformation was critical in helping Mars implement purpose-driven adaptations to support its associate wellbeing and care for the people and pets of its global communities.

These two factors — a focus on purpose and a turn toward technology — proved invaluable as the company looked to pivot in the early months of the pandemic, Mangiapane said. 
 
“Mars has always been – and will continue to be – a purpose-driven, principles-led business. These two factors have helped guide our ongoing digital journey, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated things,” she told us. “Large organizations tend to be more risk averse. The pandemic gave us the sense of, ‘we have to act now – it’s sink or swim,’ which led us to prioritize pace over perfection.”

Putting people first — in 80 countries around the world

Mars has more than 130,000 associates in 80 countries worldwide. Like all companies, the organization needed to implement changes throughout the business to ensure everyone who could work remotely was able to do so, while ensuring frontline workers were protected. That included a suite of enhanced benefits, chief among them a global pay protection policy, increased sick pay, and support for child and family care. 

But as the initial response phase passed, the company wanted to do more to help associates stay connected, safe and well, Mangiapane said. “Thanks to the efforts of our essential and frontline workers, we were able to sustain our business and provide our consumers, customers, clients and pets with the products and services they need and love. We really established that COVID-19 wasn’t going to define who we were. We were still going to make sure that we defined who we were — which is, first and foremost, Mars associates,” she told us.

As questions arose, including how to manage day-to-day workflows, onboard new hires remotely or maintain mentoring programs from afar, leadership looked to its associates for the answers. 

“COVID-19 challenged our core limiting beliefs,” Mangiapane said. “It empowered associates to ask: What can we do? By teaming up, they were able to come up with solutions.” 

One of those solutions was the implementation of accessible digital health tools, which helped their associates better connect people to resources – including the global expansion of the company’s Associate Assistance Program (AAP). 

Teams met for virtual workshops to learn new skills for working remotely while avoiding burnout, and they moved to different ways of working, including through “Meet Smarter,” a proprietary Mars tool that shortens default meeting times to provide five- to 10-minute breaks each hour. At a company-sponsored no-code hackathon, more than 1,000 associates (many with no coding or tech experience) teamed up to develop apps – including mentoring and conference room booking — with a focus on upskilling. 

“We don't want to limit digital: You don’t need to know how to code or be a computer scientist in order to use these tools,” Mangiapane said. “You could say, ‘I’ll only take people who already have the skills to work on digital,’ but then you’re limiting the potential of the wonderful associates you already have.”

Developing new ways to connect

Known for producing everything from candy to cat food, Mars is the parent company to a host of brands across its Mars Petcare, Mars Wrigley and Mars Food business segments — from iconic brands like M&M’S and Skittles to pet food labels like Iams and Pedigree and food favorites such as Ben’s Original. When it comes down to it, these are products that make people happy, so beyond their own workflows, associates also looked to create new ways to brighten people’s days in a dark and difficult time, Mangiapane said.

Ethel M Chocolates offered virtual tastings so families could meet over something sweet even when they couldn’t be together physically, and M&M’S launched 3D remote tours of its fantastical retail stores in Disney Springs and the Mall of America to bring that forever-young feeling into customers’ living rooms. “We wanted to help customers keep that social connection even if they couldn’t be physically together. We just wanted to find ways to make people smile,” Mangiapane said. 

Meanwhile, Mars Petcare looked to follow through on its purpose to “create a better world for pets.” 

“It's really humbling to see the focus on purpose that Petcare had during the pandemic,” Mangiapane told us. “It wasn't about maintaining our numbers. It was very much about how to take care of our pets. They were at the center of everything we did, and we wanted to understand what pet parents were going through.” 

In the Petcare business, the company worked with digital professionals and human health experts to help pet owners navigate the unknowns of the pandemic, while strengthening the human animal bond amidst the pandemic. Mars Petcare conducted science-based research to better understand the impact of COVID on pets, helped connect new pet parents with adoptable pets, and ensured food and treats were supplied in retail stores worldwide. On top of this, veterinary professionals around the world working for Mars offered curbside pick-up and drop-off and pioneered telehealth vet visits. The Iams brand even created the world’s first nose-scanning app, called NOSEiD, which can identify lost dogs by their nose prints and reunite them with their families. (Surprisingly, nose prints are to dogs what fingerprints are to humans — each one is unique. Who knew?) 

(Video: Mars brand Pedigree's Dogs on Zoom campaign helped shelter dogs get adopted even when in-person meetings weren't possible.) 

COVID-19 pushed digitization forward — companies should look to put purpose at the center

Mars is not the only company to embrace technology amidst the pandemic — recent research indicates that companies accelerated digitization by three to four years on average in 2020, and many of those changes could be here to stay. But Mars’ approach to leveraging the power of purpose with the connection of technology makes this a case study worthy of attention. 

“If you follow your North Star, you can’t go wrong,” Mangiapane said, “and then everything else becomes an enabler for that.” 

This article series is sponsored by Mars and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image and video courtesy of Mars

As companies feel the pressure to decarbonize in the coming decade, many have announced what they say are bold plans to go net-zero, often by 2030 to 2050. As a concept, net-zero is relatively simple: negate those carbon emissions, the bulk of which can be done by mechanisms like carbon offsets or such tactics as sequestration. Setting a net-zero timeline is the easy part; what’s difficult is actually achieving those far-off goals.

On one hand, setting a goal nine years into the future can come across as sitting on one’s climate action hands when it’s pretty clear that if we’re not past the point of no return, we’re almost there. A flip side to that argument is that even if a government or company can’t achieve its net-zero goals, the setting of such a bold plan forces a different way of doing business or completing everyday tasks, a process that becomes more efficient, sustainable or innovative – or all of the above.

But a recent report casts doubt on whether this plethora of net-zero plans can even make a difference, and in fact, there could be a huge risk that these can generate even more harm to people and the planet.

Corporate Accountability, Friends of the Earth International and the Global Forest Coalition recently issued a report that describes net-zero plans as offering “little or nothing in the way of real solutions or real effective emissions cuts.”

From these three NGOs’ point of view – and the several dozen additional organizations that endorsed this report - many businesses hopping aboard the net-zero bandwagon are falling far short of achieving any kind of meaningful climate action. In addition, the larger problem, write the report’s authors, is that net-zero is a way of generating profits. “Furthermore… [businesses] see the potential for a ‘net zero’ global pathway to provide new business opportunities for them, rather than curtailing production and consumption of their polluting products,” says the report’s authors.

The groups don’t hold back in their criticism of net-zero strategies, as summed up in the report’s title: “The Big Con.”

So, what’s the problem, one may ask?

The report’s authors lay out a long list of tactics that drive many net-zero technologies, which they sum up as “smokescreens.” They include: bio-energy (they call it, “burning trees or biomass); carbon capture and storage (mostly used to extract what was previously inaccessible oil reserves underground, says the report); carbon markets (“proven to lead to fraud and speculation, and haven’t substantially reduced emissions”); and carbon offsets (“often displace communities” that they are supposed to benefit).

If this sounds like yet another long list full of criticisms of energy companies, that is partly true – some of the world’s most recognizable fossil fuel producers are called out in the report. But those companies are also joined by their peers in the aviation, financial, retail and food sectors.

The authors don’t hold back to sharing how, from their point of view, these companies are simply moving ahead, business as usual, cloaked behind a “net-zero” veneer. In what the report describes as major “failings,” the behaviors run the gamut from the issuing of commitments too vague to mean anything at all to a reliance on unproven technologies and finally, an outright and blatant rejection of systemic change.

Some of the culprits that allow these companies’ behavior to continue unnoticed aren’t surprising: Corporate Lobbying, for example, is an obvious one. The next step after lobbying is having policymakers, as well as leaders within the United Nations, buy into a net-zero agenda. But the report is particularly scathing in its criticism of the leading universities that have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars that funded net-zero research that led to results those same companies were hoping for in the first place.

Now that the climate denial kraken is close to being slain, this report concludes another one has emerged, one that is scuttling any meaningful progress on climate change – and this kraken has “net-zero” tattooed all over it.

At a first glance, the answers are ones that many corporate boards won’t hear of, as in listening to what citizens want, i.e. “listen to the people” and pushing a strategy centered on climate justice.

The first suggestion is problematic, as the reality is that many people say they want to fight climate change until they realize changing their day-to-day behavior is part of that solution. That’s a long-term battle, one involving education, consumer awareness and all-around persistence. The second, well, until corporate boards and C-suites become more diverse not only by gender, race and ethnicity, but also by leaders who offer different perspectives, don’t hold your breath for bold “climate justice” plans. Nevertheless, at least one event that occurred last month offers some hope.

The solutions to this net-zero dilemma aren’t directly mentioned in this report, but they are around us already – and these aren’t untested or problematic technologies such as direct air capture or fossil-based hydrogen. Instead, they include tactics such as more investments in renewables, ending subsidies for fossil fuels, and an assurance from companies that environmental justice principles are aligned with business decisions. And finally, deploy those strategies in the places that can at first absorb them first: as in wealthier nations.

Image credit: Andreas Felske/Unsplash

Add cybersecurity as becoming another headache for school districts. As if educators did not have enough stress this past year, as in transitioning to online learning in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, now they are in the crosshairs of cybercriminals eager to hold their data ransom for money.

Recent high-profile ransomware attacks on meat producer JBS and the Colonial Pipeline, which shut down fuel supplies to the eastern U.S. for five days, have shown how vulnerable industries can be; the same goes for municipalities. But increasingly, school districts are targets. According to the FBI, school systems are now the top targets for cyberattacks. The number of ransomware incidents involving school systems has risen dramatically over the past two years; in 2020, there were nearly 1,700 school-related attacks. And protection against ransomware often is one of the smallest line items in a school budget.

Some of the largest districts in the U.S. have been attacked, including Clark County Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools and Baltimore County Public Schools.

From 2019 to 2020, attacks against schools and universities rose 35 percent, according to Nick Rossmann, global threat intelligence lead for the IBM Security X-Force. “They might not have the same level of cybersecurity awareness as some other industries,” he said. Online learning also has generated even more opportunities for hackers. “We just have more accounts, creating a lot of hay for attackers to use, more passwords and more passwords associated with emails.”

To help school systems boost their defenses, IBM recently awarded a total of $3 million in grants to six school districts to provide cybersecurity assessments and help with protection. Each district will receive about $500,000 worth of services from IBM consultants. The six school systems are: Brevard Public Schools in Viera, Florida; Poughkeepsie City School District, Poughkeepsie, New York; KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools, Atlanta, Georgia; Sheldon Independent School District, Houston, Texas; Newhall School District, Valencia, California; and Denver Public Schools, Denver, Colorado. To reach more school districts, IBM also is posting educational videos about cybersecurity on its website.

IBM consultants will assess the defenses a district has in place, where it can improve, help school personnel develop an incident response plan and ways to communicate with staff and students. About half of all the applicants said their cybersecurity budget was no more than $100,000, and that was for the whole district, said Rossmann, which is miniscule compared to private industry. About 250 districts applied for the grants; 40 percent of applicants already had been the targets of cyberattacks, according to Rossmann. Personnel in more than half of the school districts had no security training. 

In reviewing the applications, IBM weighed the districts’ budgets, the cybersecurity measures they were planning, how they currently were positioned in terms of security, their existing software security and if they had experienced ransomware attacks, he added. 

“This is a wonderful opportunity to be able to receive support from an internationally-known organization with expertise in this space,” said Dr. Eric Jay Rosser, superintendent of the Poughkeepsie City School District, one of the grant recipients. The district weathered a ransomware attack on one of its servers in February 2020, right before the pandemic exploded. Poughkeepsie did not pay any ransom and lost some lesson plans and data related to classroom teaching. “I refuse to pay ransom to people who would compromise money dedicated to children’s education,” Rosser said. “Besides, we had no mechanism to pay it.” The district would have needed approval from the community to appropriate funds, he said.

After the attack, Poughkeepsie contacted an information technology company to address the damage and purchased a new server and software to safeguard data. But any additional advice is welcome. “We’re hoping we will be able to learn from the experts providing evaluations of our current infrastructure so we can continue to structure our cyber security posture,” noted Rosser.

Budgets are the biggest hurdle when it comes to fortifying schools against cyberattacks, Rossmann said. “We're trying to find the right balance of how to maximize budgets with the size of the districts,” he added.

Limited resources, the failure to update programs and not using cloud storage can make school systems particularly vulnerable, even if they don’t have the deep pockets of businesses and municipalities, IBM’s Rossmann noted. Many ransomware perpetrators use financial analysts to ascertain potential victims’ financial resources, he said, and generally demand smaller ransoms from school systems, in the hope of collecting at least some money. “They (cybercriminals) want to maximize payments and try to get paid.”

IBM consultants do not take a position on whether or not victims should pay ransom, Rossmann added. “If an organization has critical data, life-saving information, treatment information or is on the verge of complete business collapse, those are reasons for considering that option,” he said. “They have to weigh that.” And just making a payment does not instantly resolve the problem. “Once someone gets the keys back, it could take weeks or months to get all the information back.” 

Preparation and organization are the best strategies for avoiding ransomware attacks, Rossmann added. “It’s what they do on their network that makes the difference,” he said. “Do what’s in your control.”

Image credit: Sigmund/Unsplash

The on-again, off-again Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline is finally off, and environmental and Indigenous activists who protested the project are taking a well-deserved victory lap. Protests against the pipeline have continued for well over a decade (including the 2011 protest pictured above, which occurred in Washington, D.C.)

However, oil is still on. After all, pipelines are not the only way to get crude oil from one place to another. U.S. business leaders who profess to care about the climate crisis should stop waiting for activists to target individual fossil energy projects and start insisting on federal policies that accelerate global decarbonization.

Oil by pipeline, freight cars and tanker trucks

Keystone XL developer TransCanada (now called TC Energy) and its allies seemed to have hit on a winning argument back in 2013, when a rail disaster in Canada underscored the dangers of transporting crude oil by rail.

Keystone supporters argued that oil pipelines were less risky than transporting crude on either highways or railways. However, that didn’t stop the Obama administration from declining to issue a key permit for the project, which would have piped tar sands oil from Alberta in Canada, down through the U.S. midsection to Gulf Coast refineries.

The Trump administration revived the project and issued a permit for the pipeline, but was doomed once again when President Joe Biden took office. As one of his first official acts on Inauguration Day, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order on climate and environmental policy, which included revoking the Trump-era permit.

Safer transportation for tar sands oil

Keystone allies excoriated the new president for revoking the permit, and they continued to argue for the “vastly greater safety” of Keystone XL compared to rail or truck transportation.

However, railway and tar sands oil stakeholders have already figured out a potential workaround.

In 2019, the company CN Railway introduced a brick-like form of tar sands oil under the trademarked name, CanaPux.

The oil pellets “are not volatile, dust-free, do not burn, spontaneously combust or explode while being shipped, and do not pose a risk if involved in a derailment,” CN Railway asserts.

“CanaPux pellets are designed to float in water, and they improve spill response as in the event of an incident they would simply need to be picked up. They are designed to prevent the product from leaking in the environment. In addition, CanaPux reuses polymers that would typically be landfilled,” the company adds.

If all goes according to plan, the Canadian energy company API will produce CanaPux in Alberta at scale and ship them to China by way of the west coast of Canada.

After Keystone, what’s next for TC Energy?

On its part, TC Energy has made the best of the situation. In a public statement last week, the company confirmed that it is terminating the Keystone XL pipeline project. It also indicated that it has plenty of other fossil energy pots on the stove.

In an interesting twist, TC Energy has been expanding its renewable energy portfolio. However, the main thrust of that endeavor is to decarbonize the energy consumption of its pipeline operations.

Those pipeline operations appear to be on the uptick. When TC Energy confirmed the cancellation of Keystone XL, it also promised that it will “continue to build on its 70-year history of success and leverage its diverse businesses in natural gas and liquids transportation along with storage and power generation to continue to meet the growing and evolving demand for energy across the continent.”

One of those projects, for example, is a new 416-mile natural gas pipeline that will enable Canada to export liquid natural gas to markets in Asia.

Ending the fossil energy whack-a-mole

TC Energy argues that natural gas is a cleaner alternative to coal for power generation. That line has lost its luster over the years as new evidence emerges about risks to the climate. However, natural gas still has a solid foothold in power generation as well as hydrogen production and other petrochemical fields.

Companies like TC Energy will continue to pivot from one fossil energy project in the coming years, as long as willing buyers keep coming for their products.

U.S. business leaders are helping to break the chain by cleaning up their supply chains, in addition to decarbonizing their own operations, but so far these efforts have been slow and piecemeal. The missing element is a comprehensive approach that integrates climate action into every area of government policy and enables the U.S. to spur global action by coordinating its considerable buying power on a national level.

The new president’s executive order has set the stage, in terms of articulating a holistic approach. Now it’s up to the U.S. business community to put real teeth in it, by supporting representatives in Congress who are willing to move forward on climate legislation.

Image credit: SecretName101/Wiki Commons

Among the many gems that are easy to binge watch on Netflix, Kim’s Convenience is a fun series to distract oneself from reality. Since 2016, the sitcom that had taken place in Toronto’s Moss Park neighborhood (shown above) has given an oft-lighthearted, sometimes heavy portrayal of a Korean-Canadian family finding their way through work and life.

Kim’s Convenience at first succeeded telling the immigrant family’s story

For anyone who is Korean, or has lived in South Korea for an extensive period of time, the series had for the most part given a realistic experience about some Koreans’ experience: the tensions between the immigrant parents and the first-generation children; the misunderstandings that can occur between various cultures; and the frustrations of fitting in and coping with assumptions people can make about you based on your heritage.

Is Kim’s Convenience 100 percent accurate? Of course not: Not all Koreans are obsessed with saving face (kibun); the melodramatic arguments punctuated by a long emphasis of the last vowel in a sentence can be a bit much; and the immigrant experience for Koreans – or any ethnicity, for that matter – is hardly formulaic. The shopkeeper subplot surely grates on some people’s nerves, too.

But overall, Kim’s Convenience had been a fun watch, with its fair share of physical comedy, misadventures, well-deserved side-eyes and little life lessons. And in the end, the Kim family members are ones who love each other and are endearing, from haughty “Appa” to sensitive “Umma” to wannabe badass Kimchee and the superficial and judgmental Mrs. Park. Viewers for the most part have enjoyed the series, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes, and north of the border the series has cleaned up with its fair share of awards – including those won by the actor playing Kimchee, Andrew Phung.

And then change occurred, one far worse

But season five of Kim’s Convenience has gone off the rails, and over the past several days the show’s stars have made it clear how the collective gut punches have affected them. Adding even more to the indignities, the series was cancelled after its fifth season because the showrunners of Kim’s Convenience decided to end the series – and they, not CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) or Neflix, own the show’s intellectual property.

Most searing in her criticism and heartache is Jean Yoon, who played the family’s matriarch on Kim’s Convenience. In a series of tweets last week, she summed up, in one episode’s proposed subplots, how the show went awry:

“Pastor Nina comes to the story to pick up Mrs. Kim for a Zumba class. Mrs. Kim is wearing NUDE shorts, and Pastor Nina is [too] embarrassed to tell her she looks naked from the waist down. Mr. Kim enters, and the joke is that if you're married you can say anything.”

“No one, esp. Mrs. Kim, would be unaware that a garment makes her look naked. Unless she is suddenly cognitively impaired. or STUPID. Stripping someone naked is the first act before public humiliation or rape. So what was so funny about that? At my request, Mr. Choi [the show’s creator] cut he scene.”

“THAT scene would have aired hours after 8 people, 6 Asian women, were shot in Atlanta, GA in a hate crime spree that shocked the nation. THIS IS WHY IT MATTERS. If an Asian actor says, 'Hey this isn't cool,' then maybe should just fix it, and say THANK YOU.”

So, how could have this incident, along with several others that Ms. Yoon described as “overtly racist” and “so extremely culturally inaccurate,” occurred?

According to some of the show’s cast, the show’s white producers dismissed any input from the stars of Kim’s Convenience. The same was true of the show’s writer’s room. According to another star of the show, Simu Lu (and star of an upcoming Marvel film), the tension between the Korean-Canadian cast and the writers and producers resulted in more friction after the fourth season, especially as the show’s creator, Ins Choi, left the show.

“…We were a cast of Asian Canadians who had a plethora of lived experiences to draw from and offer to writers,” Lu wrote in a Facebook post. “But we were often told of the next seasons' plans mere days before we were set to start shooting... there was deliberately not a lot of leeway given to us.”

Meanwhile, the show’s cast members for years apparently worked for far lower pay than the cast of fellow Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek – even though at times, Kim’s Convenience scored higher ratings in Canada than the Emmy Award-winning show.

“Our writer's room lacked both East Asian and female representation, and also lacked a pipeline to introduce diverse talents,” Lu continued. “Many of us in the cast were trained screenwriters with thoughts and ideas that only grew more seasoned with time. But those doors were never opened to us in any meaningful way.”

Kylie Cheung of Slate summed up the crisis that engulfed Kim’s Convenience – and one that can sum up far too many workplace cultures: “Representation isn't just about what we see onscreen - it must also include what takes place off-screen, and who occupies seats of decision-making power,” Cheung wrote last week.

Having a seat at the table isn’t the same as being welcomed into the room

And therein lies a simple, yet oft-overlooked lesson for anyone in a business setting. While it’s fine to commit to a more diverse workforce, celebrate Pride or honor Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, what is done is less important than how you approach such an event. It’s not enough to offer a seat at the table (or one in a cubicle): You need to extend a seat in the room where your organization is making those important decisions.

The bottom line is that whether you are rolling out a new product or design, embarking on a new recruitment policy, or acknowledging a community’s contribution to our way of life, someone with that background needs to be in that room. At a minimum, he or she can tell you whether you are on the right track – or about to ensnare your company in an embarrassing social media saga that will make the company appear clueless, or even worse, bigoted or racist.

By the way, as if the cast members of Kim’s Convenience have not felt insulted enough, mull over this face-palming factoid: The show’s one white character who played “Shannon” will soon have her own spinoff show – as of press time, none of the series’ leading cast members has been made such an offer.

Image credit: OldYorkGuy/Wiki Commons

As a growing number of organizations begin to welcome their workforce back into physical office spaces and facilities, employees are understandably concerned about whether they can be assured of safe and healthy protocols being taken in their working environments in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic. In one survey, 64 percent of Americans said they were worried about their health and safety when returning to work. The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) began to wrestle with the question of how to address these concerns shortly after it became clear that COVID-19 was going to pose a serious and ongoing global threat. IWBI is the creator of the widely adopted WELL Building Standard (WELL), a roadmap for creating and certifying spaces that advance human health and well-being.  

IWBI realized it needed to develop a new rating that was especially designed to respond to COVID-19 as a standard for managers and operators of existing buildings, to not only protect occupants from the virus today, but also to build resilience for the future. 

The result was the WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facility Operations and Management, launched in June 2020 and designed to help guide users in preparing their spaces for re-entry in a post-COVID-19 environment. It is an evidence-based, third-party verified rating for all new and existing building and facility types focusing on operational policies, maintenance protocols, stakeholder engagement and emergency plans. 

The rating, which consists of a subset of relevant features from the WELL Building Standard, was informed by the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to help users address matters of immediate concern such as air quality and emergency preparedness, but has broader applicability for supporting the long-term health and safety needs of people in a given space. Not only did IWBI’s work in generating diverse feedback lead to the new rating, but it helped inform the latest version of the WELL Building Standard itself, which publicly launched out of its pilot phase in September 2020. 

The WELL Health-Safety Rating is being adopted by a wide range of organizations and space types — including arenas and venues like Yankee Stadium, iconic buildings like the Empire State Building, retail giants like Simon Malls, global financial service organizations like JPMorgan Chase, corporate real estate owners like Brookfield Properties, school districts like Fairfax County, hotel leaders like Aimbridge Hospitality, and others. As of March 25, 1 billion square feet of spaces were enrolled in the WELL Health-Safety Rating and more than 1.5 billion are enrolled today. 

For human health outcomes, places matter

“One thing the pandemic has made clear is the significant role of buildings, organizations, and communities in supporting our health and safety,” Jessica Cooper, chief commercial officer for IWBI, told TriplePundit. “As organizations sought to mitigate the impact of the virus, we witnessed a dramatic rise in engagement with our WELL programs, which quickly eclipsed an average of about 1 million square feet of newly enrolled projects each day. There are now over 2 billion square feet enrolled in WELL programs across 99 countries.” 

Nathan Stodola, chief engineer at IWBI, added: “The pandemic has increased people’s awareness that when it comes to human health outcomes, places matter. Now more than ever, people are taking a real interest in the air and water quality in the space, inquiring if the filters have been replaced on time, looking for evidence of an effective cleaning routine, and considering how the design of a space may be influencing their decisions.”

Stodola expects that this closer attention to how buildings impact human health will continue: “Even after the temporary changes that result from the pandemic have passed, people will remember the power of place and start turning to even more holistic strategies that enable people to thrive within our buildings and communities.” 

Fast-tracking a new well-being standard during a pandemic

IWBI convened some 600 public health experts, virologists, government officials, academics, business leaders, architects, designers, building scientists and real estate professionals around the world to create the new program. That’s no easy feat amid a pandemic, but the support was overwhelming as people recognized the urgency, Stodola said. 

“When we set out to recruit task force members, we were blown away by the number of people who signed on to help provide suggestions,” he told 3p. To manage the amount of feedback from hundreds of people all connecting remotely, IWBI produced a digital forum where users could review the draft of the second version of the WELL Building Standard before it graduated from the pilot phase and respond to each other’s comments. They also held several virtual town hall presentations and discussion events.

“One challenge was being able to dissect all the information provided and organize it into usable criteria for our rating systems,” Stodola explained. “This was a main focus for us because it’s what enables our clients to take action on health- and safety-promoting strategies.”
 

Tailoring the standard to meet new requirements

“One thing we discovered is that many of the strategies WELL has promoted for years are useful both in and out of pandemic times,” Cooper explained. "For example, increased ventilation rates, emergency preparedness plans, and mental health awareness were already part of the WELL Building Standard and were now more relevant than ever.” Feedback from the task force did lead to the expansion of some of these topics: IWBI expanded on the subject of emergency management to add features with requirements on business continuity plans, emergency resilience, and building re-entry protocols. 

In other ways, learnings from the pandemic and discussions from the task force informed ways WELL requirements should be adjusted.  For instance, previously the WELL standard had rewarded projects that filtered particulate matter from outdoor air (to combat pollution from traffic or forest fires) and volatile organic compounds from recirculated indoor air (to combat off-gassing from furniture and furnishings). As a result of the task force, this feature was adjusted to reward projects that treated their recirculated air in ways that could reduce infectious particles. 

The ongoing interest in working toward healthier and safer building environments supports a long-term investment for organizations, Cooper expects.

“The shift we have seen is in large part a direct response to the increased value organizations are now placing on the health and well-being of their staff, customers and other stakeholders,” she said. “As organizations navigate the pandemic, the ROI of investing in human and social capital has become even more clear. The WELL movement can add value to everyone from employers looking to improve productivity to investors looking for a framework for evaluating ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance and benchmarking socially-focused companies. Businesses are now investing in health and prioritizing people-first places.”

Learn more about the WELL Health-Safety Rating.

This article series is sponsored by the International Well Building Institute (IWBI) and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image credit: Stocksy via IWBI