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In business, the opportunity to practice social good can start in the investment sphere itself. Venture capital firms not only can bolster financial outcomes for startups and small businesses, but also help drive company culture. To that end, Muse Capital invests in consumer tech with a focus on underserved markets and advocates for diversity and inclusion in start-ups. The Los-Angeles based seed stage fund is a diverse female team and holds a 50 percent minority or female-led portfolio.

“We really believe that as more money comes into the hands of diverse managers, you’re going to see a better outcome within the start-up space,” said Rachel Springate, Muse Capital’s co-founder.

Diversity is an investment opportunity

In the U.S, white employees comprise both 72 percent of both the venture capital workforce and investment professionals overall. Homogenous investment teams can lead to selection bias, which affects how businesses are funded and ultimately which markets are served.

On that point, Muse Capital focuses on underserved markets in industries: motherhood, the future of women’s health, education, media and entertainment.

For example, Muse Capital funded an unmet need in an underserved market by investing in Mahmee. This care management platform was designed to reduce maternal mortality, assist with recovery after giving birth and provide clinical support.

During a recent interview with TriplePundit, Springate explained that Mahmee is serving an overlooked market; traditional investors had not realized its size or demand. In the U.S., women are likely to die from childbirth related causes at a rate double that of most higher-income nations, and there is also a shortage of maternity care providers.

Muse Capital says it scouts companies that are achieving social good while proving long-term business traction; its investment in Caribu exemplifies this ethos. Launched after extensive product and market surveys and networking, the educational family entertainment platform lets children and caretakers read, play games and draw together through interactive video calls. In 2018, its founders raised $1.3 million during Caribu's initial funding stage. Then last year, school closures and social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic ended up increasing demand for interactive online learning and connection. The platform is now available in over 200 countries.                       

Diversity in venture capital leads to profitable investments

One of Muse Capital’s first investments was Firefly. The smart billboard advertising platform was founded by a Turkish immigrant team. Springate shared with 3p that Muse Capital’s diverse team, one with non-traditional career paths, helped Firefly acquire advertisement deals, raise strategic capital and provide industry support through the venture capital’s network.

“It’s also very important to understand that investing in minority of female founders is not charity, it’s good business,” said Springate.

Diverse venture capital teams are more likely to invest in diverse founders. Relatively, companies with gender or diverse executive teams are 48 percent more likely to produce a better rate of investment than homogenous teams. Strong financial performance is attributed to new ideas and higher innovation.

From different backgrounds comes innovation

In addition, companies with above-average diversity scores derived 45 percent of their revenue from innovation compared to companies with below-average diversity scores that derived 26 percent of revenue from innovation. Existing social good, diversity and inclusion in the investment sphere accelerates financial performance and innovation for businesses invested in. These factors are important for sustainable company growth. “Diversity does lead to really good business and you can do both social good and make a lot of money by investing in underserved founders and underserved markets," said Springate.

The rewards of diverse venture capital and inclusive investments go beyond immediate profit. Diverse publicly traded companies are 70 percent more likely than homogenous publicly traded companies to acquire new markets.

Through being able to pivot their business strategies rapidly, and ensuring their operations integrate social responsibility within their business models, startups that receive such support in its investment stages are at an advantage. Work and consumer attitudes amongst younger generations is changing; 73 percent of millennials prefer working with socially responsible companies. With shifting attitudes favoring social responsibility, venture capitals are leading the way in building more sustainable companies in the long term.

Image credit: Ono Kosuki/Pexels

Photo: Young students read HP "Turn to Learn" booklets; the tech giant works with NGOs such as Girl Rising to boost economic and education opportunities for girls and women worldwide.

Women’s History Month has traditionally been a time to celebrate the achievements of women and progress towards equity. We’re seeing unparalleled leadership and innovations by women during the COVID-19 pandemic: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett who helped develop the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine; Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina from Bangladesh and Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand who protected their citizens from the worst of the pandemic’s impact; and the millions of women on healthcare’s front lines.

But this year, the celebration comes alongside a reckoning. For a year now, we’ve seen girls and young women bearing the brunt of COVID-19 and its wave of shadow epidemics. Let’s start with our fellow working women. Across the globe, women are leaving the workforce at higher rates than men, and recent projections estimate that employment for women may take an additional two years to recover than for men.

And how about our future workforce, including the girls and young women that Girl Rising and HP support? Before the pandemic, 130 million girls did not have access to school. Now UNESCO estimates that 11 million girls who were in classrooms this time last year are at risk of never returning. Countries around the world report that violence against girls and young women has reached new heights, with similarly alarming trends in early marriage and unintended pregnancies. 

The challenges that women and girls face today didn’t just stem from the pandemic. Gender inequity is a plague that blemished our society for as long as we remember and the pandemic only worsened its effects. But today’s crisis is also a moment of learning.

It’s clear we need to reshape the structures, policies, and norms like closing the gender pay gap, increasing gender representation in leadership across all sectors, providing paid maternity leave and deepening investment in girls’ education. But we also need to lean into the blind spots where, without a new resolve to tackle in a meaningful way, we risk losing ground.

Recruiting boys and men in the battle 

Today, a major void in K-12 education is designated lessons on gender and racial equity. Educational programming at Girl Rising intentionally engages both girls and boys, reaching young people during the critical adolescent period when gender roles and biases become ingrained. HP not only supports Girl Rising’s educational curriculum, but also partners with NABU to develop children’s books focused on racial and gender equity. The bottom line is that the earlier boys are engaged in this type of learning, the easier it is to stop gender and racial bias from the get-go.

By leveraging their power and privilege, boys and young men can help shift norms about gender and masculinity and challenge the beliefs, practices, institutions and structures that drive inequity between men and women. Engaging boys and men to change expectations around women's roles will also help close the gender gap in leadership and earnings across all industries, which, left unchanged, will take almost 100 years to close. Also, when girls see their fathers equally engage in domestic care and work, they are more likely to work outside the home and pursue occupations that transcend gender stereotypes.

Homework over housework

Girl Rising and our program partners have seen the growing burden of housework disproportionately placed on girls, squeezing out their time for school and studies. Even before the pandemic, UNICEF estimated that girls between 5 and 14 years old spend 40 percent more time, or 160 million more hours a day, on unpaid household chores compared to boys their age. New anecdotal evidence from Girl Rising shows a spiraling crisis of girls shouldering housework demands.

The mindset that a woman’s role belongs at the home easily continues into adulthood. And coupled with the lack of access to affordable, high-quality childcare, many talented women are prevented from advancing in their careers. During the pandemic, one in four U.S. women have considered leaving the workforce or downsizing their career due to double duty burnout. The result is a talent drain in the workforce and economic loss. In the U.S., the cost of lost earnings, productivity, and revenue due to the childcare crisis totals an estimated $57 billion each year. Although we’re seeing more women breaking glass ceilings, these data points reveal that gender roles remain incredibly powerful in both developed and developing countries. There is an urgent need for more solutions, policies and innovations that eradicate the mindset that men and boys are free from the responsibility of housework and caregiving.

It seems counterintuitive to put boys and our male counterparts at the center of empowering girls and women, but without their allyship, we can only win half of the battle. And that’s not good enough. Girl Rising’s new strategic plan to meaningfully impact the lives of one million adolescents will increasingly work with boys, male teachers and fathers to close the gender gap and create a more inclusive future.

So while Women’s History Month is no doubt about women, it's also about husbands, teachers, managers, sons and nephews that need to be actively deployed in the battle against gender inequity. As we rise from the pandemic that has disproportionately impacted girls and women, all of us – men and women – should use our collective power to demand and support efforts that put gender equity and intersectionality at the center.

Image credit: HP

Photo: The Mississippi National Guard has helped distribute water in Jackson after winter storms disrupted the city’s water systems last month.

Last week, more than a month after storms crippled the water system in the city, Jackson, Mississippi lifted its boil water notice. What on the surface appear to be a precautionary measure takes on a different meaning when coupled with city’s history. On this year’s World Water Day - centered on valuing water - cities like Jackson continue to face a legacy of racism that has led to the underfunding and undervaluing of communities.

From poorer air quality connected to redlining, crumbling water infrastructure and lack of access to clean energy, communities of color and low-income communities struggle to protect their citizens’ health, environment and jobs - often in opposition to state leadership that continues to throw up barriers.

The crisis in Jackson was long in the making

Recent remarks from both Mississippi’s governor and lieutenant governor unfortunately reflected the disparity between the state’s and city’s leadership. The statewide office holders, both of whom are white, implied that the city’s Black leadership is incapable of doing their jobs well and that problems only arose after the end of the previous white mayor’s tenure. The city has been neglected, sometimes actively targeted, by state leadership, and the white flight from the city after forced desegregation in 1970 has only highlighted in the inequality.

In recent years, the state legislature has limited the city’s power to raise its own funds or make its own decisions. This is a troubling trend seen across southern states in particular as cities are often more diverse and progressive than the elected state leadership. Further, those same cities are also often the economic drivers for the entire state. It is especially distressing in Mississippi, the poorest and one of the sickest states in the country as well as one of the most publicly underfunded.

Redlining—the practice of mortgage lending discrimination that disproportionately affected communities of color—has created sections of cities that subject their residents to poor air and water quality, a phenomenon that has not only worsened as infrastructure crumbles but also creates greater vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change. Over 82 percent of Jackson’s population is African American, with poverty levels of 25.4 percent, compared to 19.6 percent for the state and 10.5 percent for the U.S. (Note: these are 2019 numbers and do not take into account changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

The city’s water and sewer systems are chronically underfunded, with many parts of the system are limping along with age. In 2015, then-Mayor Tony Yarber declared two states of emergency for the city’s infrastructure to allow emergency repairs, although the City Council declined the second declaration. The first declaration allowed the city to raise about $12 million towards repairing crumbling infrastructure, but it was just a drop in the bucket of the $1 billion needed. We knew this water problem was coming.

Lack of water investments leaves much of the U.S. at risk

Jackson, like many Southern cities, sits in a state whose leadership believes in limited government and does not believe in taking action on climate change. Lack of state investment in the cities creates untenable financial situations in these urban areas, which rely on the state for infrastructure, education and health funding.

An economy under treat if water isn’t prioritized

Yet despite these challenges, cities are taking the lead across the country in addressing climate change. Jackson was awarded a $475,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in February 2021 to address climate change in poor communities and has created a municipal climate mitigation and adaptation task force with local partners. While these are great steps, they are not sufficient to tackle the challenges the city faces. Climate change is wreaking havoc on the South, especially Gulf Coast states, and significant investment from the state and private sector are needed.

A recent report by Risky Business, a group headed up by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and business leader Tom Steyer to look at and publicize the economic risks of climate change, exemplifies these risks. This study found that the economic boom currently experienced from Texas to the Atlantic coast is at risk from climate change, particularly from heat and extreme storms. Hurricanes, floods, heatwaves and droughts all tax the already stressed water infrastructure of the region. By not addressing the root cause as well as building more resilient infrastructure to replace it, the region’s economic boom could easily bust.

World Water Day is an important communications strategy to highlight different aspects of water and its importance. Valuing water means also having a clear focus on the consumers of water and how it’s used and valued up and down the supply chain. The most vulnerable communities, like those in Jackson, value clean, reliable water. The infrastructure challenges our water supplies face have been known for a long time. Antiquated and racist policies have prevented the necessary resources needed to improve and upgrade the Jackson’s infrastructure - it does not mean the city’s consumers value their water any less.

Image credit: Mississippi National Guard/Facebook

Today, March 22, we celebrate World Water Day. While many take flowing faucets and flushing toilets for granted, nearly two billion people drink unsafe water and one billion don’t have toilets or latrines - a leading cause of disease worldwide. There is a long way to go before achieving the United Nations' goal of universal access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (known as WASH). Surprisingly, classic marketing techniques could hold a key.  

We all want rapid progress, but we need approaches that avoid common pitfalls. Too often, interventions are implemented quickly by outsiders without looking holistically at the local context, involving the community, or considering long-term maintenance. These efforts frequently fail or are short-lived. Toilets are installed without proper drains in areas with high rainfall. Parts break and there isn’t a way to get them fixed.  

In contrast, marketing approaches focus first on how to increase demand for sanitation or other WASH products and services, while improving the local private sector’s capacity to supply them. Good market research is key to identifying the classic “four Ps” of marketing: the right local products, prices people are willing to pay, place or point of sale and effective promotion. The ultimate goal is to create a sustainable sanitation industry in which people feel a sense of ownership and pride after making a financial investment. 

To be clear, in emergencies, it’s important to provide WASH products free-of-cost to quickly reach everyone, and subsidies are still needed to ensure that the most vulnerable people have access. Yet, locally-driven marketing approaches are proving effective even in resource-constrained environments such as Haiti, Cambodia and Uganda.  

Haiti is the most underserved country in the Western Hemisphere in terms of water and sanitation infrastructure. Waterborne illnesses cause more than half of the deaths in the country every year. Adding to this, the 2010 earthquake displaced more than a million people, leading to the largest cholera outbreak in history at the time. It was within this context that Action Against Hunger and other development organizations experimented by shifting from free distributions of WASH products to a market-based program to increase viability of potential solutions.

In Haiti’s largest region, Artibonite, for example, our teams found that only 34 percent of rural households were treating their water (which realistically was closer to 5 to 10 percent, with many people reporting yes without actually doing it). Aquatabs and liquid chlorine were available in the local markets, but people associated Aquatabs with free distribution (they are distributed for free during emergencies), and therefore placed a higher value on liquid chlorine, which they had to pay for. Plus, liquid chlorine is locally produced, whereas Aquatabs are imported, making it a more sustainable solution. We determined the price people would be willing to pay for liquid chlorine, and that people were willing to pay even more when sellers went door-to-door. The poorest households were subsidized through vouchers. 

We certainly faced obstacles. At times, political instability and gang violence prevented access to communities in need; the COVID-19 pandemic stopped wide-scale, door-to-door sales; and inflation doubled the price of liquid chlorine between the start and end of the project. But in the end, we educated more than 60,000 people on correct household water treatment and storage; trained 68 new local vendors; and enabled more than 12,800 people (70 percent of the population in four regions) to access water treatment products.  

Marketing of sanitation products is also delivering results in a very different part of the world: Cambodia. Here, where open defecation is common, we piloted a project giving families a choice between two models of latrines – both locally made. Three-quarters opted for the more expensive model with a water basin, demonstrating that, when given the chance, people who can afford to invest in sanitation, do. By the end of the project, the number of households with latrines surged from 15 percent to more than 52 percent. 

In Uganda, a similar latrine marketing project is underway. It focuses on refugees at the Kyangwali settlement, where cholera and diarrheal illness contribute to high mortality. We are helping local masons purchase cement to make sanitation slabs, which are concrete covers for latrine pits. Although harder to make, they are dome-shaped for easier cleaning and repeat usage. We’re conducting research to learn how much people are willing to pay for a slab, holding community auctions to test price sensitivity and then averaging bids. While this research is ongoing, we are hopeful to gain insight into the local market, informing WASH programs in this district and beyond.  

Together, water, sanitation and hygiene have the potential to prevent at least 9 percent of global disease and 6 percent of all deaths worldwide. WASH investments are also cost-effective: for every dollar spent, there’s an estimated return on investment of $4.30 - leading to a 1.5 percent boost in GDP - due to reduced healthcare costs for individuals and society and greater workforce productivity.

Sanitation marketing, while still a small and emerging field, shows great promise. Now is the time to scale up these innovative approaches so all people can access clean water and better sanitation facilities by the end of the decade. 

Image credit: Action Against Hunger

Energy experts are still parsing out exactly what went wrong in Texas last month, but one solid fact emerged early on: Renewable energy was not the culprit. The severe storm that struck the state in February tested the state’s 20th-century electricity infrastructure, and it failed. In fact, the entire U.S. grid must be brought up to 21st-century standards in order to withstand climate impacts and other stresses. That means more wind and solar power, not less.

How business leaders can help push for grid modernization

U.S. business leaders have already begun flexing their muscles in support of renewable energy. One key development occurred in 2016, when Google, Facebook, General Motors and Walmart spearheaded the launch of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance. With hundreds of members now on its roster, REBA has quickly become a powerful driver of wind and solar development.

To cite just one example, in two years McDonald’s barely registered as a renewable energy buyer until two years ago, when it leveraged the knowledge base of the REBA network to transform itself into a leading wind and solar adopter.

Impressive as that is, huge renewable energy buys are not sufficient to fix the problems of an outdated electricity grid. REBA began with a focus on helping its members procure wind and solar primarily for their own benefit, as a retail transaction. More recently, REBA has begun exploring the community-wide benefits that can result when corporate renewable energy buyers have access to wholesale energy markets.

Now the REBA Institute has followed up with a new report that provides additional incentives for business leaders to support a modern, 21st-century grid, including access to wholesale markets.

With market access in hand, the report makes the case for applying the know-how and market clout of corporate renewable energy buyers to decarbonize 90 percent of the U.S. power system without running into prohibitive costs or reliability issues.

The modern grid: decarbonization plus resiliency

Prepared with the consulting firm Grid Strategies, the institute's new report is titled “Designing the 21st Century Electricity System.” It envisions a modern grid that is resilient enough to deal with climate-induced stresses, while also making a significant contribution to global decarbonization.

“A re-envisioned 21st century electricity system needs to be both resilient for extreme weather events and decarbonized to prevent the worsening damages of climate change,” explained Miranda Ballentine, CEO of the REBA Institute.

Ballentine also draws attention to the key role of market reform.

“Decarbonizing the power system cannot happen at the rate and scale necessary without updated market design, and that includes integrating insights and needs of customers throughout the process,” Ballentine said.

Designing a new market for grid modernization

As described by the report, the grid of today is based on 20th century technology and policies aimed at optimizing the use of coal, natural gas, and oil. Electricity customers barely factored into the equation in the 20th century, but renewable energy has chipped away at the share of fossil energy as a power source in the 21st century. Wind and solar have also opened the door for a more proactive approach to energy use by consumers.

However, as long as the 20th century grid model remains in place, it will obstruct the pace of renewable energy development, and it will prevent energy users from fully exploiting new technology that promotes decarbonization.

“The 21st century power system requires fundamental changes to achieve climate action targets, provide affordable electricity to all customers, and ensure reliability and resilience,” the report's authors explained.

The report targets several areas of direct interest to corporate renewable energy buyers, including opening up access to transmission lines and increasing transmission capacity.

The report also underscores the need to establish reliability standards and stress-testing that integrates all utility systems, including gas used for heating as well as electricity, water supply, and other infrastructure.

In particular, the study makes the case for market reform that smooths the way for scaling up renewable energy buys. That includes lowering the cost of financing projects as well as promoting long-term contracts.

The roles of renewable energy and new clean technologies

One loud, long criticism of wind and solar power is the fact that both sources are intermittent. Grid management strategies in some areas can balance wind and solar output, but a broader solution depends on energy storage technology.

Today’s generation of lithium-ion batteries can deliver power for several hours, which covers many use cases for wind and solar. The institute's study also emphasizes the need for new, long duration technology that can last much longer. Its emphasis on transmission access and capacity is also reflected in its advocacy for new developments in the area of HVDC, or high voltage direct current transmission.

In contrast with conventional AC (alternating current) technology, HVDC transmission lines can carry more power over longer distances, with much less loss.

The bottleneck is in the local converter stations needed to switch into AC mode. The report advocates for more research aimed at bringing down the cost of those stations.

A breakthrough is in sight

This technology vision is coming together. The U.S. Department of Energy has already been pouring funds into grid modernization technology, including long duration energy storage and HVDC transmission. That work intensified under the Obama administration and it never stopped during the Trump administration, despite the former president’s preference for supporting fossil energy stakeholders.

The details of market reform have yet to be hammered out, but as the new Biden administration takes shape, the prospects for a more rapid transition into the reliable, affordable, and sustainable power system of the future are already beginning to brighten.

Image credit: Hunter Gascon/Unsplash

At the onset of the pandemic, the data showed that Black and Latino populations across the U.S. contracted and died from COVID-19 at rates up to three times as high as whites. For example, in Chicago, though Black residents make up only 30 percent of the population, they accounted for 70 percent of the deaths. However, one year later, as we move to vaccinate, the response in Black and brown communities has been tepid. Some residents argue that the vaccines are unsafe because companies developed them too quickly. Some are concerned about potential side effects. Others cite a lack of trust in the medical profession given the history of racist and unethical practices in their communities. At a time when we need everyone to roll up their sleeves and vaccinate, how do we regain their trust?

This pandemic highlights the need for ongoing, authentic community engagement by health institutions. Institutions cannot come to communities of color in a crisis and expect them to be receptive and responsive when they have spent decades ignoring, or worse undermining, those same communities. One way to move forward involves a five-part strategy based on humility, open dialogue and relationship building – a community engagement continuum. My organization used these steps to launch West Side United, (WSU) a multi-stakeholder collaborative focused on closing the 16-year life expectancy gap between Chicago’s downtown area and the West Side. WSU has played a pivotal role during the pandemic.

To gain a receptive audience for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, start here: Understand the context

In this phase, organizations take the time to understand the historical context of the communities they want to serve. Communities are not under-resourced by choice. People do not choose poverty. Poor health outcomes are often a result of systemic racism and barriers. Understanding that and identifying what communities of color view as important are key. Conducting an environmental scan to learn about existing community organizations and leaders can be helpful to your work.

Prior to launching WSU, we conducted a community health needs assessment and learned about gaps in life expectancy, educational attainment, and access to quality jobs on the West Side of Chicago. We also did an asset-based community scan to learn about organizations working on these issues. This baseline knowledge helped us find partners and shaped our initiatives.

Gauge and know the signs of interest

Community members and organizations are open to collaborating, if approached correctly. That means meeting them where they are. View the start of the relationship as meaningful engagement instead of a box to check. This stage is about laying the foundation for a longer-term relationship. Institutions should also understand that employing a diverse team to reach diverse communities lays a strong foundation for relationship building.

WSU put community stakeholders at the center of the work. We conducted 50 listening sessions across 10 West Side neighborhoods and reached over 1,500 people. Residents told us how we could work together to improve health and economic vitality in their neighborhoods, and they joined our planning committee to generate programmatic ideas.

Commit to mutual Investments

Acknowledge power dynamics. Institutions are resourced, but there is also power in lived experience. The best relationships find value in both. If done right, the relationship becomes valuable and not just the program or initiative of the moment. Notably, communities of color need resources, opportunities and authentic partners, not saviors. Community stakeholders showed their commitment to WSU by joining a Community Advisory Council and implementing initiatives developed during the planning stage.

Acknowledge and embrace conflict

In large projects with multiple stakeholders and points of view, conflict is inevitable. Embrace conflict and use it as an opportunity to deepen communication. Through listening and open dialogue, conflict can become progress and lead to the next phase - resolution.

As a large collaborative, WSU was rich with program ideas, but lacked prioritization. Conflict arose during the strategic planning process. We worked through it by listening to different perspectives and ultimately voting on our top priorities.

Finally, all parties can reach a resolution

True resolution makes it easier to work with community stakeholders on future projects. Importantly, authentic community engagement never ends. It requires ongoing attention and cultivation.

By centering community voice in the work early on, WSU became an honest broker between health institutions and the community. This led to a partnership with the Mayor of Chicago to convene government, healthcare and community stakeholders to address the impact of COVID-19 on black and brown communities. WSU’s work ensured equitable access to COVID-19 education, resources, testing and vaccination. Building on this work, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation provided $5 million in COVID-19 relief funding to WSU for distribution to community based organizations across Chicago.

While community engagement strategies take time, the reward is better outcomes. When the next public health crisis hits, organizations will be better prepared to engage communities of color in ways that are authentic and effective – ultimately saving lives.

Image credit: Julian Myles/Unsplash

Business leaders have been stepping up to support Black Lives Matter and other justice reform efforts in the U.S., but until recently the death penalty escaped much notice. Somewhat ironically, former President Donald Trump can take credit for pushing the issue back into view. Inadvertently or not, he has provided corporate citizens with a powerful new opportunity to embrace abolition of the death penalty as part of their pursuit of equal justice and support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The death penalty is a persistent manifestation of white-on-Black violence

The record is clear on the history of state-sanctioned, lethal white-on-Black violence in the U.S. — from slave law, to the “lynch laws” called out by Ida B. Wells during the late 19th century, to how the death penalty is applied in the country today.

To further underscore the strength of those roots, the U.S. has become increasingly isolated in its continued insistence on the broad use of the death penalty. By 2018, Amnesty International listed 106 nations that had abolished the death penalty entirely. Eight others abolished it for all ordinary civilian crimes, and another 28 still had it on the books but had not applied it for 10 years or more.

More recently, the United Nations took stock of the situation and noted that “some 170 Members States of the United Nations with a variety of legal systems, traditions, cultures and religious backgrounds, have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.”

Former President Trump turns the spotlight on capital punishment

Until Trump took office, the U.S. federal government fell into the category of a non-practitioner. 

Following a 1972 Supreme Court ruling, some U.S. states abolished the death penalty while others retained it on a revised basis. The revisions did not erase racial sentencing disparity. However, they did help tamp down opposition by providing state-based death penalty supporters with legal cover. On its part, the federal government all but eliminated the death penalty after 1972. According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, no federal executions occurred from the 1970s through the 1990s. Two occurred in 2001 and one took place in 2003. 

Not one federal execution took place during the 17-year period following 2003. That changed dramatically midway through the presidential election year of 2020.

For context, the Federal Bureau of Prisons lists 50 federal executions that have taken place in the 94 years since 1927. The Trump administration alone accounts for 13 of those executions, all taking place in just six months between July 14, 2020, and January 15, 2021.

Political observers assumed that the late-term push was intended to gin up support among Trump’s base, and the intent comes into sharper focus with the January 6 insurrection in hindsight.

Trump began the 2020 election cycle steady in the polls, but his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic began to eat away at his prospects for winning the November election. By the summer of 2020, his campaign and its allies in media began to coalesce around an aggressive, persistent strategy of pushing race-based lies about election fraud and raising the specter of a criminal takeover of U.S. elections before and after Election Day.

On July 15, 2020, the Trump administration also began executing federal prisoners at an unseemly pace. In retrospect, that effort now seems specifically aimed at exciting the Trump base in support of extreme action as a response to criminality. The twin strategy almost succeeded when an organized, violent mob of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol Building on January 6 with lethal intent, including pushing for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence.

The United Nations is paying attention

As result of the post-1972 patchwork of state policies, and the virtual abolition of the death penalty in federal policy prior to the Trump administration, advocates for reform have found it difficult — if not impossible — to stimulate momentum for change on a national level.

However, Trump may have inadvertently lit the spark for reform. By apparently deploying the federal death penalty for political gain, he threw a harsh spotlight on the persistence of race-based sentencing disparity in the U.S., especially regarding the race of the victim. Trump further underscored the disparity by ramping up his practice of doling out pardons to white offenders, including four U.S. mercenaries convicted of multiple murders in Iraq.

Apparently, the world has been watching. The United Nations responded to the rash of federal executions last week when it reported on the findings of human rights experts who reviewed Trump’s actions during his last six months in office. Without mentioning Trump by name, the U.N. report excoriated the Trump administration, along with U.S. states and other nations that still carry out executions.

The death penalty as a threat to democracy

U.N. experts cited four moral and ethical reasons for abolishing the death penalty in the U.S. and elsewhere: It does not deter crime, it is inconsistent with right-to-life principles, it is inhumane, and it disproportionately has an impact on people of color and those living in poverty.

To that list, Trump himself has added a fifth reason, one that speaks to the preservation of American democracy: Politicians often deploy the death penalty as a blunt political weapon to curry favor among voters. With the insurrection on January 6, Trump weaponized this form of punishment and demonstrated that using the death penalty against those accused of crimes can help to instigate a vigilante mob.

That new perspective provides U.S. business leaders with a new opportunity to redefine the terms of the death penalty debate. Rather than relying on emotion-fraught appeals to morality and ethics, business leaders can call for a redefinition of terms. They can advocate for treating the death penalty as a threat to democratic institutions. Policymakers may fiddle around the edges of capital punishment, but the rot of enslavement, white supremacy and vigilantism will continue to endanger American democracy until it is cut out, at the root.

By focusing on the lessons of events leading up to the January 6 insurrection, business leaders can place the death penalty firmly within the context of the need for wider criminal justice reform.

To help business leaders organize, Virgin Group’s founder Sir Richard Branson today launched a new campaign that provides a platform for CEOs and other leaders to leverage their personal profiles to lobby in support of death penalty abolition in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In launching the campaign, Branson highlighted Trump’s execution spree alongside similar spikes in Egypt and other countries. “The death penalty is broken beyond repair and plainly fails to deliver justice by every reasonable measure,” Branson said. “It is marred by cruelty, waste, ineffectiveness, discrimination and an unacceptable risk of error.”

Brands take a stand against the death penalty

Branson is leading the effort through the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ). The organization has already established a track record of successful lobbying for criminal justice reform in several U.S. states and elsewhere. It has also developed a criminal justice reform toolkit that provides guidance on meaningful steps that individual business leaders can take within their own companies.

RBIJ urged the U.S. business community to follow Branson’s lead. “This is a critical opportunity for business leaders to embrace their responsibility to speak out authentically on issues of racial and social justice — in a way that delivers real impact,” Celia Ouellette, RBIJ’s CEO, said in a public statement.

Global business leaders aligned with RBIJ on this front represent a myriad of industries, countries and cultures — from Guilherme Leal, chairman of Brazil’s Natura, to Jared Smith, the Utahn co-founder of powerhouse Qualtrics, to Strive Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean founder and executive chairman of the South Africa-based telecommunications and technology firm Econet Group.

Business leaders taking on this cause here in the U.S. will find a likely ally in President Joe Biden. Though Biden backed expansion of the federal death penalty in 1994, in the following years he advocated for reform. He came into office in part on a racial justice platform, and he has already announced his intention to order the Justice Department to stop scheduling executions. Advocates are also pressing him to commute the sentences of federal prisoners currently on death row, and U.N. experts have called on him to take action.

Permanent reform in the U.S. will be impossible without additional support. A total of 28 states still have the death penalty written into their laws, and an act of Congress would be required to abolish the death penalty nationwide.

By organizing and advocating for the abolition of capital punishment, business leaders can demonstrate that the U.S. is making definitive break from its past and stepping up to lead the world in a more diverse and inclusive future.

Image credit: Ai Nhan/Unsplash

About 4 billion people live in water-stressed areas and face severe water scarcity during at least one month each year. Over a billion more — including 1 in 4 children — will live in areas of extremely high water stress by 2040. Climate change is already disrupting weather patterns, leading to extreme weather events, causing unpredictable water availability, worsening water scarcity, and contaminating freshwater supplies. 

As major water users, manufacturers have an influential presence in communities worldwide. More specifically, multinational businesses can use their scale to play a significant role to protect the watersheds where they do business and forge partnerships with governments, nonprofits, and other community stakeholders who are best poised to understand the intricacies of local water problems.

Water scarcity poses risk to companies — and climate change is making matters worse

Already, companies must consider the realities of available resources on the ground and factor in other stakeholders that might be in competition for those resources. Climate change only exacerbates this tension. In fact, in its 2021 Global Risk Report, the World Economic Forum listed failure to act on climate change as a top risk impact for the global economy, second only to infectious diseases. 

Water scarcity, specifically, poses a major risk. The World Bank predicts a growth rate decline of 6 percent of global GDP by 2050 as competition for water intensifies across all sectors. While these figures are stark, opportunities exist to create innovative solutions to these challenges. Companies are better poised to drive faster change, and due to the risks they face, it is in their interest to do so.

A personal connection gives way to a global solution 

For Vetri Dhagumudi, global water program leader for Kimberly-Clark, these issues are personal as well as professional. He grew up in Chennai, India, a city of 11 million people that nearly ran out of water in 2019, despite historically being one of the wettest cities in the world. 

“As a child, growing up with no water was normal,” he told TriplePundit. “Every day, someone’s duty was to pump water from a hand pump. We had no water as part of a daily routine, and then when it rained, you walked to school [in] waist-high water.” 

Dhagumudi trained as an engineer focused on wastewater management, but it wasn’t until he started working in the Arizona desert that he realized how much his life had always been connected to water. He often thought about Chennai, where the community seemed to continuously struggle to develop a solution that worked for them. 

“There were many solutions in the market,” Dhagumudi recalled, “but it was hard to see what works best. How do you find a solution? I decided to focus on the whole water spectrum.” That led to Kimberly-Clark’s co-creation of WaterLOUPE a tool for water-stressed areas similar to Vetri’s own life experiences growing up in Chennai.

Mapping risk at the watershed level eases business-community partnerships

Launched on World Water Day in 2018, WaterLOUPE was developed through a partnership between Kimberly-Clark and Dutch research organization Deltares. The tool visualizes current and future scarcity risks for entire watersheds on a user-friendly dashboard, with the aim of supporting multi-stakeholder decision-making and collaborative action. “Water is emotional,” Dhagumudi said. “The whole idea of WaterLOUPE was to create a scientific discussion, not an emotional one, so the water users could make the best-informed decisions.”

In order to enable the most comprehensive view of a particular watershed, WaterLOUPE tracks data relating to social, economic and climate factors that affect freshwater availability. “As soon as someone says ‘water risk,’ you think water reduction, but that’s not the only solution,” Dhagumudi continued. “We need to understand water supply demand, the socio-economic factors, population, economic development, risk of water conflicts, biodiversity, and urbanization.” 

Watershed partners in Cape Town, South Africa; São Paulo, Brazil; and Cali, Colombia, already use the tool — which combines national and local data with scenario modeling to create risk models and associated solutions. 

Notably, though, WaterLOUPE is not meant to be a plug-and-play solution. An intensive stakeholder process happens first. Getting the data is one thing. Having people buy into it is another.  “We spend eight or nine months before the engagement workshop getting everything lined up,” Dhagumudi said. “You must consider how every location has its unique challenges. What works in Cape Town doesn’t work in São Paulo. We have to have people who understand the culture, the bureaucracy, and pull the science up through the emotion and the politics.”

Felipe Godoi, senior environmental engineer at Kimberly-Clark’s Mogi das Cruzes facility in São Paulo, added: “It’s extremely important to design the tool based on local specifics, so industry, government, and community can together understand the present and future scenarios with the purpose of minimizing the impacts of water scarcity through strategic decision making.”

The entire countries of Israel and Bahrain now have WaterLOUPE studies in progress, with the aim of mapping watersheds at the national level. 

Kimberly-Clark and Deltares will launch WaterLOUPE 2.0 on World Water Day, March 22. This new dashboard can assess possible measures that help mitigate future water scarcity risks, as identified by local stakeholders. The methodology and tool will enable local stakeholders to choose one or multiple solution strategies using scenario modeling to visualize if the water gap and related risks can be minimized, as well as quantify water shortage, risk reduction and economic consequences. Using this tool, local stakeholders in the water basin will be able to visualize the risk and interventions that close the water scarcity gap. 

Addressing water scarcity challenges on a global scale 

Unfortunately, no region is immune from water stress. Many wet areas will go dry, and dry areas will strain under exacerbating conditions. Multinational companies with manufacturing or other operations in multiple countries will see these issues compound with climate change, and it behooves them to proactively work with local leaders to find pragmatic and fair solutions. 

No one company or stakeholder can solve a region’s water problems — the realities are too complex, too emotional, and involve too many interests. A company can set a goal for zero water use, but it will have little impact on the local watershed if other major users in the area do not also change their practices. Put simply: Working together is the only option. 

While the climate changes across the globe, impacts are felt locally. Water in particular is hyper-local, and its importance means it’s also hyper-political. As something we all touch every day, it is also emotional. Using the best scientific data is essential to find the right solutions, but at the heart of this problem are the people who are affected by increasingly scarce water supplies. 

Bringing the story full circle, Kimberly-Clark and its partners are taking the tool to Chennai because of the dire need for innovative water solutions. But for Dhagumudi, it means he can be involved in making things better for his hometown. “It’s satisfying to go back home.”

This article series is sponsored by Kimberly-Clark and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image credits: kazuend and Mark Rohan via Unsplash