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Something as simple as the speaker's lineup for a trade show can become a platform for change -- if people pay attention and speak up, that is. That's the lesson from the popular Consumer Electronics Show. This year, CES will shine the spotlight on two women keynote speakers, fresh on the heels of the backlash it experienced last year, when a grand total of zero women were slotted into the top speaking positions.

Why CES matters

To call CES popular is something of an understatement. The annual showcase for all things tech is staged by the Consumer Technology Association, and the organization is not shy about tooting the CES horn.

Last year was the second year that CES expanded to include all major and emerging industries, and it was the second year in a row that total attendance topped 182,000.

The Consumer Technology Association called CES 2018 the "Global Stage for Innovation," noting that a good one-third of the total attendees at the 2018 event in Las Vegas were from overseas countries, regions and territories. The organization ran down the numbers last year in a press release:

According to a preliminary report released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, international travel to the U.S. decreased by 3.8 percent in 2017. CES 2018 showed no signs of following this trend as international attendance at the show increased by 5.9 percent from CES 2017. This included 36,482 attendees from Asia/Middle East, 17,338 attendees from Europe and 9,964 attendees from Africa, North America (excluding U.S.), Oceania and South America.

CES is the largest and most influential global technology event that highlights life-changing and transformative tech that improves lives.

Among the attendees last year were 6,645 members of the media, including 166 "key online influencers."

Where were all the women?

All in all, CES is quite a nice showcase for tech entrepreneurs and professionals who are competing for public attention in a highly competitive field. That makes it all the more curious why no women made the cut for keynote. Making matters worse, there were no women headliners in 2017, either.

To be clear, women did speak at CES 2018. The press release noted that "1,079 speakers participated in CES keynotes, panels and conference sessions including more than 300 women speakers." However, lumping all of those assignments together is more than a little disingenuous. The headliner slots are pretty much the only ones that catch national and global media attention.

When activists called attention to the absence of high profile women speakers at CES 2018, USA Today did a little digging and came up with these numbers:

...only three women in the past seven years have been tapped to deliver the much hyped keynote addresses: former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, General Motors CEO Mary Barra and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Other prominent business leaders such as former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former GE vice chair Beth Comstock participated in what CTA calls keynote panels.

Ouch!

Pay attention, speak up, get results -- sort of

Among the activists cited by USA Today were Gender Avenger co-founder Gina Glantz, developer of the Gender Avenger app. Much like the Sleeping Giants and Grab Your Wallet campaigns, the app enables individuals to identify bad behavior and publicize it through social media.

In the lead-up to CES 2018, Glantz posted an action alert on the Gender Avenger blog under the title, "The Keynote Speakers At CES 2018 Are All Men." The blog post garnered copious social media attention including commentary from Brad Jakeman (formerly of PepsiCo), Joy Howard of Sonos and Leslie Berland of Twitter, among others. This pithy observation got the ball rolling:

For a show marketed as “the world's gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies,” it sure seems like “for all” really means “for all men”.

So, did the Consumer Technology Association listen? Well, yes and no.

Shortly after Glantz's blog post, CTA Chief Executive Officer Gary Shapiro penned a somewhat defensive rejoinder on Medium. Here's a key passage:

. . . I was stung by the online backlash expressing outrage that no women were among the CES keynote speakers announced to date. The exclusive focus on keynotes in my view insults the hundreds of women who are speakers at CES in January.

Diversity abounds at CES. The number of women on the keynote stage will fluctuate each year in part based on the business needs of individual companies. I prefer to focus on spotlighting the remarkable women throughout the show who are impacting innovation. We’re proud to have women founders, CEOs, CMOs, chief counsels, government leaders and others speak at CES 2018. You’ll hear their voices, perspectives and industry insights.

Okay, but that misses the point identified by Glantz and others: sure, women are included but they hang out on the sidelines while men nail down most if not all of the spots reserved for superstars.

Be that as it may, the lineup for CES 2019 indicates that CTA was listening. Last August, CTA announced that IBM Chairman, President and CEO, Ginni Rometty, will be a headliner at CES. In October, the organization also announced a keynote slot for AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's two of the four top keynote positions, which sounds pretty good. On the other hand, it looks like CTA is still casting about for a fix that will address the core of the problem.

Fast Company took a deep dive into the issue last November and described one rather disappointing solution: requiring all keynotes to include multiple speakers. In other words, this is diluting the star potential of women by including them in a gaggle of speakers rather than giving them each an exclusive platform.

That kind of reform pretty much defeats the whole purpose. After all, one main selling point of CES is the power to make stars shine. That includes raising the public profile of companies engaged in corporate social responsibility issues, including conflict minerals and sustainable design among others.

The 2019 event page underscores the focus on individual achievers:

[CES] has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years — the global stage where next-generation innovations are introduced to the marketplace.

...because it is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™ — the technology trade association representing the $292 billion U.S. consumer technology industry — it attracts the world’s business leaders and pioneering thinkers to a forum where the industry’s most relevant issues are addressed.

CES 2019 kicks off on January 8 in Las Vegas. Regardless of CTA's outreach, it's a safe bet that activists, reporters and key social media influencers will keep the topic of women's representation front and center throughout the event.

Image credit: CES.tech

In their book released in the summer of 2018, corporate responsibility veterans David Grayson, Chris Coulter and Mark Lee predicted a “Regenerative Era” of business. “We believe that as we get closer to 2025, there will be a critical mass of companies committing to a circular economy or closed-loop approach to business,” they wrote in “All In: The Future of Business Leadership.”

The financial incentive is great: The worldwide circular economy has the potential to generate $4.5 trillion in additional economic output by 2030, the global accountancy Accenture estimates. Even reaching a 75 percent waste diversion rate could create 1.1 million new jobs by 2030 in the U.S. alone, according to 2018 research.

From government collaborations to massive corporate commitments, we moved closer to realizing a circular economy in 2018. Let's take a look back as we rally for the year ahead.

1. Firms worth $1.3 trillion bolster new innovation initiative

At the start of each year, the World Economic Forum brings leaders from the public and private sectors together to discuss pressing problems and solutions. In January 2018, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) leveraged the Forum to announce a new circular economy program. An initial list of 30 companies from 16 industries signed on to the Council’s Factor10 project, which aims to “build a critical mass of engagement” from the business community around the circular economy.

Initial partners include BMW, Dow, ExxonMobil, Honda, Novartis Philips and Rabobank. If these companies fulfill their commitments and invest in circular solutions, they stand to reap great financial and reputational benefits. But if they fail to show any progress over the next few years, they may draw ire from advocates and the public. “For companies participating in this initiative, including ExxonMobil with its lucrative plastic industry, they could find themselves stuck with the reputation of yet again talking the sustainability talk but doing little to walk that walk,” 3p Executive Editor Leon Kaye observed.

2. Companies move toward circular packaging

In June 2018, a group of 25 institutional investors with a combined $1 trillion in assets called plastic pollution a clear corporate brand risk and pledged to engage with consumer goods companies on packaging solutions. Advocates and NGOs have long pressured top brands to assume greater responsibility for the single-use items they sell, arguing that it has taken companies far too long to ensure their packaging is reusable or recyclable.

Several companies stepped up to the plate last year. In October, French multinational Danone—parent company of brands like Evian water, Oikos yogurt and Silk plant-based milks—pledged to produce 100 percent circular packaging by 2025. Around 86 percent of the company’s packaging is already circular, and half of its water volumes are sold in reusable packaging, Vikas Vij reported on TriplePundit this year.

In the face of mounting pressure from advocates, Coca-Cola pledged to collect and recycle 100 percent of its beverage packaging by 2030, although the details remain murky. Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, made a similar commitment last year, pledging to make all of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. McDonald’s and PepsiCo have similar commitments on the books.

As companies move toward greater circularity in packaging, some hard-to-recycle elements are bound to be left behind, as demonstrated by the Great Straw Revolt of 2018: In response to a wave of consumer pressure, a sizable list of companies—including Starbucks and Alaska Airlines—pledged to ditch plastic drinking straws in favor of recyclable or compostable alternatives.

3. Stakeholders adopt a shared vision for plastic waste

Nearly 300 brands, governments and other stakeholders adopted a new strategy to address plastic pollution in October 2018. Launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment sets forth plans for a circular economy around plastics.

Only 14 percent of plastic products are recycled, according to a 2017 report from the New Plastics Economy. “Experts with the initiative foresee a recycling ceiling of around 70 percent and say tackling the remaining 30 percent would require a ‘fundamental design and innovation’ approach,” 3p’s Tina Casey reported. The initiative aims to drive collaboration between plastic-dependent companies, recyclers and governments to reduce the volume of plastic that ends up as litter or landfill waste.

Brand participants, including Danone, Mars and Johnson & Johnson, represent 20 percent of all plastic packaging produced globally. These firms signed on to evidence-based, time-bound targets as part of the initiative—including pledges to increase their use of recycled material, eliminate unnecessary packaging, and make all packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.

4. The CE100 welcomes new corporate members

Launched by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2013, the CE100 rallies prominent actors in business, government, and civil society to invest and innovate around the circular economy. The CE100 offers companies a multi-stakeholder partnership to ease their transition to a more circular model, and it allows corporations to demonstrate that they’re open to such a transition. Global partners include the likes of Unilever, Google, Cisco and IBM.

The CE100 officially launched in the U.S. in 2016, and its membership is growing. The innovation program welcomed at least 20 new corporate members last year, as well as a number of nonprofit organizations and cities like Charlotte, North Carolina, and Toronto, Canada. Companies including Target, AB InBev and Procter & Gamble pledged to offer more circular products, invest in new technologies, and incorporate circularity into their supply chains as part of their 2018 commitments.

5. Fashion labels move toward circularity

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Make Fashion Circular program aims to rally top brands to eliminate unnecessary waste from the fashion sector. The initiative continued to gain traction last year. Labels like Burberry, Gap, H&M, HSBC, Nike and Stella McCartney pledged to design models that keep clothes in use longer and recycle their materials at end of life.

“For the fashion industry to thrive in the future we must replace the take-make-dispose model, which is worn out,” Dame Ellen MacArthur, founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said in a statement. “We need a circular economy for fashion in which clothes are kept at their highest value and designed from the outset to never end up as waste.”

Additionally, online thrift store thredUP launched a re-commerce partnership with top apparel companies, in which consumers receive gift cards for partner brands when they send used clothing to the thrifting platform, Lauren Phipps of GreenBiz reported.

6. Companies team up on a recyclable coffee cup (finally)

Due to a plastic lining that prevents hot beverages from leaking out, paper coffee cups are notoriously difficult to recycle. After years of pressure from advocates, two top coffee sellers finally took action last year.

In July, Starbucks and McDonald’s joined forces on a multi-year effort to create a compostable coffee cup. With help from Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, the companies hope to release the cup by 2021, Fortune reported.

7. Ocean-bound plastic becomes new products

A partnership launched in 2018 by Dell and the Lonely Whale Foundation encourages companies to collect ocean-bound plastic and turn it into new products.

HP, for example, turned 12 million plastic bottles collected in Haiti into new ink cartridges. Everlane launched a line of outerwear made from recycled plastic and pledged to eliminate new plastic from its supply chain in 2021, while Ikea plans to begin prototyping products made from ocean-bound plastic in 2019, Fast Company reported.

8. Government commitments pave the way for a circular future

Governments around the world are taking a serious look at the circular economy as a way to make use of the 82 billion tons of raw materials expected to enter the economic system in 2020. In 2018, several governments set new commitments, established new programs and formed new collaborations in pursuit of a system to turn that waste into resource.

The United Kingdom’s Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) launched the U.K. Plastics Pact in April to pursue a more circular economy for plastics by 2025. China and the European Union signed a joint memorandum of understanding on circular economy cooperation in July, pledging to work together and align their policies.

If that's not enough, the U.K. and Canadian governments are discussing how circularity could play into their economic plans—and they’re even considering a post-Brexit trade deal that hinges on the circular economy.

Image credits: 1) Courtesy of Starbucks 2) Courtesy of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation 

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Tech giant Cisco says it has been committed to aligning its core business processes with the SDGs in order to help build a sustainable planet.

Cisco’s 2018 corporate social responsibility report highlights the company’s efforts to lead from the front on many of the SDGs. Here are three areas where the company’s sustainability strategy particularly stands out.

SDG #4 – Education

Cisco insists that it is committed to building a digital foundation to improve education across all of society. Programs in the company’s education investment portfolio are designed to increase student engagement in STEM and improve the professional development of teachers worldwide.

To that end, the company has partnered with the New Teacher Center (NTC), the mission of which is to improve student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers, experienced teachers, and school leaders. NTC works with school districts to select and train exemplary teachers, who provide mentorship to new teachers.

In addition to funding and product donations over the last decade, Cisco has helped NTC develop digital assessment and mentoring platforms to extend its program reach. With the company’s support, NTC now serves 14,000 teachers. According to 2018 data, over 1.8 million students across 500 U.S. school districts benefited from this program.

Cisco has also partnered with Science Buddies by providing cash grants and product donations to support STEM-related content targeting girls and underserved populations. The partnership has led to doubling of the program’s reach to 18 million students from 2011 to 2018, which includes 54 percent female students and 38 percent from underrepresented ethnic groups.

SDG #8 – Decent Economic Growth

Cisco’s economic empowerment programs are an attempt by the company to connect underserved people to skills, meaningful employment, financial products and services and opportunities they need to develop careers in the digital economy.

For example, Cisco touts its partnership with Living Goods, which empowers a network of women called Community Health Promoters (CHPs). This network strives to improve the health of families in their communities by distributing essential goods and health education to those who need them, all enabled by mobile technology.

The program reached six million people in 2018, and according to Cisco, it has helped reduce child mortality 27 percent at an average cost of just $2 per person per year. The logic is that by supporting healthier families, they can become a vital part of their local economies.

Another partnership with the nonprofit Opportunity International (OI) has also enabled Cisco to provide financial products, services and training to help people become integrated within their local economies. As a result, the company says its cash grants, technology and expertise support have allowed OI to increase its reach and target specific client populations, including women, the elderly and the most marginalized in society. Cisco claims this partnership has resulted in the creation of two million new jobs and boost financial inclusion for 11 million people.

SDG #11 – Sustainable Cities

Cisco’s claims that its approach to helping build sustainable and "smart cities" begins with the areas where the company has the greatest potential for impact—reducing energy consumption and improving resource use efficiency. The company’s greenhouse gas reduction goals are focused in the areas of operations, supply chain, products and solutions.

The company recently announced it has completed two off-site solar projects, and is offering technology solutions that help Cisco and its clients become more sustainable while transitioning into the circular economy.

In addition, the company says its alignment with SDG #11 shows in the Cisco Green Team Network (GTN), an employee-led global “green team” with local chapters. The company says it now has 11 GTN chapters worldwide that together have over 1,000 members. For their innovative efforts to promote global sustainability, the Green Team won Cisco’s “Excellence in Environmental Stewardship” award in December 2017.

Summing up the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, Chuck Robbins, said: “As our world grows more complex and interconnected, social responsibility is not only a competitive differentiator or a business imperative—it is simply the right thing to do.”

Image credit: Cisco

A leadership vacuum in the White House has created an opening for corporate America to step up and advocate for human rights, civil rights and other integral issues that are normally under the purview of federal policy makers. It is a unique opportunity for the ongoing brands taking stands movement. In 2017 and 2018, corporate social responsibility (CSR) rippled far beyond the factory gates and c-suites to address fundamental problems faced by employees, customers and the nation. Here are five CSR stories from 2018 that will continue to resonate in 2019.

1. The Murder Of Jamal Khashoggi

The brutal murder of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in October could elevate the corporate social responsibility movement to a new level of activism. However, so far it has exposed the limitations of brands taking stands.

When the horrific crime occurred last October it first sparked an immediate corporate backlash against the Saudi government, which has been directly implicated in planning and overseeing the murder of Khashoggi, who was a regular columnist for the Washington Post.

The government's role came to light soon after news of the murder broke, and TriplePundit noted that the act amounted to a "brutal, bloody dare" to the CSR movement. That dare has grown more brutal and bloody as each new piece of evidence emerges.

Unfortunately, in terms of brands taking stands the backlash was narrow in scope, and short in duration.

The problem lies in the volume of Saudi investments in Silicon Valley, the oil and gas industry, and other top U.S. companies, the intersection between Saudi business interests and the companies controlled by President Trump and his family, and of course, nation-level alliances and defense contracts.

Clean tech companies are also entangled. The U.S. electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors, for example, received an "eye-popping" $1 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund just weeks before the murder occurred.

In addition, earlier this year Saudi Arabia launched its ambitious new Neom "green megacity" project. The prospect of significant new business opportunities in Neom may also be dampening the clean tech community's appetite for activism.

Nevertheless, the stakes ramped up considerably in the waning days of 2018. The Khashoggi murder has rippled out to push other stories about overreach by the Saudi government into the news, including this episode:

Saudi Arabian officials arrested a partner at consulting giant McKinsey & Co. in the fall of 2017 and have been holding him in detention since then, people familiar with the matter say. In recent months, he has been repeatedly beaten, two of those people said.

McKinsey is already on the hot seat over its contract work for the Saudi government and other authoritarian regimes. According to the Wall Street Journal, McKinsey has stated that it no longer employs the detained man. Still, the story adds fuel to the fire.

Looking ahead to 2019: The Khashoggi murder will continue to fester throughout 2019 and beyond -- and it will continue to expose both the possibilities and the limits of brands taking stands.

2. Nike: Brands Really Can Take Stands

In 2017, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, women's marches and other protests, Pepsi decided to use the theme of civil activism as the backdrop for a new television ad featuring model and reality television celebrity Kendall Jenner of the Kardashian business empire. Needless to say, the ad went over like a lead balloon. The Guardian provided a representative critique in April 2017:

The ad has been criticized for seemingly co-opting the resistance movement while framing a privileged, white 21-year-old supermodel with a can of soda as a peacemaker between civil rights activists and police.

The two-and-a-half minute ad, soundtracked by Bob Marley’s grandson Skip Marley, shows the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star walking out of a photo shoot decked in double denim to join a protest where breakdancing and headscarf-wearing activists of all ethnicities carry signs bearing peace symbols and messages like “join the conversation” and “love”.

Yep, it was that bad.

The Pepsi debacle provides a stunning contrast with Nike's 2018 "Just Do It" campaign re-launch, featuring football star and well known civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. In addition to showcasing an actual activist, the new Nike campaign also involved a strong element of walking the walk including a million-dollar commitment by Nike to contribute to the Kaepernick Foundation. The foundation supports Kaepernick's Know Your Rights Camp, which fosters civil rights education.

Most importantly, the campaign placed Nike firmly on the progressive side of a political hot potato.

That exposed Nike to a considerable amount of risk. However, it was a calculated risk. Kaepernick's on-field protest against police violence sparked the ire of right wing pundits, but Nike was paying more attention to the concerns of its customers, especially the up-and-coming generation.

Timing also came into play. Nike launched the campaign launched early in September, just as the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections was beginning to gather steam. True to form, President Trump soon weighed in. His public criticism of Kaepernick was just icing on the cake in terms of cementing Nike's position as a cultural icon of resistance to authoritarianism.

Looking ahead to 2019: The Nike campaign is a tough act to follow, but 2019 could see more brands taking a firm, public stand in opposition to Trump's policies on climate change, immigration and gun control among other issues -- especially as evidence mounts on Trump's history of malfeasance both in and out of the White House.

3. Brands Taking Stands On Gun Control, Intentionally Or Not

In 2018, corporate action on gun control combined with a powerful new wave of grassroots activism, galvanized by the student survivors of the Parkland school massacre in Florida.

Dick's Sporting Goods, Starbucks, Walmart and Levi Strauss were among the major U.S. companies that went out on a limb to take a stand for common sense gun control before and during 2018.

In particular, Levi-Strauss doubled down on gun control last September, when it announced a new partnership with the national organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

Everytown supports the grassroots gun control organization Moms Demand Action, which backed the winning candidates in a slew of high stakes races during the November 2018 election.

The most significant development occurred in November, when FedEx confirmed that it would no longer provide a shipping discount to the NRA. Previously, FedEx had resisted considerable pressure from gun control activists to sever ties with the organization.

Rather than acknowledging the activist pressure, FedEx framed the move as part of a broader initiative aimed at shedding unproductive affiliations. The New York Times explained:

…FedEx said on Tuesday that its decision to end its marketing relationship with the N.R.A. was the result of a review that began months ago. The review showed that members of the group did not bring in enough shipping volume to warrant its participation in the program, the company said. More than 100 companies were dropped from the discount program as part of the review.

The FedEx action only applies to the NRA organization (individual members still get a discount), but even just dropping the organization from its discount roster was a decision that exposed the company to risk and criticism.

Looking ahead to 2019: As more information comes to light regarding the NRA's links to Russia, more brands will become find politically neutral ways to sever ties or take a public stand against the organization.

4. Social Media Gets Schooled

When the grassroots boycott campaign Sleeping Giants launched in 2016, it demonstrated the power of consumers to influence brand behavior through their advertising platforms.

The campaign focused on the notorious "hate site" Breitbart News, which was instrumental in amplifying then-candidate Trump's messaging during the 2016 election cycle. Sleeping Giants encouraged consumers to contact brands that were advertising on Breitbart, let the companies know their ads were appearing on a hate site and then share that information on social media.

Sleeping Giants soon began to target bad behavior on television including a successful campaign against Fox personality Bill O'Reilly, as well as brands advertising on social media sites where notorious far-right personalities like Alex Jones have (or had) accounts.

By November of 2017, the strategy rippled out to ding Breitbart's chief financial backer and Trump "megadonor," Robert Mercer.

Unilever is one company that seems to have paid close attention to the risk exposure of brands that refuse to take stands against bad behavior in media. The company spotted an opportunity to position itself as a change agent in social media.

Last February, Unilever issued a public warning to Facebook, YouTube and other social media giants. The company took a stand based on the idea that advertising is part and parcel of a company's supply chain - and should be subjected to the same ethical principles, as reported in The Guardian:

...the company’s chief marketing officer Keith Weed told attendees at a conference lead by the Interactive Advertising Bureau that Unilever “…cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain – one that delivers over a quarter of our advertising to our consumers – which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.”

Weed's speech was an extraordinary moment in the brands taking stands movement. The problem, he argued, is not just offensive content. It comes down to a matter of institutional trust in the foundations of modern democratic government:

Consumers don’t care about third party verification. They do care about fraudulent practice, fake news, and Russians influencing the U.S. election. They don’t care about good value for advertisers. But they do care when they see their brands being placed next to ads funding terror, or exploiting children. They don’t care about sophisticated data usage or ad targeting via complex algorithms, but they do care about not seeing the same ad 100 times a day. They don’t care about ad fraud, but they do care about their data being misused and stolen.

Last summer, Unilever also expanded its transparency campaign by announcing that it would stop working with social media influencers who buy followers.

Looking ahead to 2019: Here in the U.S., hate speech is only part of social media's ongoing problem. Political propaganda is another key factor. Facebook in particular is already in trouble when the topic turns to Russia influencing the 2016 presidential election. As the Mueller investigation brings more evidence to light, more brands will be forced to take a public stand on social media.

5. When Brands Don't Take Stands: The Collapse Of Ivanka

When President Trump tapped his daughter Ivanka as one of his senior advisors, it presented a unique (and probably never to be repeated) opportunity for a brand to build its reputation on a platform of national policy.

The potential for a history-making event in brand identity was in fact realized, though certainly not in the way that Ms. Trump anticipated.

The seeds of trouble were sown during the 2016 presidential election, when the grassroots campaign #GrabYourWallet targeted all Trump family businesses for boycott. Like Sleeping Giants, the strategy was to hold leading brands responsible for their relationships with tarnished brands,

Under the #GrabYourWallet hashtag, consumers were encouraged to identify and criticize major retailers that carried Ivanka Trump's eponymous Ivanka fashion brand. At first the strategy did not seem to gain much traction, but industry followers soon took note of that signs of slippage were showing.

It didn't help much early on when another Trump advisor, Kellyanne Conway, exposed herself to a serious ethics violation by making a pitch for the Ivanka brand on television, or when the President himself publicly criticized Nordstrom for dropping the line from its stores.

Sure enough, by last July the Ivanka brand was officially dead. With considerable credit to Grab Your Wallet founder Shannon Coulter, a report in Glamour Magazine connected the brand's demise to consumer activism. Women didn't simply stop buying Ivanka products. They also contacted retailers individually and used the #GrabYourWallet platform to shine the media spotlight on them.

TriplePundit has often noted that consumer boycotts rarely succeed, but when they do the object of the boycott is often a brand that is already suffering reputational issues. The Ivanka boycott also worked, as Glamour reported, partly because the Ivanka brand was just one among many fashion options for women, not a lifestyle necessity like coffee or fast food.

Looking ahead to 2019: Ms. Coulter is reportedly planning to leverage the Grab Your Wallet knowledge base about consumer behavior to take on an advocacy role with a focus on labor rights. Brands that are paying attention will take steps to ensure that they stay ahead of the curve.

All in all: Brands take stands when consumers take stands. Top U.S. and global companies listen when the White House speaks, but they listen and take stands when consumers register complaints.

This year has all the makings of an even more powerful moment for the brands taking stands movement.

Photo: Know Your Rights Camp.

From big investments in the electric vehicle segment to scooter invasions in cities worldwide, we saw a great deal of movement in the sustainable transport space in 2018. Next year is expected to be no different, and we can't wait to see what the future brings. Here are five trends to watch as we move into the New Year.

1. Electric cars get a luxury makeover.

Upstart automaker Tesla burst onto the scene in 2006 with its all-electric Roadster, a gorgeous sports car that could go from zero to 60 in less than five seconds and unapologetically courted the "car guy" crew. With killer torque and an unprecedented 244 miles of all-electric range, this initial proof of concept helped Tesla rise quickly from obscurity to icon status. Three years later, Tesla stopped taking orders for the Roadster, and it continues to shift toward the mass market—producing cheaper and cheaper cars that deliver the same industry-leading battery range and technology.

As mainstream automakers first started to dapple in electric vehicles, most also pursued mass-market price points. Without the tech expertise of Tesla, however, many delivered early EVs with poor battery range and awkwardly futuristic appearances that some deemed flat-out ugly.

Fast forward to 2019, and industry insiders are predicting a luxury EV revolution. Carmakers like Jaguar, Audi and Porsche are set to rapidly expand their electric offerings this year, reported Peter Valdes-Dapena of CNN Business. Audi is already taking deposits for its E-Tron all-electric sport-utility vehicle and will begin deliveries in mid-2019. The sleek E-Tron, which can go from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds and tow up to 4,000 pounds, will join the Jaguar I-Pace in the luxury electric SUV segment.

Porsche's first all-electric car, the Taycan, will hit the market at the end of next year, Valdes-Dapena of CNN Business reported, and BMW also has plans for new luxury EVs in 2019. Even Tesla will come full circle with a re-launch of the Roadster, although those won't be available until 2020.

2. Self-driving car services reimagine personal transport.

For those who can't quite afford a new luxury car, there's a good chance you won't have to. As technology reporter Chris Neiger of The Motley Fool predicted in November, "2019 is shaping up to be the year of the self-driving car service." Indeed, mainstream automakers like General Motors and Volkswagen—along with tech firm competitors like Alphabet's Waymo and Intel's Mobileye—are gearing up for a big year.

While Waymo backed off its original aspiration to launch a human-free taxi service in 2019, the company still boasts the largest autonomous ride-hailing fleet in the U.S. Its commercial robo-taxi service launched in four Phoenix suburbs in December 2018, albeit with human supervisors still at the wheel. The company plans to expand service in parts of California, Texas, Georgia, Michigan and Washington in the New Year, Investor's Business Daily reported.

Meanwhile, GM plans to "begin mass producing fully autonomous cars, without steering wheels or pedals, starting in 2019," reported Neiger of The Motley Fool. Volkswagen and Mobileye will partner on an autonomous ride-hailing service in Israel this year, while Toyota and Uber continue their own partnership—set to culminate in a commercial fleet of self-driving robo-taxis in mid-2019, Neiger reported. Ford is also testing its autonomous technology in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Miami with a grocery-delivery service in partnership with Walmart and Postmates, which will expand to Washington, D.C. in 2019.

3. Electric buses push forward worldwide.

More than 385,000 fully electric buses are in use around the world, CityLab reported earlier this year. China is the clear leader in the electric bus game, with 99 percent of the world's battery-powered buses, according to a 2018 report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But the trend is beginning to take off worldwide.

In December 2018, California regulators voted to require the state's bus fleet to completely phase out fossil fuels by 2040. While the transition period will likely include other lower-emissions options like natural gas and hydrogen fuel cell buses, the decision paves the way for broader deployment of all-electric alternatives. Los Angeles County and San Francisco, for example, have both committed to shift their entire bus fleets to all-electric before 2035, GreenTech Media reported.

Experts expect others to follow suit. "We would not be surprised to see other states with environmentally-minded regulators follow California’s lead over time, just as 13 other states enforce California-set fuel economy standards for light-duty vehicles," Pavel Molchanov, senior VP and equity research analyst for Raymond James & Associates, told Seeking Alpha.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will deploy 18 electric buses at its three airports over the next six months, Mass Transit Magazine reported last week. Chicago's Transit Board is also expanding its electric fleet with 20 new buses, and New York City is in the midst of a three-year electric bus pilot. Across the pond, Chinese electric bus manufacturer BYD recently completed its first battery-powered buses made in France. The new buses will serve Beauvais-Tillé airport, about 65 miles outside Paris, as Western European governments also begin to embrace electric bus transport.

4. Alternative trucks usher in the next generation of logistics.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology has made big gains over the past year. 3p clean tech reporter Tina Casey covered many of them, including the burgeoning popularity of fuel cell forklifts and the world's first fuel cell passenger train. Concurrently, a handful of companies are looking to deploy fuel cell technology in trucking fleets, which are responsible for 23 percent of transportation-related emissions in the U.S. alone.

In May 2018, Anheuser-Busch committed to order up to 800 hydrogen fuel cell trucks from startup semi company Nikola. UPS is developing its own fuel cell truck in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. And Toyota introduced a beta version of its fuel cell truck this summer, with Hyundai right on its heels.

By harnessing a chemical reaction between hydrogen and water to run a generator, fuel cell vehicles are essentially electric vehicles, "just like their battery-operated cousins," Casey points out. But even as companies are expected to continue developing their fuel cell truck technologies in 2019, they're neck-and-neck with battery-powered models in the race toward mass production. The Nikola truck will begin a limited production run in 2021, with full production following one year later. Meanwhile, Tesla expects to have its all-electric semi ready for fleet testing in 2019, and a prototype has already been spotted on a Los Angeles freeway.

Dutch truck manufacturing company DAF delivered its first all-electric heavy truck in December, with more expected in 2019. German automaker Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, also delivered its first electric medium-duty truck in Los Angeles last week. With all of these first to wrap up 2018, look for alternative trucking to continue its push in the New Year.

5. The U.S. (finally) gets high-speed trains.

Even as high-speed rail services continued to proliferate across Europe and Asia, transit authorities in the U.S. were painfully slow to adopt the technology. But Americans will finally see high-speed train routes expand in 2019.

Richard Branson and the Virgin Group acquired a minority stake in high-speed rail startup Brightline Trains in November. Rebranded as Virgin Trains USA, the company hopes to launch a high-speed rail route connecting Orlando and Tampa, Florida, in 2019—adding to its existing high-speed service in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and a route serving Orlando that's set for completion in 2020. The company will also break ground in 2019 on an ambitious project to connect Las Vegas and Southern California via high-speed trains.

Communities in Texas and California's Central Valley can also expect the arrival of high-speed rail lines, although not until the early 2020s, travel media outlet AFAR reported. Amtrak customers will also have to wait until at least 2021 to realize their dreams of high-speed transit between Northeast cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Image credits: 1) Roberto Júnior via Unsplash 2) Courtesy of Porsche 3) Courtesy of Waymo 4) Courtesy of Proterra 5) Courtesy of Toyota 6) Courtesy of Brightline via the Virgin Group 

 

This article series is underwritten by Symantec and went through our normal editorial review process.

Identity theft is a nightmare for anyone who falls prey to it, and while everyone is vulnerable, America’s foster youth are particularly at-risk.

There is conflicting data about exactly how many foster youth are impacted by this problem, but estimates run as high as up to 50 percent of foster youth have been affected by identity theft such that by the age of 18, many of them are starting their adult lives with their credit already destroyed. This is an enormous problem when you consider that almost half a million children were in foster care as of 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

TriplePundit spoke with Ty Shay, SVP and CMO of Norton & LifeLock, and Symantec’s Consumer Business Unit to find out why foster youth are at greater risk of identity theft, and to learn how the company’s Fostering a Secure Tomorrow (FAST) program is helping to protect this vulnerable group.

Why are foster youth so vulnerable to identity theft?

First, what makes foster youth particularly vulnerable is that they lack consistency and stability in their lives. Unlike kids brought up by one or more parent or guardian, foster youth don’t have anyone consistently looking out for them throughout their childhoods. This typically forces them to move from place to place frequently within the system of care, which inherently gives many people access to their personal information.

 

Because their data changes hands so frequently, some cyber criminals have identified foster youth as easy targets and deduced ways to access their data—seizing upon their vulnerability to gain access to critical information such as birthdates, last-known addresses and social security numbers, allowing them to open lines of credit under the guise of a foster youth’s stolen identity.

As Shay points out, when it comes to foster youth, “no one has a vested interest in their identity.” Furthermore, identity theft tends to happen in the background, and it’s only when individuals try to apply for credit that they learn their identities have been stolen and their credit destroyed.

This presents foster youth with a dual problem—they must first learn their credit has been compromised and then take steps to restore it. Symantec’s FAST program was developed to address these issues by bringing the company’s core business capabilities into alignment with the opportunity to help create a safer future for foster youth.

The FAST program helps foster youth recover from identity theft

FAST is a pilot program targeted to support foster youth between the ages of 16 and 21 in four cities: San Jose and San Diego in California and Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona. Shay says these locations were selected for the pilot as the company has a local presence in these cities.

 

The program was developed in partnership with local nonprofit organizations that either work directly with foster youth or are involved with adults who interact with them. The program is organized according to three areas of focus:

• Education for nonprofits


• Tools for youth


• Restorative resources to help youth bounce back fast

Symantec is in the education phase of the program at the moment. This includes hosting in-person trainings, workshops and webinars and offering free online resources and toolkits to change behaviors that put foster youth at risk of identity theft. “The first step of the program is awareness, which is where our training and workshops come into play,” Shay says.

 

Starting primarily in Tempe, the program has so far trained 250 people spanning across all stakeholder groups: foster youth, foster families and service providers. In addition, Symantec has trained 70 employees who will be both educators and, soon, mentors for foster youth.

The mentoring program will begin in April. As well as working with youths, employee mentors will act as advocates for the program, which will include working with public officials with the aim of building stronger policies to protect the security of foster children. Notably, Symantec was invited to the nation’s capital to launch FAST earlier this year with members of Congress, including the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth.

Community partners offer a varied approach

The community nonprofits slated to complete the training bring different competencies to the table. Symantec chose these partners based on three outreach models that reflect their interaction with foster kids and teens.

 

The first model involves organizations that work directly with foster youth. The Bill Wilson Center, for example, provides housing, education, counseling and advocacy services to more than 6,300 children, young adults and families in Arizona. Promises2Kids works to support California children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect.

The second model involves organizations that work with adults who interact with foster youth. Aid to Adoption of Special Kids (AASK) recruits, trains and supports adults serving as mentors, as well as families who are building relationships with children through adoption and foster care.

The third model focuses on research and data and as of now includes only one partner organization. ITRC (Identity Theft Resource Center) supports victims of identity theft in resolving their cases and works to broaden public education and awareness in the understanding of identity theft, data breaches, cyber security, fraud and privacy issues.

Shay tells us that Symantec decided on these nonprofits in part because the company has partnered successfully with them before. Additionally, since the partnerships are based on three different models, the company will be able to learn a lot from each of them, Shay says. And since each partner operates near Symantec offices, employees can engage with both the organizations and the youth, person-to-person.

Tools and resources empower foster youth to overcome identity theft

The tools available under FAST will include easy-to-use security software to help foster youth keep their information safe. Norton Solutions will be distributed through another Symantec partner, TechSoup. Symantec will also offer free restorative LifeLock services to foster youth whose identities have been stolen, to help them get back on track as quickly as possible. This aspect of the program has not yet launched.

 

The program is sufficiently new that Symantec hasn’t been able to measure its effectiveness statistically, but the company is already able to gauge how FAST is being received by the target groups.

Encouragingly, foster youth exposed to FAST were generally interested and receptive to the initiative. “One of our fears was that this might be a boring topic,” Shay says, “but in the trainings we’ve done, the youth have been really engaged, asking great questions.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the scope of the problem within this segment of the population, many of the youths involved know someone whose identity was stolen, so it’s not an abstract subject for many of them. That said, the foster youth were often unaware that, as a group, they were particularly at risk, Shay tells us.

Importantly, a key purpose of the program is to offer ways for foster youth to be empowered to take ownership of their identities, and so far, Symantec has seen a solid response to this goal.

That’s a good sign, because according to Symantec, nationwide, there is an opportunity to educate at least 76,000 foster youth aged 16 and older on ways to mitigate identity theft and credit fraud while building a strong credit history.

Image: AdobeStock/highwaystarz

The global food industry begins 2019 with increased pressure to make sustainability a key ingredient in feeding an estimated 9.8 billion people by 2050.

One of the top trends in 2019 and beyond for global food innovation is what the market intelligence agency Mintel calls “evergreen consumption.” From farm to retailer to fork to bin and ideally, to rebirth as a new plant, ingredient, product or package, the industry is moving towards circularity as the new sustainability, according to Mintel.

This is exactly the approach the private sector must adopt to secure a sustainable food supply, according to Richard Waite, co-author of a recent synthesis report from the World Resources Institute, the World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future.

Sustainably feeding nearly 10 billion people by 2050 is possible, he says, but it will require significant innovation and investment by the public and private sector.  

A five-course menu

The report offers a five-course menu of solutions for feeding the planet without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. At the top of the menu is reducing growth in demand for food and other agricultural products. Add to that the need to raise food production without expanding agricultural land. The menu also includes protecting and restoring natural ecosystems, limiting agricultural land-shifting; boosting the health of fisheries and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agricultural production.

“Private industry has role to play across the whole menu and they are already playing a substantial role,” Waite, an associate with WRI’s Food Program, told TriplePundit. “Companies are innovating ways to shift consumers to more sustainable diets, reduce food and waste and accelerate agricultural productivity. But we need to do all of this at a much faster rate than we did in the Green Revolution.”

Overall food demand is on course to increase by more than 50 percent, and demand for animal-based foods by nearly 70 percent, according to the WRI report. Yet today, hundreds of millions of people remain hungry, agriculture already uses almost half of the world’s vegetated land, and agriculture and related land-use change generate one-quarter of annual GHG emissions.

Closing the gaps

Meeting the demand for food requires closing three massive “gaps” by 2050, the report notes:

• The food gap: 56 percent more crop calories have to be produced than in 2010.


• The land gap: 593 million hectares of additional agriculture land are needed, an area nearly twice the size of India.


• The GHG mitigation gap: holding global warming below a 1.5°C increase would require meeting a 4 gigatons target representing agriculture’s proportional contribution to GHG emissions, plus reforesting hundreds of millions of hectares of liberated agricultural land.

Shifting diets to less meat

Consumption of animal-based foods is projected to rise 68 percent between 2010 and 2050, with an 88 percent increase in consumption of ruminant meat (meat from cattle, sheep and goats). These trends are a major driver of all three gaps, according to Waite.

“For every food calorie generated, animal-based foods—and ruminant meats in particular—require many times more feed and land inputs, and emit far more greenhouse gases, than plant-based foods,” Waite says.

The shift away from meat-based diets is a particularly prevalent trend among Millennials, as TriplePundit recently reported, with 40 percent of Millennials embracing plant-based diets.

Food producers are paying attention. United Kingdom retailers Sainsbury and Tesco are stocking more meat alternative products to meet the demand of the U.K.’s estimated 22 million “flexitarians” who want to reduce their meat consumption. The global food services company Sodexo introduced last year The Natural, a beef-mushroom blend aimed at meeting increasing consumer demand for sustainable foods with a lighter footprint.

Sodexo, Sainsbury, Google and Hilton Worldwide are among the members of WRI’s Better Buying Lab, an initiative to research and scale cutting-edge strategies that enable consumers to choose more sustainable foods, focusing first on plant-based foods.

Reducing food waste

Another key action for both governments and companies, according to Waite, is to set food loss and waste reduction targets aligned with one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target 12.3, which calls for reducing food loss and waste by 50 percent by 2030.

The Consumer Goods Forum has taken up this call, with a commitment to halve food waste within the operations of its members by 2025 and to support the wider SDGs on the issue.

Reducing food loss and waste by 25 percent globally would reduce the food calorie gap by 12 percent, the land use gap by 27 percent and the GHG mitigation gap by 15 percent, according to the WRI report.

“Companies are recognizing that they can gross sales, reduce costs and address sustainable food challenges all at once by adopting new practices,” Waite told TriplePundit.

Image credit: Sunawang/Pixabay

Netflix, responding to complaints from Saudi Arabia’s government, has removed an episode of a quick-witted political show which criticizes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The episode plainly titled “Saudi Arabia” from Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj originally aired October 28 in response to the brutal, and still mysterious, death of Khashoggi, whose body was violently dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. International lawmakers and intelligence organizations alike allege that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a role in the murder, but the Kingdom, despite fumbling its story time and time again, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Saudi Arabia successfully blocked the show by citing a cybercrime law that says criticizing the government through any form of digital medium is a criminal act punishable by up to five years in prison. Netflix, who acted swiftly to “comply with local law,” received immediate criticism for condoning a policy that undermines free speech.

“Netflix’s claim to support artistic freedom means nothing if it bows to demands of government officials who believe in no freedom for their citizens -- not artistic, not political, not comedic,” tweeted Human Rights Watch executive director Sarah Leah Whitson.

In the episode, the show’s namesake and famed comedian Hasan Minhaj discussed how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reputation as “the reformer the Arab world needed” led itself to a coddling, Oprah-welcoming world tour - only to see his the prince’s star fall nearly overnight following the revelations of Khashoggi’s murder. Minhaj said that although the United States has strategically kept good relations with the Kingdom since the 1930s, it is now time that the current administration should reassess such an alliance. He also lambasted the atrocious proxy war currently devastating Yemen.

What’s ironic, as Minhaj noted in a tweet following Netflix’s announcement to remove the episode, is that quashing the episode in Saudi Arabia is shooting it directly into the spotlight. Suddenly, an episode Minhaj first debuted two months ago has resurfaced as a must watch. Netflix removed the episode from only Saudi Arabia’s streaming service, keeping it available in other countries. The episode is also on YouTube free of charge.

“Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube,” Minhaj tweeted.

Mary Ann Halford, a former 21st Century Fox executive, told CNN Business that Netflix made the right choice in abiding by local laws. She said the best way to effect change is to stay in the market and continue to push the envelope that way. Netflix’s decision to stand up to the Saudi government may have resulted in the entire streaming service getting the boot.

“They could risk being shut down in Saudi Arabia, and I don’t think doing that advances Netflix’s interest,” Halford said.

While Netflix may continue to toe the line between keeping relevant content available and not overstepping with anti-government content in Saudi Arabia, other companies have been more outspoken in their dissidence against the Kingdom.

In the immediate aftermath of Khasshogi’s murder, several companies and individuals pulled out of Saudi Arabia’s mammoth conference, the Future Investment Initiative (FII), which was held last October. The long list of names included the likes of the World Bank President, leading international government officials and a number of prominent columnists representing powerhouse media organizations like the New York Times, The Economist and CNN.

More stinging, billions of dollars are being taken off the investment table as the Khasshogi investigation amplifies. Virgin Group’s founder and billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson ended talks over a $1 billion investment in tourism projects; Hollywood agency Endeavor Content is discarding a $400 million investment deal with the Kingdom’s wealth fund; and former energy secretary Ernest Moniz suspended his role advising a $500 billion smart city project.

For now, Netflix has acquiesced to the Saudi government’s demands, but it does remain a positive that the streaming service continues to operate in the country three years after its debut. Netflix is available worldwide in every country except for China, the Crimea, North Korea and Syria.

Image credit: DVIDS