AAgainst a global backdrop of violent conflict, debilitating financial conditions and increasingly extreme weather events, leaders of major institutions have had to adapt and search for meaning beyond profit creation, as senior officials from four companies discussed on Wednesday. on stage at the TIME100 Summit.
Tory Burch, executive chairman and chief creative officer of Tory Burch, creator of the Tory Burch Foundation and member of this year’s TIME100, said that when she considers leading her company over the past 20 years, she “can’t believe it’s still standing.”
“Being an entrepreneur today is, as I mentioned, whiplash. Because with all these things going on in the world, with all the macro stuff going on, you have to be super agile – you have to have conviction and a vision and not deviate from that – but also be able to go with the flow,” Burch added.
Burch joined Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of retirement financial services company TIAA, and Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon (a TIME100 Summit supporting partner), for a conversation moderated by TIME CEO Jessica Sibley, about leading with purpose.
Each person spoke about the importance of leading “with purpose,” as Sibley put it, “and not just leading for profit.” And with the current challenges to the world’s financial security and well-being, that starts with serving both employees and customers who need your services.
“We are having more armed conflicts in the world than since the Second World War. We live in a society where we should understand each other better, we should talk to each other, we should learn better, we should be educated and understand that there are differences. And we don’t need to fight and have wars for that,” said Vestberg. As a communications executive, he emphasized the need to spread connectivity and broadband equitably across society.
Vestberg continued that leaders especially have an “enormous responsibility” far beyond keeping shareholders happy. “I have hundreds of thousands of employees who basically come in every day and work for me. My responsibility is that I have a positive influence on them, that they have a job, that they have growth, that they can support their families.”
Duckett, who is also on this year’s TIME100 list, cited the need for effective leadership to fulfill his company’s mission and create equitable access to financial resources to prepare for retirement.
“The reality is that 40% of all Americans will be broke in retirement,” Duckett said. She added more statistics: Women retire with 30% less in their savings. Fifty-four percent of African Americans do not have enough money to retire. Sixty-four percent of Hispanics do not have access to a workplace plan and 41 percent of people ages 25 to 35 do not save or take advantage of their workplace plan. “So we have to do better,” she added.
“We can make sure that everyone is automatically enrolled in their work plan, and not being someone like my dad who worked 40+ years at a company and didn’t contribute a dollar to his 401k plan because maybe he worked in the warehouse and scanned boxes, and the sophisticated stuff didn’t make it to the man in the warehouse,” Duckett added. “It’s a fight and one I’m committed to.”
The TIME100 Summit brings together leaders from the global TIME100 community to highlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers from diverse sectors, including politics, business, health and science, culture and more.
Speakers at the 2024 TIME 100 Summit include actor Elliot Page, Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad, WNBA champion A’ja Wilson, author Margaret Atwood, NYSE President Lynn Martin, comedian Alex Edelman, professor Yoshua Bengio , the 68th Secretary of State John Kerry, actor Jane Fonda and many more.
The Leading With Purpose panel was presented by Verizon.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
