“HR leaders can [understand LGBTQ+ inclusion], but if business leaders get it, they can really drive change.”
Todd Sears is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Out Leadership, the global LGBT+ business advisory company that partners with the world’s most influential firms to build business opportunity, cultivate talent, and drive equality forward.
In 2001, gay marriage was not legal. That meant there were over 1,049 rights at the federal level that the LGBT+ community did not enjoy, over 90% being financial. This presented a massive opportunity as there was an entire segment in desperate need of financial guidance related to protecting livelihoods and estates. This ultimately led to the creation of global conferences in 2011 called Out on the Street that brought CEOs together in support of the LBGT+ community in business. “Everything that we've done globally with 650 CEOs, and now 85 companies, is focused on the idea that business can drive equality, but from a business imperative.”
Beyond the social value, LGBT+ advocacy has real economic benefits. Leaders in the business communities of places like Singapore, where homosexuality is still illegal, can be influential in applying pressure.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Todd Sears
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Out Leadership
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Joe Eletto: (00:07)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is Joe Eletto, and I'm the production manager of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform, encompassing finance, technology, and geopolitics. SALT Talks is a series of digital interviews with the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. And just as we do at our global SALT conferences, we aim to both empower big, important ideas, and provide our audience a window into the minds of subject matter experts.
Joe Eletto: (00:35)
And we are very excited today to welcome Todd Sears to SALT Talks. Todd is the founder and chief executive officer of Out Leadership, the global LGBT+ business network trusted by CEOs and multinational companies to drive return on equality. Out Leadership creates executive events and insights that help businesses realize the economic growth and talent dividend derived from inclusion. I'll cut the bio a little bit short there, because we're going to get in more and more about Todd in a bit from the horse's mouth, if you will. But if you have any questions for Todd during today's talk, please enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen, and we'll endeavor to get to them before the end of the talk, but, Todd, it's a real pleasure. Welcome. Welcome to SALT Talks.
Todd Sears: (01:20)
Thanks, Joe. It's great to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
Joe Eletto: (01:23)
Absolutely. So we begin each SALT Talk asking our guest to tell us something about them that we can't find on their proverbial Wikipedia page. But I'd like to turn it over to you, to walk us through sort of a robust Wikipedia page, if you will. Your journey, and how you got to where you are today, and share your story with the SALT audience.
Todd Sears: (01:41)
Sure. Well, if you do go to my Wikipedia page, it's very clear that I am openly gay. So you can find that from Wikipedia, but I'll weave that into the story. I knew I was gay when I was four, which for most folks who are LGBTQ that's actually in the range. Most people know their sexual orientation or gender identity between the ages of three and eight. For me anyway, I grew up in North Carolina, and it took me until I was 18 to actually be comfortable to come out. I moved all around. My dad was in textiles, so I went to nine different schools before I went to boarding school in Virginia. And spring of my senior year in boarding school at Woodbury Forest in Virginia, I came to New York. And I saw a play called Angels in America, which I think a lot of folks have seen, hopefully. It just celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, or two years ago, which nothing like having a play that made you come out celebrate a 20th anniversary to make you feel old.
Todd Sears: (02:37)
But I basically, I saw my life kind of played out on that screen. I was the good old southern boy who was going to get married and have 2.2 kids, live in a white picket fence, do all the right things. And you see it played out on the screen, or on the stage, actually a character named Joe the Mormon, who's played by a guy named David Marshall Grant, who if you've saw The Devil Wears Prada, he was her dad in the movie. And so he basically, the show, showed me what I was going to be if I didn't come out, and so in the Walter Carr Theater in spring of 1994 I came out to myself. And I went back to Virginia, and I actually wrote a letter to Joe the Mormon, David Marshall Grant, and I sent it to the theater.
Todd Sears: (03:21)
And interestingly, all through my years at Duke, he actually wrote me. We corresponded, and he was kind of my first ally, my first mentor, and he really kind of helped me navigate what it meant to be gay. Because if you think about role models and visible gay people in the '90's, there were very few. And those that we did have were either very stereotypical, drag queens, florists, or people dying of HIV. That was pretty much what you saw. You didn't see gay bankers, you didn't see gay lawyers. You didn't have CEOs who were gay. You didn't have anyone saying that you can have a career if you were gay, right? I mean, it was kind of career suicide at that point in business to be gay. And so I sort of internalized that, but also was lucky enough at Duke to have some great fraternity brothers and great supporters, and I was in campus politics.
Todd Sears: (04:02)
And so out of college I moved to New York, and I went to Wall Street, which was at that point late '90's. And my first boss was a homophobe. He used the term faggot on the floor with regularity, and it was kind of shocking actually. I thought back, and I thought, hey, I grew up in North Carolina, and I never really had issues. And here I am in New York City on Wall Street, and I have a homophobic boss. What are the odds? So I did what most gay people do who are in homophobic environments, and went back in the closet, and I started looking for a new job. And the second investment bank that I worked for, I was super out in my interview. I was like, "I'm gay, and you need to know this." And they were all like, "Dude, it's totally fine. We're cool with the gay thing." But coming from a homophobic environment, that mattered, and that was a decision I made, that I would never again be in the closet for any point in my career.
Todd Sears: (04:57)
And what that also allowed me to do was connect who I was as a person, to the community to which I belong, to business. And from an investment-banking perspective, it allowed me to actually help win business, by connecting with gay CEOs and gay business owners. And so I was on the sell site M&A in media, and we actually won the business of Out and Advocate magazine merging the second time, I think, they did it, which ultimately led, when I was a private banker, to helping take PlanetOut public, which was the first gay IPO, which was pretty exciting.
Todd Sears: (05:24)
And so the idea that I was able to leverage who I was, to have those connections, was kind of a new thing. And so I switched sides of the world and went to private banking in Maryland in 2001. And for those who know private banking, probably a lot of folks listening today, you get a phone, a desk, a computer, and they say bring in a million dollars a month of new assets. And if after eight months you don't have $8 million, sayonara you're fired, which at that point, I believe, the fail rate was 92%. And I put together a business plan for focusing on LGBT financial planning. And believe it or not, in 2001, not a single Wall Street bank had thought about the LGBT community as a market, as a business opportunity.
Todd Sears: (06:03)
At that time, because marriage equality was not a reality, there were over 1,049 rights at a federal level that gay and lesbian couples did not enjoy, because of federal recognition not being an option. And about 90% of those rights were financial, titling, taxation and estate planning, all of those types of things. And I thought why isn't another firm talking to these folks? These folks need help protecting their families, protecting their livelihood, protecting their estates. And so I put together a plan, and I partnered with Lambda Legal, which is the largest LGBT civil rights organization in the U.S. And I did domestic partner planning seminars all over the country, helping gay and lesbian couples understand how to protect their assets, how to have a charitable planning component to their financial plan, and ultimately how they could support Lambda, HRC.
Todd Sears: (06:47)
We actually had 31 nonprofits whose endowments I managed at that time, and in the first 12 months I brought in $100 million of net new assets. And after the first four years, I brought in almost $2 billion, which was great, it was nice. I got to keep my job, so that was a bonus. But what was also exciting was I tracked it as an ROI initiative. I didn't go to Merrill Lynch and say this is the right thing to do. I said this is the right thing to do for business. This is the right thing to do for our reputation. This is the right thing to do for our employees. And I tracked it as something that they needed to reinvest in. So I actually got a meeting with the head of Wealth Management, Dan [Sontag 00:00:07:24], my second year, and I got 30 minutes with him, and I was 25, I think, so so it was like two years ago. And so I-
Joe Eletto: (07:33)
[inaudible 00:07:33].
Todd Sears: (07:33)
Look, right, exactly. I didn't have quite as much gray hair. So I said, look, I brought in $100 million in the first 12 months, and we as Merrill Lynch can own this market. And if you really want to, we could do it, and here's how we do it, and asking for a quarter-million bucks of sponsorship, and he gave it to me. And I later found out, in 37 years at Merrill, he'd never given a financial advisor a dollar, but he gave me a quarter of a million. And the deal was I had to report back to him once a quarter on the ROI in his investment, and the ROI on his investment was twofold. One was new assets under management, but it was also more financial advisors who were focusing on the LGBT market.
Todd Sears: (08:07)
And I later found out that was a bit of a test, because, as he said to me later, when he tapped me to kind of lead diversity strategy for him, he said, you're not a financial advisor, you're a leader. Because a financial advisor would not share his or her ideas, and want to bring in other leaders with them, right? That's a leadership role, not an advisor role, and ultimately I'd brought in 250 other financial advisors and help them sort of do the same thing. So that was the framework. And along the way, because of the work that we did, Merrill won all kinds of accolades. We actually helped advocate for LGBT equality through marriage equality, through adding non-discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity, transgender medical benefits, we won the HRC award. All because they were doing the right thing for business, not just because they were doing the right thing for LGBT employees and clients.
Todd Sears: (08:52)
And along the way, I got to really have some great and mentors, and we can chat about that as well. But the ability as an out, gay person to then help other people be out and visible, was something I was very proud of. Ultimately, as I mentioned, he tapped me to run diversity strategy for him, which I did. And then I was recruited away to Credit Suisse, and I was head of diversity inclusion for them across all their businesses. And in 2010 they laid me off, which was awesome. And so I was sitting on my cell phone with a severance check and multiple martinis, and I thought, all right, what the heck is next? What am I going to do next in my life? And I kind of looked around at my Merrill experience, which was so incredibly positive and wonderful, and I was the guy that would get choked up with the Merrill commercials, and Mr. Loyalty kind of thing, would dollar the bull.
Todd Sears: (09:41)
And, anyway, and I thought, and I looked around ten years ago, and if you think back for the leaders on this call, we didn't see CEOs using their economic platform to advocate for change or equality, or any sort of social justice platform. We didn't have companies using their economic power in places like North Carolina or Indonesia or Singapore, to advocate for gay equality, or really almost anything. And I thought, could I create that conversation? And could I use the learning of getting an old, conservative Irish Catholic command-and-control company like Merrill to support gay equality, because I taught it's the bottom line?
Todd Sears: (10:12)
And so I start a summit I called Out on the Street. I used my severance check to fund it. And the idea was using Wall Street as an example, and kind of Davos, all talk to me, this type of conversation was the model. CEO-hosted, senior-business-leader attended, not a diversity summit, not an HR summit. I really wanted business leaders, because HR and diversity folks get it, but if business leaders get it then they can actually drive change. So our first summit was in March, 2011, so we're almost ten years old now. I think you guys celebrated ten years last year, I think, if I'm not mistaken, right?
Joe Eletto: (10:42)
We did. You were at our tenth anniversary conference.
Todd Sears: (10:44)
Yeah, which was awesome. And so the first six banks were Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. And I gave each of the six original banks ten slots for director level or higher business leaders. And I said the framework's going to be business, talent and equality, but in that order. I want you to be in the room because it matters to your business. You've got to have the right talent to execute on it, and equality's the output, not the starting point. And we were 200% oversubscribed for the first summit. Two weeks later, four of those six CEOs signed on for marriage equality for New York, and we grew from there. So I launched in Europe almost nine years ago, in Asia eight years ago. We were the first gay summit ever an Asia, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in Sydney, Australia.
Todd Sears: (11:21)
So now, around the world in 2019, we had Davos-like summits in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney. We have talent initiatives for young, gay leaders that we built called OutNEXT. We have a talent initiative for senior LGBT women called OutWOMEN. We have a board program called Forum, which we can chat about, as well as research on allyship, on self-identification, on the business bottom-line benefits of LGBT equality. And everything that we've done globally with 650 CEOs, and now 85 companies, is focused on the idea that business can drive equality, but from a business imperative. So we get these companies to leverage the economic power they have by doing business in states and countries all around the world, to say that discrimination against gay people, LGBTQ people, is simply bad for business. And so that's what I'm now doing around the world.
Joe Eletto: (12:08)
I think it's fantastic. Just to go back to Angels in America, I actually saw that when it was on Broad- I think it, was it two years ago already? That's-
Todd Sears: (12:16)
Yeah.
Joe Eletto: (12:16)
The 25th?
Todd Sears: (12:17)
Yeah.
Joe Eletto: (12:18)
I took a picture of the wings and everything. That was, yeah, it was something I'll never forget. I just, I don't know, I loved the story.
Todd Sears: (12:24)
And the HBO, the miniseries of it as well, Meryl Streep and DeNiro, and an amazing cast of folks. So if you haven't seen it on Broadway, it's still on HBO so.
Joe Eletto: (12:34)
And that's what I'll be watching this weekend. So just to go back to SALT 2019, and, you know-
Todd Sears: (12:40)
Yeah.
Joe Eletto: (12:40)
You moderated a panel on diversity leaders from BlackRock, Bank of America, a hundred women in finance and HP. And Leslie Slaton Brown, who's the chief diversity officer of HP, said that they implemented a process at HP to actively track business one, because diversity was at the table. So I sort of want to do a state of the state, if you will, of how member firms at Out Leadership are able to use the power of business to successfully drive change.
Todd Sears: (13:07)
Yeah. Well, I'd say a couple things. I think what gets measured gets done. So I think companies like HP, that are measuring diversity and their impacts, matter. It depends on what they're measuring, and how these companies are looking to effect change, right? So, internally, I always say the representation is a lagging indicator, to put it in financial terms. It's the result of your corporate culture of the last five years. Engagement is a leading indicator. So too often companies say, oh, we don't have enough of insert blank, whatever blank is, women, people of color, LGBT, and we have too many of insert blank here, generally straight white men. And the challenge with that is that you're saying that you're valuing difference differently, right? And the idea is that it's a problem to be solved, it's only focused on head count and belly buttons, it's not focused on opportunity or business.
Todd Sears: (13:52)
There's a guy named Martin Davidson at Darden school that talks about leveraging difference. And he actually says it's an opportunity to be capitalized on, all elements of difference. Both inherent and acquired diversity count, right, so acquired diversity is more your mentality, and your diversity of thought and perspective. And ultimately everyone, including straight white men, have something to be gained from that idea. And so when companies are looking at this, I really encourage them to think about it as an opportunity, not a problem, that everyone does have a role to play, and that's on the internal side.
Todd Sears: (14:20)
On the external side, quite frankly, as we know from pretty much every metric, discrimination is bad for business, whether it's discrimination against black people, white people, LGBTQ people, et cetera, and companies are in a war for talent. So the challenge that if you're doing business in Singapore, for example, where gay people are still illegal - there's 67 countries around the world where it's still illegal to be LGBT- but in 100% of those countries, we are doing business. So if you want to actually bring your top talent into Singapore, it's hard. And so if we can get 19% of Singapore's GDP, which is financial services, to say to the Singapore government that 377A, which is the anti-sodomy law that's on the books, is bad for business, then that's how you start to effect change. And that's really the model of Out Leadership, is using that soft power that businesses have to advocate for change, because it does matter to their talent, to their clients, and to their bottom line.
Joe Eletto: (15:09)
Yeah. And I think this goes well into talking about the Quorum initiative of Out Leadership, so that works to ensure that LGBTQ+ diversity is central in conversations about board representation and policy. So, are there examples that you can share, where something like that having a more diverse board, having more representation at the top, actually has affected change, whether that's locally or internationally?
Todd Sears: (15:33)
Yeah. Well, so I'd say, so first of all, Quorum is our board program, and we've been doing it for about seven years now. And the idea, quite frankly, was expanding the board conversation to include LGBT folks at the board diversity level. So, too often the conversations around board diversity only center on race and gender, and historically have not included LGBTQ, and to me that's just a missed opportunity. Because there are LGBTQ people of color, women, et cetera, so why wouldn't you broaden the pool? And the first step of that is actually including people in the policy. And so we're actually, literally today, will be launching Out Leadership's policy in a box. There are only 12 companies in the Fortune 500 that include LGBT in the definition of board diversity currently. There were only two, so we've gotten ten to amend their policy, which is great. We've also gotten CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York City and New York state pension funds to include LGBTQ in the definition of diversity that they mandate for their investment strategies. So they have to have board diversity in the governance of the companies that they make investments in.
Todd Sears: (16:32)
And then a lot of private equity firms, KKR, Carlisle, et cetera, and Blackstone and BlackRock, are in the same kind of zeitgeists, in terms of using their buying power of the market to actually say that this is something that matters to them. So it's about having people involved in the conversation, it's about including people in the policy, but then it's about holding companies accountable. The California law that just passed last month was a great example, I think. And so it requires all companies doing business, who are based in California, to have diversity at the board level.
Todd Sears: (17:02)
And we've been advocating the last three years, and thanks to a lot of lawmakers in California who listened, LGBT is included in that definition for those companies. Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, actually announced at Davos this last year that Goldman would no longer take a company public if they did not have a diverse board. And for Goldman Sachs, that Goldman was actually one of the two companies originally that included LGBT in the definition of board diversity. So for Goldman, LGBT is included, and they're actually a supporter of the Quorum initiative, as is KPMG, Ropes and Gray and Egon Zehnder, is coming on board as well.
Todd Sears: (17:34)
So it's kind of a mixture, I guess, is the best way to say it, that it does matter for folks to be included at the top. It's not about belly button counting, and saying you have to have one gay person, one black person, one woman. But it is about broadening the pool, and saying you really should have diverse thoughts and perspectives. And most of the research out there does show that diverse thought and perspective leads to better outcomes.
Joe Eletto: (17:54)
Yeah. And I was going to follow up with this, and you kind of answered it, but I guess we can extrapolate on it a little bit. And some companies approach diversity and inclusion as belly buttons, as optics, as, look, we have a gay person, throw us a bone. So how do we push back on the tokenism, when data and business case here you will make money, this is good for business. How do we push back on those companies that say nah, it's just not for me?
Todd Sears: (18:21)
Well, there's a great Peter Drucker quote that I like, when he's Mr. ... At any of the MBA schools really do a lot of Peter Drucker focus, and he has this great quote, which he says, In business, you don't have to change. Survival is optional." And I really look at it in that way with all these conversations. You shouldn't be required to have to do these things, but if you're a forward-thinking business in today's world, purpose matters. And the consumer actually does care what you as a company do with your employees, in your supply chain, how you address climate, how you address LGBTQ people, Black Lives Matter. And the tie-in to me, as well, is if you look at the data that shows that people don't actually trust the government, people do trust CEOs in business now. And over the last ten years that has dramatically changed. Ten years ago it was risky for a CEO to speak out on gay issues, for example. Now it's actually risky for companies not to have some sort of perspective.
Todd Sears: (19:19)
So I think that the tokenism is one key piece of it, and I think it really depends on how the companies approach it. It goes back to opportunity versus problem, right? A great example I love from research on the trading floor, testosterone levels on the trading floor go down if you have a better gender balance, which leads to less risk-taking, which leads to better returns, right?
Joe Eletto: (19:42)
Yeah.
Todd Sears: (19:42)
That's not saying that you need to hire more women because you need to hire more women. It's saying a better gender balance gets you better outcomes. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink book, I think, is a great example as well. He talks about symphony orchestras, and the percentage of women that were in symphony orchestras in 1980 was something like 4%. And there was an audition, that one of the people auditioning had a connection to the conductor. And so they decided to do the auditions blind. And so all of the folks auditioning for this role went behind a screen, played their piece. And the conductor, two-thirds of the way through, said, ah, that's it, that's the person, that's who I want, and out walks a woman. And she's a, I think it was, a brass instrument. And he said, well, women can't play a brass. You don't have the lung capacity, you're too small, let's do this again. He does it again, points, says that's the person I want, out walks the same poor woman.
Todd Sears: (20:28)
And he ultimately hired her as second chair. She still had to earn to go to first chair, which is complete BS, but ultimately symphony orchestra auditions now are all done blind. What percentage of symphony orchestras are now women? Roughly 40%. They didn't do it because they needed more women, right, as a tokenism, right? It was they needed the right people with the right skills to make the right sounds, to make the great orchestra. So I think the idea of removing blind spots, and actually having people there for their skills and their, I would say, what they bring to the table, versus their gender ethnicity orientation, is how companies should look at it. Unfortunately. too often companies don't, and there's this balance of holding companies accountable for that.
Joe Eletto: (21:08)
Yeah. And you actually just reminded me of my, I mean, in my past life I was an opera singer. So I went to school, undergrad and grad, for music.
Todd Sears: (21:14)
Nice. That's awesome.
Joe Eletto: (21:14)
So having my friends go behind the wall, and it was amazing. I was like, oh, you can't really do this for music, for singing actually. I don't know if it would work. They can't tell if you can emote or anything, but it's imagine if that was done more broadly.
Todd Sears: (21:29)
Yeah, and companies are looking at that. There's some companies that on resumes they'll take off people's names, because that can be an identifying factor, or taking people's universities off, so that they don't do the oh I went to Duke too kind of frat guy sort of thing or what. So removing opportunities for people's blind spots to sort of overtake the reason is smart.
Joe Eletto: (21:50)
Yeah. I want to want to turn to something that's been on no one's mind the past week, and I guess that's politics and the election. Nothing too salacious or scandalous, I promise, but I just want to get your opinion on what a Biden/Harris administration would look like for LGBTQ rights. Obviously we had a surprise, honestly, but major victory this summer, with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. But today, I believe oral arguments are beginning for Fulton vs. Philadelphia for Catholic services. So everyone, Democrats, pro-gay, but what does that translate to you, and how are you going to be advocating with the new, with the change of administration?
Todd Sears: (22:33)
Well, I would say a few things. I think, one, it's a mistake to assume that LGBT inclusion is just a democratic issue. I think there are significant numbers of Republicans, Independents, who look at discrimination is bad for business, or bad for the country, or bad for themselves, their families. Ken Mehlman, who's an Out Leadership board member for many, many years, organized the Republicans Amicus Brief for marriage equality. Paul Singer has spoken at our summits, Stan Loeb. There are a lot of folks who you would not necessarily put in the camp, per se, of liberal support, and yet they do support inclusion, which I think is just worth pointing out. And because I think as we go forward as a country, 71 million people voted for Trump, and they can't all be bad folks who are anti LGBT. In fact, I don't think anti-gay animus was a driver for them. I think a lot of people looked at the economics, and that was more of a driver.
Todd Sears: (23:27)
Unfortunately, for minorities and LGBT folks, politics is personal, and I think that's what kind of got lost a lot in this election, right? That folks who are not LGBT, or from a majority community, or aren't Black or Hispanic or immigrant or Muslim, don't necessarily understand the fear that so many minorities lived under for so long of losing our rights. If you look at the LGBTQ in particular, trans folks have lost significant rights in the last four years, gay people have been discriminated against. Bostock was a great example from a support perspective, but in 37 States you can still be criminalized for having HIV. You can still just, the sexual orientation non-discrimination, included employment, but not in housing, so gay and lesbian people can still lose their housing across the United States. Gay adoption has been removed from so many states. There's so many elements of our just basic humanity and human rights that have been taken away/threatened.
Todd Sears: (24:24)
And I think that's what is hard for folks who are not part of these communities to necessarily understand. So when you're voting for someone who says those rights shouldn't exist, you're literally voting against my own humanity, and my rights to exist, and that's hard for some folks to take. So that idea, I think, is something that has gotten lost, that I think will, under Biden/Harris administration, be, I think, obviously more positive from an LGBTQ perspective, from a minority perspective. Everyone that I've spoken to in the last week just feels like we finally can exhale, and I think that's a very common sentiment.
Todd Sears: (24:59)
But at the same point, I think we've got to do a great, or a better job, of building bridges among folks who did not understand why it mattered, and educating folks, and I think that is on us to create those conversations. As it relates to LGBTQ in particular, I think we will see a lot of support from this administration, just like we did from the Obama administration. And I do think the case that you mentioned, if I were to make a prediction, I do think we will have challenges with religious freedom going forward, and that will be at the Supreme Court level. I think there's a misconception that there is a religious right to discriminate, that people's closely-held religious beliefs give them the right to infringe on my civil rights, which is not the case. We should never have the right to discriminate against anyone based off of closely-held religious beliefs.
Todd Sears: (25:45)
Everyone has the same right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And my marriage or relationship, or whatever, does not infringe on anyone else's civil rights. And when people have actually gone to court, and they've been asked to explain how marriage equality somehow impacted their marriage, they were not able to do it. So there are, I think, a lot of challenges we have still ahead of us, but I'm excited about the direction our country is heading, and the opportunity to continue to create this conversation.
Joe Eletto: (26:13)
Absolutely. Pivoting off of that, we escaped without any major, major declarations.
Todd Sears: (26:19)
Twitter's blowing up right now, I don't know.
Joe Eletto: (26:21)
Absolutely. Our lights are going-
Todd Sears: (26:24)
Your followers are just going nuts.
Joe Eletto: (26:26)
So, representation is tremendous. I know we touched on it in the beginning. I just want to go back, because we have an anecdote from yesterday. We had a SALT Talk featuring two Black venture capitalists. And at the end, our moderator remarked that she couldn't identify many other instances, if any, of two Black VCs having conversations on a platform, not to toot our own horn, but such as SALT, such as, well, such as Out Leadership, that it just isn't happening as much as possible. And then sometimes, when you're on the other side of this - I don't know if you've had this experience, and I'm curious to know your thoughts - you program these amazing, robust conversations, and then you almost have to get people to kind of care. And it's a chicken and egg of how you get people in the room to witness what's going on, and what amazing ideas are happening.
Joe Eletto: (27:19)
So I'm just curious of your thoughts on how we continue to promote people. Is it just that we have to continue putting them out there, making their voice heard, and promoting them as much as we can with the platform that we have?
Todd Sears: (27:31)
I think the last piece of what you said, I think, is the right answer. So one of the learnings, I think, from the Black Lives Matter movement, was the idea that significant numbers of Black Americans did not have access to a platform to tell their stories, and to be seen and heard, as well as to fight systemic racism that still does exist in our country. So one of the things from Out Leadership perspective we've been trying to do is find opportunities to use our platform to share diverse voices. We're actually doing a big announcement tomorrow about a new Black/Trans initiative that we're kicking off in that same way, bringing an amazing leader onto my team, which I'm excited about.
Joe Eletto: (28:08)
Awesome.
Todd Sears: (28:09)
But the idea that, take Allies for example, and I think this kind of ties into one way to look at your question. The idea of being an ally to the Black community, to the gay community, to any of these marginalized communities, is that you are lending your voice, your power, your platform, so that those who don't have access to that platform can create some sort of visibility for themselves, and create opportunities for conversation. So as you're convening conversations, and using SALT's platform to bring together Black VC's, I think that's fantastic. That's, as we were chatting before, it's one thing to do it in an ecosystem of folks that would ordinarily expect to see such a conversation. And it's really, I think, probably a whole lot more impactful to do it in an ecosystem where that's not the expected conversation, because ultimately we have to reach more than just the choir. And I think that's the opportunity that you guys are creating. And I think as we go forward, from an Out Leadership perspective, that's what we're also trying to do as well.
Joe Eletto: (29:11)
Yeah. And I'd like to point out - this might be a milestone. I'm going to have to go back and double check - but I think this was the first SALT talk with two out members of LGBTQ community, so I can high five you through there.
Todd Sears: (29:23)
Awesome.
Joe Eletto: (29:24)
But turning to, and turning again - I have a really good way of getting to more somber things - COVID, turning to COVID, obviously we're virtual, we're not together. How are you guys responding to the COVID pandemic? What have you heard from your member firms, maybe from yourself or your own experiences, about the experience of people in the LGBTQ community? How are we disproportionately affected, if at all?
Todd Sears: (29:50)
Yeah, so we actually could convened as part of ... I think when we went virtual in March, we convened after the first conversation on HIV, LGBT and COVID, and sort of the intersections thereof, because there was a huge fear that HIV positive, and folks with AIDS, would be disproportionately impacted from a COVID perspective. And interestingly, so we had the head of Weill Cornell Medicine, and the president of Mt. Sinai, who's actually openly gay as well, discussing those issues. And fascinatingly, folks with the HIV and AIDS - not to be only I'm thinking that only LGBT people are HIV positive, by the way - were actually not at a greater risk, which was interesting, primarily because the medications that people are taking, including Gilead and Remdesivir, that ultimately was being used to treat COVID now, so maybe it was a silver lining, if you will.
Todd Sears: (30:38)
From an LGBT community perspective, I think the data is actually that we were not disproportionately affected, but Black and brown communities are and were, and that's across the United States. There is intersection there, but economics really do sort of drive a lot of that, and access to medical care, access to space, right? There are a lot of economic indicators that predispose people to be much more impacted by COVID. And unfortunately, the Black and brown communities of our country were much more impacted than the LGBT community, which leads to all kinds of other not necessarily positive outcomes as well. And it underscores the need for better inclusion, and more of us to understand what the situation is in Black and brown communities across the country.
Joe Eletto: (31:27)
Absolutely. Turning to Out Leadership, I know you guys are doing your conference, obviously, virtually. I wanted to see if you had anything you could share about that, what's going on, what the timing of that is, and how people can potentially be more involved with Out Leadership.
Todd Sears: (31:41)
Yeah. So when we went virtual in March, I decided that we would not do anything virtually that we wouldn't have done post pandemic. And so in 2019, we had 57 events around the world. In 2020 thus far, we've had 130, including a global virtual Pride platform we created called Proudly Resilient. We had 41 events all across Pride month, and all of them benefited 21 intersectional and LGBT nonprofits, which I was very proud of. Our talent program has expanded this year as well, so our OutNEXT program, we just launched a global curriculum in March, I'm sorry, in August. We had 2,500 young leaders from 110 companies and 27 countries participate in that platform. Our European summit, which is hosted by HSBC, happened in September. Our Asia summit, which was also hosted by HSBC, and EY and KPMG, just completed in October. We're about halfway through our U.S. summit, and I kicked off our Australia summit last night.
Todd Sears: (32:39)
And the I'd say the thematics are similar to what we're talking about today, the idea that business is continuing to drive change, that companies are driving change around the world, CEOs using their platform matter significantly. We have our second CEO round table this afternoon. And we had 17 CEOs and chairmen on Monday, and we have another 13 this afternoon, and we convene those round tables with the opportunity to share our data and research. So we've published four pieces of research this year, including the first-ever global ally research, which I can share with you guys to share. We had 5,000 leaders across 11 countries, then we had 3,000 leaders in the United States. And then we went back out in the field post-COVID, to understand really what the difference was, and then the idea of really making it actionable, so that leaders need to actually come out as allies, we say, just like LGBTQ people have to come out, allies have to come out, and the impact that that makes in companies and cultures now.
Todd Sears: (33:34)
So there's a lot of conversation around obviously working from home, and what that impacts creates. How does that impact people's covering, right, hiding an aspect of their identity in the workplace. And ultimately what has been really kind of fun, and we've had probably 40 different CEO sort of one-on-ones that I've interviewed this year, that the conversation around the Zoom box is everybody's equal, right? You can't really talk over folks. It's not a board table where somebody is at the head, et cetera. There are some interesting positives that, of course, go with the challenges of working from home. But from a cultural perspective, the ability to have more diversity be heard is something that a lot of companies have said is a silver lining coming out of this.
Joe Eletto: (34:17)
I like that Zoom is the great equalizer.
Todd Sears: (34:19)
Yeah, it is.
Joe Eletto: (34:21)
That's fantastic.
Todd Sears: (34:22)
And people can't always, you know, I've got my orchid, and that's nice, but my dog could bark any moment. And people want to manage their profile, and their look and feel as much as they can, but you can't, right? I mean, you've got the CEO with the kid walking in behind him, or the cat walking across. That humanizes people, and I think that makes people more authentic. And I think that's not a bad thing. I think that's a good thing.
Joe Eletto: (34:47)
Yeah. I mean, I'm coming to you from my living room. So obviously this is just my stuff, so I'm sorry I couldn't clean up too much, no.
Todd Sears: (34:54)
It's okay. Same, same, same.
Joe Eletto: (34:56)
Exactly. Just to bookend this, I wanted to see if you would share your best advice to people listening today, who want to start or increase change at their firms. Maybe they're not part of Out Leadership, maybe they don't have representation. I personally am lucky to have someone here who is a mentor for me, and that they are out at the firm, and that we have very supportive leadership of people bringing their genuine selves to work. As small a firm as SkyBridge is, as SALT is, I was happy to find that. So people who aren't as fortunate, or in positions, what do you think they can do?
Todd Sears: (35:35)
Well, I'd say a couple of things. From a firm perspective, we'd welcome and love more companies to be members of Out Leadership, and I'm happy to talk about that any time, any place, anywhere. And we can send info, but info at Out Leadership is the easiest, in terms of reaching out there. I would say companies have the opportunity, and leaders have the opportunity, to really look inward, and figure out how they can leverage the platform that they have, right? So we have companies that are training 50 people, and we have companies that are 300,000 people, and the size of the company really is irrespective of the leaders that are leading the company.
Todd Sears: (36:11)
I reflect on Noel Quinn, the Global CEO of HSBC who's on our board, who talked about his leadership style, which is he has roughly 300,000 people that work for him, and he looks at it as if he has five. And he literally says how would I manage with just a team of five? That's how I manage with a global organization like HSBC. So being available where he can, being authentic, being transparent, all of those things really matter. And I think, from a diverse perspective, and what these companies can do for their employees, and in the communities that they're working in, I think that's the approach. And it really does just take visible leaders, allies and LGBT folks, and people of color. All of the different groups have an opportunity, I think, to lead. And it really does require corporate support.
Todd Sears: (36:56)
So I'm glad that I'm glad to hear that you have that with SkyBridge and SALT - I'm not surprised - but that's really important. I think you can never underestimate the impact. Whether it was David Marshall Grant on me when I was 18, or any of the CEOs I've had the pleasure of working with over the years, that you never know the impact that you're going to make. And being open to creating that impact, I think, is a huge gift that leaders can give to their employees, to their clients, and even to their families.
Joe Eletto: (37:22)
Fantastic. Well, Todd, this has been awesome. I'm glad that we're able to do this now on a yearly basis. Hopefully we'll make it more frequently, and looking forward to the partnership between SALT and Out Leadership for the coming year. But I want to wish you guys the best for your conference going on. I can't imagine the lift of doing a fully-virtual conference. I am not envious right now.
Todd Sears: (37:45)
Luckily I have a great team. They're the ones that do all the hard work. But I will send you the link that you can share with folks and people. We have two public programs for each of the summits, and very happy to have any of your constituents join the U.S. or Australia, and-
Joe Eletto: (37:58)
I would love that.
Todd Sears: (37:58)
And, yeah, that's exciting. Well, thanks for having me.
Joe Eletto: (38:02)
[inaudible 00:38:03].
Todd Sears: (38:02)
It's nice to see you, at least through the screen, and I'm excited to continue to have the conversation with you guys, and with SALT, going forward.
Joe Eletto: (38:10)
Absolutely.