Company, a maker of health and Beauty Products recently bought by procter gamble. Iman abuzeid, founder and ceo of incredible health, a hiring platform for nurses. Chris bennett, the founder and ceo of a preschool and childcare network, wonderschool. Kin, thephanie lam founder and ceo of blendor, a maker of software that helps Companies Manage and fight bias. Thank you all for taking the time to do this. I am so happy to have you all here. Thanks for having us. Glad to be here. Emily obviously its been an emotional last few months and i want to know, how have you been experiencing the latest momentum behind the black lives Matter Movement . Tristan the thing i like to tell our people is in moments like this, three things are critical. First, a forceful acknowledgment of the trauma we are all facing, whether it be emotional or physical, over these last 400 years, frankly. Second, the idea of modeling the way. Really being in line with the values we have and picking a side. That is something we have done a while. Lastly, action. Hope is not a strategy, it is an unreasonable passion that forces you to not focus on the present. Theres a lot we can do right now in our capacity to not only help ourselves but our consumers and really respecting the fact that before we are employees and consumers, we are people first who represent the audience most impacted. Emily iman, you are on the front lines in the perspective of health care. What kind of conversations have the protests sparked in your company and community . Iman first, we are working with a group of Health Care Workers and nurses that are diverse themselves. 30 of nurses identify as minorities. At the same time, they are also serving a diverse patient population. We have really had to consider the impact of the black lives movement on both of those groups, nurses and patients. Some of the things weve had to do is really in terms of what tristan was saying on action, is double down on these subcommunities we serve. An example of that is speeding up the launch and release of our free nurse salary estimator that nurses use to better negotiate when they are looking for a job on our platform. Pairing every nurse with a career coach and offering free continuing education to every nurse so they can rapidly get their licenses. We are constantly looking at what we can do to further empower this community we serve. Emily chris, how about you . You have 800 schools on the wonderschool platform and it is having a huge impact on parents and children. Obviously race plays into this in very complex ways. Chris one of the big motivators for me starting wonderschool is to tackle race in america. Traditionally, children of a minority background do not get access to highquality Early Childhood education. One of the big motivators is making sure every child gets access. The vast majority of providers on the platform are women of color. They have very diverse classrooms. We have provided antibias training, we have provided opportunities for providers to connect with each other and process what is going on, and we are planning to take further measures around providing data around what is happening in the classroom when it comes to race. Emily stephanie, your Company Makes software aimed at improved diversity in hiring. You have Companies Like salesforce and amazon using your products, and there have been gains for women in the workforce, but for the black and brown community, representation has actually declined. Is that the case . Stephanie yes, particularly at the Senior Leadership levels. We have a product that analyzes boards and executive diversity. We have seen over 30 growth for women in Senior Leadership, but the numbers for africanamericans, latinos, and Indigenous People have declined by 1 since we started measuring six years ago. You will find a lot of professionals are in hr or marketing, but not Senior Leaders in tech or operations or in finance, the folks that can really pull the levers on how to tackle this problem. Also, companies are not doing a lot of measuring. You cant fix what you dont measure. We see a lot more attention is being paid to the optics rather than the actual results. Emily i want you all have a chance to tell your personal stories and talk about how you got to where you are, how you achieved what you have achieved, and the challenges you overcame. Iman, i will start with you. You started as a medical doctor, a real doctor, and became a tech founder. What are some of the hurdles you had to clear . Iman i have walked into a Venture Capital firm in San Francisco and been mistaken for the postmates delivery person despite being in business casual. These things happen and things im not even aware of. Despite that, you have to push through, and the most important thing all of us can do is to make sure we are successful ceos, and we are just examples and role models for the entire industry we are in and communities we are in. Emily tristan, how about you . You worked at foursquare and twitter and then you had an idea to start your own company, and meet a need not being met, making personal and Beauty Products for the black community. It took off. Tristan yes. It is important for me to set some context, particularly as we talk about diversity. I have to lay out on the table i have incredible privilege. I am a cisgender, black man, stanford mba educated, on public boards with the opportunity to have worked at twitter and foursquare, with experience on wall street, had the good fortune to go to boarding school for high school. I am lucky. I am one of the fortunate ones. Emily you are on the board of shake shack and footlocker, for context. Tristan i am. That is part of the context that is important. I have incredible privilege and i am fortunate. You and i have been speaking about this for the greater part of a decade, frankly. It wasnt without work, it wasnt without determination, but it was with respect, and with what i felt i was uniquely positioned to do. In everything ive done and all the things youve mentioned and all the things i am mentioning, i realize in that privilege i have a responsibility to articulate the message of black economic empowerment. When it came to raising money for code2040, an organization i am proud of that i started before all of this stuff, it is important to know that in that, in that privilege, i have a responsibility to do the work because im one of the lucky ones. I remember speaking chris, i think we spoke years ago, first thinking about fundraising. Chris oh yeah. Tristan that is part of that responsibility. Right . I had the Great Fortune to be able to go through that myself. Emily tell me about those early conversations, chris, and what it was like raising money as a black founder in mostly white silicon valley. Chris tristan may not remember this, but we met in 2010 and you spoke at an event. Tristan i remember. Chris when it comes to being a black founder and fundraising, it is sort of, as iman mentioned, there are a lot of micro aggressions. They are so micro you dont even really know. It is hard to pick up on them. Also, you are the only person in the room so its not like you can see what its like for other people to fund raise. I operate with the idea that when i am fundraising, it will always be hard and i always need to talk to a lot of people. I typically talk to 60 to 100 people when i am raising around and i am used to that. Even though im in a position where i likely dont have to do that anymore, it is just very normal for me because i have found it to be challenging. Emily stephanie, you have been coding since you were 13, a developer at 15, you have an engineering degree from stanford, all of the right schools, multiple years at microsoft, and yet when you applied for jobs, people told you you were not technical enough. How did you overcome that . Stephanie its a pattern. All through my academic career, i have gone to predominantly white schools, i have had people in power underestimating my abilities. It has gone to the point that it is so normalized for me, and you just have to push through. People cannot see you, they are incapable. In large part because there are not a lot of examples of People Like Us who have been successful. I have had to be like a horse with blinders on and move forward and say your loss and not let that deter me from what needs to be done. Iman a big piece that is missing is how diversity drives business results. Emily tristan, in your work with code2040, you are working to get the most talented black and brown students into silicon valley. I am curious what trends you have seen in their experiences. Tristan one thing people might not know you are my first tv interview. 10 years ago, do you remember that . Emily i remember it well. Tristan do you remember what we were talking about back then . Emily we were talking about this code 2040. Tristan that answers the question. Nothing has changed. Some of the things stephanie mentioned it has gotten worse. If nothing is going to change, im going to triple down on my own personal uniqueness. You know what i can do better than you can on the other side of this table . Reconcile with myself the uniqueness of my blackness. There is specialness in that, and we speak to our code2040 fellows or anyone associated with the organization, it is you are unique because of that. You see things that folks on the other side of the table will never be able to and there is a beauty in that. Look, it is frustrating. I am no longer in silicon valley. I was one of its greatest evangelists and i continue to be disappointed by the lack of progress, but i continue to be inspired by our incredible progress, whether it is stephanie, iman and chris, we recognize, but also recognize what we need to do to navigate. Emily you all broke through and so many people did not and so many people havent. How do we change that . Iman one is what personally i can do, i do double down on helping other black founders, whether it is fundraising, hiring, growth, product, whatever they need, and i am paying it forward. Chris has helped me in the past and i am involved in one of stephanies organizations, visible figures, black female ceos. Emily you are all helping each other. Iman we are helping each other. I am proud to have a diverse team of all political views and colors, whatever it is. At the end of the day, we are Building Products and technology for a very diverse population. I think a big piece missing is how diversity drives business results. There is so Much Research that shows it drives profitability, revenue, diversity making decisions faster and so on. Diversity also drives better returns. Emily you are right, the Research Shows that diverse teams are more innovative, make more money, and produce better results. Stephanie, you are doing a lot of work in ai. Talk to us about how we build that ai to actually serve the world. Stephanie the low hanging fruit is just hiring black and brown Software Engineers and leveraging diverse data sets. I think one of the pieces we are starting to get right is algorithms cannot be race blind because people are not race blind. Emily how do we talk about this . Is it unconscious bias or conscious . Stephanie all of the above. It is a very multifaceted problem. I mean we consume information daily, whether it be online or in tv, in movies, that tell us a certain people are a certain way. It impacts the way we think and the way that cops operate, whether you know it or not. That is the piece of unconscious bias i have particularly built systems to try to address. But some people are just racist or sexist or xenophobic. You will not see technology built that can solve that, but there can be systems in place to hold people accountable for that behavior. Tristan it is not that some businesses will go out of business. They just are already. Emily the pandemic has created this massive shift to remote work and we dont know how long it will be this way but you have companies saying employees can work from home forever. Ellen pao, who famously sued for gender discrimination, is looking into new forms of discrimination and harassment that can emerge in remote settings. Whether it is on zoom or slack. Are you guys concerned about that . Stephanie we are seeing early evidence that certain folks are not invited to certain zoom calls they might have otherwise known about had they been in an onsite setting. I think what makes me optimistic is this is all traceable and trackable. We have natural language processing analyzers that can look at the emails and the slack messages you are sending to certain demographics to identify where there can be instances of bias. These receipts, so to speak, were hard to have before now. Given everything is digital, we can do a better job of Holding People accountable. That is my favorite word, accountability. Emily chris, i know youve been dealing with School Closures and the cascading impact on various communities. What is your outlook on how covid impacts the Education Sector and our children . Chris it is pretty scary, to be honest. School districts across the country are closing for the fall and it seems like they will likely not open in the spring as well. There is this trend happening in america right now called pandemic pods or trust pods where parents are grouping up and getting the Children Together and sort of monopolizing teachers. Teachers are finding themselves in very high demand right now because these pods are trying to recruit teachers. The trend we are seeing, what this is leading to is those who have the best connections and the most money are able to monopolize teachers and utilize them for the fall and spring. My concern is that this will set back a large number of children, a generation of children. Emily who will be hurt the most by this . Chris it is still hard to tell, but it is the folks who dont have access to those teachers, i think that is the clearest one. The children who arent going to get access to the correct social, emotional education they need to and academic education they will need during these times. Emily do you think we should be looking at this as a year of lost learning . Is that what it is . Is this going to be a lost year for our children . Chris for some, and that is the scary part. It will be a lost year for some. Our most disadvantaged children and families. Emily iman, how about you . You are on the front lines of first responders, helping nurses get jobs at hospitals. How does this play out . Iman the pandemic has definitely exacerbated inequalities in health care, too. Even before the pandemic, black patients, even when you control for everything else, age, insurance, so on, got worse care and had higher mortality when they went to hospitals. That is an uncomfortable reality we live in. They actually get worse care. When the pandemic happened, we saw a huge shift into Digital Health and telemedicine, and not every family in america has an ipad and laptop at home and can access telemedicine services. The thinking is that the pandemic will further make inequality here worse. Emily stephanie, there has been record joblessness, short only of the great depression. What does this mean for jobs across the country . Stephanie i dont think we are ever going to see jobs rebound to the level they were before covid. Emily really . Stephanie we were already on the verge of this supercharge in automation and displacement of a lot of jobs held by bluecollar workers, and i think covid19 is only going to accelerate that. It will be the responsibility of the public and private sector to figure out a way to ensure that people can still make a living. It is going to have to be something very innovative. Emily tristan, what do you see for retail Going Forward . I know a lot has moved online, but with people hurting, is Discretionary Spending ever going to come back . Tristan there are a lot of companies out there with a lot of money and a lot more not ases out there with much. There will be consolidation. Its not that some businesses will go out of business, they just are already. I fear for those folks who are already disadvantaged in that way and not having access to capital or able to get the loans they need to thrive and all of that stuff. They will need the money of interest to come in and acquire the things of value and you will further widen this gap between the haves and havenots. Emily we are in an Ongoing Health crisis, economic crisis, and now a social crisis. For the first time, you wonder if our children i find myself wondering if my children will be growing up in a better world than i did. I dont know the answer to that. Tristan i think i do. Ive thought about this a lot. You know, look, we are all the age we are, but the youth is ahead of the game. On all of the stuff were talking about, their motivation, their excitement, ability to see things differently. You know, i have to have hope that they will look at the potential mistakes we made and learn from them and be motivated, right . When i see folks on the streets in support of some of these very important movements gosh, could you imagine if folks werent . [laughter] i have to have hope when i see old, young, across ethnicity, age groups, all that really kind of coalescing around a progressivism this country has never seen before. These next fears are going to be these next few years are going to be really telling for our ability to break through it. But if we dont have that hope, man, we are all in trouble. But i am inspired by it. Emily at this moment in time, how optimistic are you that we will make real change . That we will look back on this point in history as an actual turning point . Stephanie i am very optimistic. I think a lot of things dont change until there is a major, catastrophic event. I mean, people are waking up in ways they needed to. Whether it be through the next generation or the technology or the growth in social impact investing, i think everyone is sort of coming together and understanding that you need to do good while you make money in the world. I am very optimistic that the results of this will be positive. Chris i do have mixed feelings. You know, when tristan was talking about how we are having the same conversation 10 years later i am concerned. I am concerned. There is a lot of downward pressure around this movement. But, you know, i have dedicated my life to this. I think this is the most important solving for racism and creating a world where there is equality around opportunities and around education and around professional opportunities i think is something that is absolutely worth fighting for. So it is something i am committed to changing. Tristan i think it is inevitable. I believe in human ingenuity. I think it has won over time. I think we will look back on this time as having been a part of probably one of the most transformative moments for the world. Again, if i dont believe in those two things, man, that would be a terrible life to live right now. But i do fundamentally believe in those two things. Iman the big question for me is how long is it going to take . I know its going to get better, but the question is will it be two years, 10 years, 20 years . All we can really do is focus on our missions and win, honestly. Emily thank you for telling your incredible stories and continuing to break down these walls. Thank you. So glad you could join us. Iman thank you. Yousef this is best of bloomberg daybreak middle east. United arab emirates and israel increase normalized ties in a historic decision. We hear from both sides. 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