but for instance in a book like a very stable genius, it was stuff like that ended up kind of overpowering the conversation surrounding the book. ... >> on the chairman and ceo of the federal bank in new york . the distinguished history since 1967, economics america's premier nonpartisan form, wide e of issues facing new york, the

united states and the whole world. our mission is important today as ever as we can continue to bring people together as a catalyst for sharing diverse points of view in particular during these challenging times, probably stand with all communities of mutual understanding. i would like to take a moment to recognize those are 312 members of the centennial society pretending today and their contributions continue to be the support for the club and help enable us to offer a wonderful and diverse programming now and in the future. i would also like to welcome the members of the 2020 fellows, a group of rising nexgen leaders as well as students from nyu student school of business. and it's an honor for me to introduce her special guest today, or chair, and trustee deanna mulligan. deanna was named chief executive

officer 2011 and served in the role until now, she joins in 2008 is the executive vice president to lead the company in a physical light in his abilities business is appointed to president, she operated in 2010, she also served as the trustee the board of directors at the vanguard group, a position she held in 2017. her background in the strategy consulting and operational strategy, a principal at a company in held senior positions, asa financial in new york by insurance companies. she was pregnant at the previously director the ops capital and active industry and community and deanna serves as the board and the financial services, insurances companies. in advance communities, she served on the board of trustees for the new york presbyterian hospital, in partnership with new york. catalyst you think executive and

brief in connecticut. in 2015 she was appointed to president obama's advisory committee and capability for young americans and is currently a member of the stanford graduate school of business advisory council. in 2019, she was again was named one of the 50 most powerful women in business, and recognizer is one of the most 50 powerful women in new york since 2011. in recent book, which debuts tomorrow, "hire purpose" it debuts tomorrow. it's more companies to fill the gaps in conference a guide to help businesses meet the appointment challenges in 2020. so the format today's conversation which we are fortunate to have economic near club number and chief executive club member. linda promptly at 245 any questions, the members in advance that were shared with deanna. as a reminder, this conversation is on the record as we do have media on the line.

speech of thank you so much john. i appreciate that much. deanna you have a long list of accomplishments, you're still able to write this phenomenal book. some are going to talk about that today . that i want to start with that she did become the ceo a guardian in 2011 enjoyed in 2008 . 2011, you talk about this in the book is storm sandy and you wanted to make sure that your guiding principle was there for people to follow. and about doing the right thing and holding yourself to a higher standard of party there was during bad times and then you refresh those you say in your book, the principles are great because they are but they are. but its purpose by which we live. so that is part of what you did in the book, "hire purpose". so my question is, in your role

in ceo how have you maintained this purposeful leadership during this tumultuous times now in 2020. deanna: personal janice, i want to thank you and it's been an honor to be here with you today. and i also want to think john and barbara for inviting me to be here. i feel honored to be here and have all of you in the line. and thank you janice for introducing my new book, "hire purpose". personally just want to say thank you to the people a guardian, any of them are probably on this call today. they helped me into my cowriter who helped me organize my thoughts . going back to your question janice of purpose. guardian is a purpose driven company on the winter fortune 250 company, were not public, we are owned by our policy holders, a mutual company. we are driven by providing value

to our policyholders. guardian is 160 years old. we always say we want to be here for another 160 years. and so i think people are attracted to guardian because of our purpose. we are with people in the most difficult times. certainly that has been true in this covid-19 environment. we are here to provide economic support when people die. and when they die too soon, we are here to provide economic support when they become disabled. when they cannot work and we also administer paid laminates and family. this can come very important during this time as you know brightest of the purposes a natural thing. and it is probably around the company a guardian, along with our values which is stated . we did the right thing. people count. and we hold ourselves to very high standards. janice: i know having work with you over the years, you're very

certain about that . and the diversity as well and companies being very purposeful. and in this book, "hire purpose", i think your timing and publishing this is impeccable because right now, is the bible that really rescaled and keep workers motivated and maintained. but we did this idea come to you to do this. recent her a while ago. deanna: i came guardian in 2008 while guardian was not deeply affected by the great recession, as a matter fact we were upgraded not long after that. there was chaos all around us as you recall. i observed the number of people are losing their jobs it is great recession. as you recall, it took any years for employment to come back down

and for them to become reemployed. i started thinking to myself, the next time we have a disrupting event, i don't want guardian to be a company that lays out follow people. so is how we deal with what is going on in the world in terms of how long: change and also for ask, and a very low interest rate environment. having to do we do those things to make sure that we can keep as any people with us as possible and be true to our values and our purpose. and so in 2011, and 2012 after super storm sandy, we decided we need to make a lot of change in the company that's what started me thinking about writing the book. and it seemed like it just popped unseen but is been in the works actually for a number of years. it. janice: and really that 2006 crisis really got to you.

it's much more costly often to lay off people. but the question now is how did you do this. meaning the current and future needs in terms of what do i do with my talents. how do live look at the rescaling and isn't the technology are much broader view that you're taking in terms of that rescaling. what steps do the ceos take the rescaling are jiggly for large and how you scale that up. deanna: that's a great set of questions there janice. your comment that it cost a lot more money to lay people off is definitely true. this is your business, so you know it can cost five to six times as much life people off as to rescaled someone into the same job. so in this environment, this and that economic environment, certainly makes a lot of sense to try to rescale as any people

as possible. i know it's not going to be hundred percent solution but i think companies owe it to the people and we as business leaders through the country and the economy, to try to do this. and the question is how we do it at scale. there are a lot of people right now are working the answers to that question. we have done it at scale with a vegas scale project happened not too long after storm sandy when we said while we were put out of our building for nine months. that was on friday and then we didn't come back for nine months later because we are lower manhattan. they had 5 feet of water washed were building within the infrastructure in the street in front of us which contained asbestos was basically destroyed and we to wait for the asbestos to be cleaned up and her electricity and internet to be restored and that ended up taking nine months.

so after that, so that set . we need a new technology platform. we need to be location independent. and we hired a person who mapped out a plan and took us about five years to move from our data center infrastructure largely into the club. in doing that it required a massive rescaling of our key people rescaling. any of them were given a choice whether they were like to stay in the current job but they were told it's not going to be forever. or whether they would like to rescale or retire. unfortunately, any people chose to rescaled. and into this new technology. so from that kind of early when, we developed, number of programs and really focused on developing a learning culture.

guardian is not the only one. in the book we have any examples of companies large and small who have reskilled. we talked about the way they did it. we did it with outside health and their any companies springing up now any of the large consulting firms are also offering to help. i know company like yours know a lot about this. it said was possible to do it internally and on one's own, it is also possible to go and get some outside help and do it quickly. janice: is not just technology rules. this is beyond technology that you've done that reskilled . can you talk a little bit about other programs where other skills are being changed. deanna: i think when people hear reskilled, they think about technology. and certainly in our end and a large number of jobs have been in technology. but just looking at some research a couple of days ago,

it's hard about the top skills for 2020. they are changing rapidly. things like video design and videoconferencing, surprise giving the environment are now all of a sudden early hot technology. communication skills, breaking down silos. that's really important when you're doing things remotely. sales skills are always a perennial list. it's not just technology. certainly soft skills are really important. isaiah, recently with microsoft calmly said that soft skills are it right now. so we need both hard and soft skills if you will. janice: do you think it guardian in terms of when you started doing this reskilled, what are some of the obstacles that your company another coming surprising in dealing with that task.

deanna: think i hear from other companies and sometimes they say, this is a massive project. how can we reskilled at scale. i say start small. start small, be prepared to fail. and focus on developing a learning culture. so start small and find the problem that is vexing today than say we had a different skill set, for different way of looking at this, how far can we go. then figure out how to get those in the organization. there are lots of ways to do that. everything from working with your local community college to book looking online for retraining programs to going to get outside help. start small. give people the room to fail. suddenly going to work the 31 time not always . and then finally, it's important to develop a learning culture. if you develop learning culture

in the organization, not everything will have the top down. people throughout the organization will start applying knowledge to solve their problems. then they will start looking for an asking for help in re- skilling themselves. janice: speak about this morning culture because the 40 year career is gone. people are going to turn over make moves. sue talking about that, saying that innocent cat okay if you reskilled people they leave you in the go elsewhere. that's actually not a bad thing because you may get somebody from some other company. but some would say they don't want to do that. if i don't want to lose my top employees. you talk about it as a moral imperative, to make this happen. talk to us about that. deanna: will janice come i think if you look at what is happening in the world right now, this

problem is a big one. when a big problem around the world. people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and because of the situation in which we find ourselves. government is not going to be able to solve the problem entirely on its own but the education is not going to do that either. and certainly the people affected are not going to be able to solve this problem on their own. we really need to step up and be a partner in this maybe take a leadership role and develop some public and private partnerships. and across business partnerships to work on this issue. it's just too big for any one entity to handle on their own. in terms of the people who say, but a very trying my people and they leave. i would say, what if you do not retrain them and they stay.

the world is moving so fast right now and customer expectations, and we've certainly seen this in covid-19 are changing. and you need an educated and flexible adult agile adult workforce to meet these needs. so i think it's incumbent upon all of us to try to make this happen. janice: there's public-private partnerships that you talk about in the book as well. they should be local as well as that higher-level scratch buried in terms of coming together to make that happen. deanna: absolutely. i think it's important to reach out in your local communities and which you operate. we have done that in a series of partnerships with community colleges around the country. to help them. we started out saying that we want to help you but we ended up being helped as well, because we hired any people from community college which was really not a force for hiring 31 before. an internet to be great assets

to the company. so yes, i think reaching out to your local community college, we talk in the book about the ibm textiles which is a fairly well-known story at this point. now ibm reached out to bicycles and helped them develop a five-year program for the graduates not only have a high school diploma been an associates degree in ibm hired a lot of those people. and not only have they develop their own schools, they put a model out there that of the companies can. we talk in the book about a business in upstate new york, cabinetmaking business. in small community so they can have trained cabinet makers trying them after high school graduation. so this does not have to be a corporate only phenomenon or a large company phenomenon or large city phenomenon.

small towns across the country are being affected . hard right now. and are also going to have to find a way to rebuild their economies and their workforces. janice: and in doing that, going to the community college taking students out of high school giving them internships and apprenticeships, we also going into these underserved communities and increasing the diversity in terms of the training. thus in honestly beneficial. you also challenged the four year degree here. is it really necessary. versus a community college. deanna: thank you janice raising the point about inclusion and diversity which is obviously on everybody's mind right now. so 50 percent of our interns come from underserved communities of diverse backgrounds. we are finding that the community colleges, we also

people who have high school and certificates as their credentials do not necessarily a college to grill attempted rape and continue to train them when they arrived at guardian. that has worked out very well for us. it one can earn a bachelors degree online at guardian free of charge. looked at the statistics and who is using that program and we found is by far a majority of women and people from under under other underserved and diverse backgrounds and also people within the 315 years of their career. so we think this is really working or people come to us and eight maybe have a certificate or maybe a technical high school degree or certificate from the community college. they can take college classes while the being trained to guardian and earn a college

degree without undertaking that debt that we hear . really helps us to make our population much more reflective of the communities in which we live and the people that we serve. it's a win - win - win. it's a win for the employee, it is a win for our customers, and it's a win for guardian. janice: we sometimes have to have our clients look at people a little bit differently. and you're suggesting that is skill stacking, people from different backgrounds and sprayed the people will hire more physicians. maybe if they want a four year degree or some experience. but it sounds like you were saying, that if you hire this great person who has had a different background. deanna: will the business roundtable has recently taken up

with this idea us will stacking and certification. a four-year college degree is a great thing. i'm not going to say the people should forget them. however, sometimes while a four-year college degree can teach you how to think, does not teach you necessarily the skills you need it for such a big job. people for whatever reason did not have a four-year degree but actually have the skills needed to do the job. in previous times, have often been left out of the job market because any companies have previously used a four-year degree as a strainer. or finding increasingly the companies are not using the four-year degree is a screener anymore. were saying that we want to hire people with the specific skills whether they have a degree or not. in the business round table just trying to make it easier for companies to identify the skills and were hoping to make it easier for potential employees

to identify those skills. we have a ways to go on this as a society that if we can move from more of a degree base to a skill base, a skill-based hiring situation, i think that we can put more people to work more productively and we can move faster in this environment where skills that are required are changing. it does not end it when you walk across the stage and you collect your diploma. your learning journey is really just beginning. janice: is that learning environment, the culture of that you build it guardian, people comment in their really meant toward by others in terms of building those skills up and to stack them and such. so is that a lot of training on the part of your people with these new hires. deanna: mentoring is really

important. i think it is important in any learning based organization. any culture. certainly important going to be hiring people based on skills that he may not have done specific roles before or quite frankly, may not have worked in the company before. it may not understand all of the ways that things happen in an organization. so we have been very fortunate it guardian that our employees have been very generous and willing to mentor others. we do a lot of mentoring at community colleges and our recently, we brought that in house. i actually signed a pledge with him power which train a lot of veterans. and so we've had a lot of employees volunteered to be mentors to the veterans were trying to bring in the organization . where a great example of people who have a lot

of skills but and they have learned in the military. but they might need mentoring and coaching in order to really bring them to life in a corporate environment. janice: how is the pandemic impacted these three skilling that you see in guardian and other companies working virtually. is not as easy as it seems. deanna: that's interesting. like any companies, have really good success working virtually. seen a lot of increase in productivity. we've even managed to issue new products and hire new people and bring them into the organization while working remotely. i was on call this morning where the ceos were debating whether or not learning is really happening in this remote environment targeted in the research is not really been done yet. we have continued to offer on online courses that we have to

find new ways to mentor and help people develop their skills in the online environment were going to be totally successful with this going forward. janice: see do have challenges friday. deanna: yes, is not easy. i'm going back to my three tips to how to make this happen in your organization. start small. don't get to district, there will be failures and then develop a learning culture. everybody has their share of failure. and i think that sometimes when the phillies we see is with everyone how they want to do this. and it not everyone is going to sign up. that's okay. i think another misconception that people have is age is a barrier to this. we have found that not to be true at all. going back to the story of retraining and rescaling the people who are working in our

data centers. we did not find that age was a factor. any older people were able to make the transition. recent research by a group back that up. when they looked at employees who were successful in the rescaling especially in the data driven and digital jobs, the number one characteristics of employees who were successful were deep knowledge of the subject matter. in fact the 50 -year-old was a category that they set up to have the most success. as they determined that they were going to be rescheduled. so think a mistake the companies often make is to say this only applies to certain category of employee and from one side of the scale on the other side of the scale to say that everyone is certainly going to want to do this. it's really important to just go out there and test and you might surprised at what you find.

janice: you want about the skill gap and 85 million jobs potentially will be unfilled globally by 2030. so there's a serious implications. of being competitive. so how do we mitigate that. deanna: is new research, actually done by a large firm who did this estimate. it's higher than us other estimates that we sing by other organizations in the past. if you think through the experience we have all have in the last six - nine months we both had to learn a new skill. i doubt that any people would call them soon experts before six or nine months ago. we all learn more about managing our technology in our environment from homing been making digital things from home. as we were discussing about things like writing.

so just that little example, the number of people around the world who have learned new skills in the last six - nine months. it's huge if you roll that forward ten years, anything about the acceleration and change that has happened because of the covid-19. it continues to happen. i heard somebody say recently, had i wish i had a dollar for every ceo told me that we made three years for the progress in three months. and we also found that it guardian and certain things we wanted to change. and who had a two-year plan to roll it out we've rolled out in three - six months . that continues to be the case moving forward departed that is how you get those 85 million jobs rated potentially going not skilled because they are changing rapidly we need to make sure that we work together in the

public and private partnerships. education, business, government and employees themselves taking responsibility for learning new things. that's how we are going to get through this targeted. janice: it is a balancing act. companies are under tremendous pressure. and financial pressure to reskilled the employees. develop the capabilities that you have. and the people coming in and retaining people. and at the same time, the cost. so it's quite a balancing act for the ceos. what you've heard and see in this regard. deanna: we've been fortunate at guardian although i don't think anybody has in his time would not have the tremendous economic pressure that you see in some industries because of the shutdown and obviously, this categories of employees. like people and entertainment

the restaurant business in the airline business. they need to be reskilled. at some point that becomes larger than what an individual company can take on the government really does need to step in and help. bc two examples of states that have come to my attention recently, rhode island and maryland departed this is not a partisan issue. they both republican governors and democratic governors who are really stepped up. in our governors was stepped up in new york state. i've heard the examples of retraining from a lot of different states who are really jumping on board and saying that we have to get involved. we have to engage with business. so that the people in our state, some of whom were financially just on the cost of this before this happened can be retrained to get new jobs.

janice: so we are in the pandemic it, hopefully coming out of it at some point. and building back and better. what you see is the workforce of tomorrow in the workspace of tomorrow. it your vision of what that might look like. deanna: well janice, i think that is still evolving. and that is a topic of a lot of conversation. do we need to have office buildings, do we go all remote. what is the role of cities . is a big conversation that were all going to be part of over the next few years. i personally do not see 100 percent remote as a solution in most cases. however i do think there's going to be a lot more remote work in their has been in the past. a guardian we were about 30 percent remote before the pandemic and we have a lot of flexible hours and flexible location in situations . we are certainly going to continue that

and we will find the any of our employees are going to rethink whether they want to be remote . i will always have places for people together and have camaraderie and train so that we can pass down our corporate culture. a lot of what we have done over the last 69 months and a lot of companies of really building the culture and relationships. we've already built in person before the pandemic started whether we can continue to be as productive as a society as we have been, remotely, that me and remains to be seen. there's always been vehicle i think for some sort of in person contact. people do want together and experience a culture. and they to go to great restaurant rated it will take a while. but there will be unforeseen

impact from situations where in. there is no doubt about that . janice: we hear from employees themselves in terms of what they are looking for to doing through this reskilling that they've gone through at guardian and working remotely and that the company. what kind of sentiment preparing for people. deanna: missing close to our employees as we always do but especially during this time and we have found the engagement scores have actually gone up. we do have locations in parts of the country where people often have long commutes. some one of the big pressures of the remote work we have heard is why, this cuts down on my commute time. we find the people are using part of that commute time to be very productive in their jobs. we've actually have to remember to take time off. these we don't want people to

burnout. we are hearing that because the situation that we are in, where we have our homeschooling that some people find it difficult. then we have put in new family leave programs, new grieving programs. quite frankly is people are baffling with loss, relatives and friends and loved ones to the disease . so we been listening to our employees and ingesting programs on the fly as we go to try to be more supportive. and i do that people are looking forward to getting back together and sing their colleagues in person and having some social interaction. i think we all are created but we don't know yet when were going to be widespread and have that happen in the safeway. janice: back in 2014 when president obama had you on his advisory council on financial capability of young americans. that was quite i think an

experience for you. what did you learn from it and what the lessons going forward in terms of young people in america. what we need to focus on. deanna: in order to be part of the advisory council, and again it was a public-private partnership that we had representatives from treasury and the department of education, and other representatives. people from business and education outside of the government. also from non- for profits. one of the things that we quickly decided we were talking about really financial literacy and financial capability for young people. how to make sure they graduated either from high school or college. but the ability to really manage their finances. we quickly learned that one of the big problems they have is finding a job. so working on this advisory council, really got me to thinking about the contents of the book.

and thinking about how do we make sure that young people can get jobs. and at one point we brought some of her students from a community college where we were mentoring and teaching financial literacy to the presidents advisory council meetings. that was a great express for them. and they very quickly runs all down to reality and talk about the difficulties they face to afford school. in transportation and computers and feeding their families. and if they were students who have families. is very interesting. actually received credit in the report for the contributions. but what i underestimated was they did a wonderful job finding their way to dc and we helped them and they were really excited to be there but they had never been in a big meeting

before. so meeting etiquette wasn't something they have not yet learned. since just a microcosm of what we are facing when were trying to bring students and to a corporate environment. and just show us how important it is to really have the mentoring function when we are bringing people in who have not had a lot of work experience. janice: i want to talk a little bit about leadership. and how the have had to step up during this pandemic. some things may be that you've experienced that you had not experienced before. and what have you seen in others as well. deanna: it made me start thinking about the topic and talking about it since 2008.

as public-private partnerships and ceos. they're doing good in the world. that really wasn't quite as popular of a topic as it is today. obviously today, the social vision of companies is something that is discussed all of the time. five or six years ago when i started this book, it seemed a little squishy for ceo of a financial services company to be taking this on. but it is really driven by what we are experiencing at guardian and what i was seeing in the outside world. so was a little countercultural at the time. but happily now, i think everybody is kind of hopping on the bandwagon. i would say that one experience that really sticks with me is that we have a smaller number of people, probably five or six years ago. we were phasing out operation

that we had. people were taking paper mail that we received from our customers and using machines and scanning it in to our system. we were going to farm out process. she had about 30 people were worried about what would happen to them. because i did not have college degrees. we were not sure how the skills would transfer. and some of them did get other jobs within guardian and some decided to retire because they were close to retirement. some of them opted to take severance because they had other plans. they wanted to move to florida or start a business from my brother. but we did make them an offer that we would pay for up to two years of tuition at our local community college. whatever community college partners was very helpful to us. and sing the yes, we do have jobs in the community that we think your employees could

qualify for. it they can take these programs to requalify. they can earn an associates degree. we said yes, we will pay for it. and whatever topic they found useful. and we received a note from one person and said. no one in my family went to college. no one ever told me that i was college material. until he came to guardian, i never believed that i can do this. and they ended up earning an associates degree and it just shows me the impact that corporations can have very little expense on people. unreal people. and change their lives not only that person's life the movie change their families lives. change the trajectory of a couple of generations. so it really is important. it just takes a little bit more time and planning and a lot less expensive than laying people off. it's much better for your

internal cultural. the people were left are inspired by what they are saying. and there inspired to go out and turn and learn more. since really a bigger circle. janice: so goes back to your key principles. people can't . and enticing people to go to companies are they know they will count. that's really important. so imparting words, my advice for those of us are trying to make this work because were reading your wonderful work with chance great examples. but maybe two or three things and people should focus on today. deanna: so thank you very much janice and again, it's an honor to be here and i think john and barbara for inviting me with this great introduction today and anybody thinking about doing this i would say, start small. pick one problem engage your

employees in solving one problem be patient and expect failure and welcome it because it's just part of the learning journey and then finally developing learning culture. you need to model the learning culture. you need to show that you're learning too. it's not always easy for you to be vulnerable and try anything. it. janice: i know you been a leader and a purposeful life. do you know what is next for you. deanna: i am busy with my guardian responsibilities and the book right now. but i would say looking ahead, we have a lot of challenges out there. as you have outlined today and we have discussed and i would just like to be part of the solution. so looking forward to that when

in whatever form that may take . janice: thank you so much for your very insightful discussion about what we all need to take in charge of. john and turn it you. john: thank you both. this is actually a terrific conversation have been taking notes whole time. especially round learning culture and journey. in all of the things you discussed. thank both of you are participating in this wonderful discussion. >> you want to book tv on "c-span2". television for serious readers . some programs to watch out for. tomorrow noon eastern, where life with eddie chair of the african-american studies program at princeton university. he will discuss race and politics in america answer your questions on our "in depth" on program. if tonight, it is coverage of the 7031 annual national book awards . on her author interview program afterwards, national

review correspondent kevin believes and reports on the politics of everyday life of the working class in his travels through appalachia. find more schedule information a book tv or consult your program guide. >> here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books. according to - topping the list in the 31 volume of the presidential memoir, promised land, former president barack obama reports in his life and political career. and then another explores what she calls the hidden caste system in the united states. then there is the best of me, collection of stories and essays author and humorist, david. followed by modern comfort foods. and wrapping up our look at some of the best-selling books according to them as it collection of comics by actor and comedian steve martin. and cartoonist. some of these authors have appeared on book tv, and you can watch the