three illnesses during his presidency and each one he would give himself a very arduous test like a around the world trip that required a lot of stress and said if i don't perform at top level, you have to tell me because then i will resign. in any case that never happened. he became adroit at managing his time in his stress. and ingratiating himself to get through his second term.

>> good afternoon welcome to the 113th year i am the chairman and ceo of the federal reserve bank of new york. with a distinguished history since 19 oh seven and then the and then with all community. and then to be the backbone and to help enable us and with

the university. and it's an honor for me to introduce our special guest today. but then to name chief officer in 2011 to serve in the role and then with the individual life and disability and with the chief operating officer in 2010 with the board of directors with those positions

and to serve on the projectors for life insurers and then committed to advancing communities on the board of trustees and with the chief executive and then appointed to president obama and then is currently and from the stanford graduate school business advisory council. in 2019 and then to be one of the most 50th powerful women for the first time since 2011 in new york.

and then that is a comprehensive guide how businesses can meet the employment challenges of 2020. and with that club member and chief executive officer. and with members and we will advance ensure with jerry jenison this is on the record as we do have media on the line. we will turn it over to you. >> thank you. we do have a long list of accomplishments and surprisingly you could still write this phenomenal book. so we will talk about that today. and those guiding principles for them to follow.

hide to a higher standard and then you say in the book because they are what they are in the purpose by which they live. as your role as ceo how do you maintain this purposeful leadership during this tumultuous time in 2020? >> first of all and end the discussion and thank you for inviting me and i'm so honored to be here to have you on the line. thank you for introducing my new book, higher purpose.

thank you to the people at guardian and make a writer who help me to organize my thoughts. guardian is a purpose driven company out of fortune 250 we are not public. we are owned by the policy holders. we are a mutual company. we are driven by providing value to policyholders. 160 years old. we want to be here for another 160 years. so people are attracted because of our purpose. we are with people in the most difficult time and that has been true in this covert environment and we are here to provide economic support when people die or too soon and economic support when they become disabled or cannot

work. we also administer paid family leave which is very important during this time. so it is how we run the company at guardian along with our values which you stated. we do the right thing. people count. we hold ourselves to very high standards. >> having worked with you over the years concerned about diversity with one - - to be purposeful so this book how they can close the gap, think your timing on publishing is impeccable because right now it's the bible and how to keep workers motivated and retained. but when did this idea come to you? >> as john mentioned i came to guardian and 2008. although not deeply affected

by the great recession, in fact we were upgraded not long after by the rating agencies, there was chaos all around us. and with the number of people that were losing their jobs and it took many years for unemployment to come back down and for them one - - for them to become employed. so i thought the next time we have a disrupting event, i don't want guardian to be a company that lays off a lot of people. how do we deal with what is going on with technological change and a very low interest rate environment? had to me make sure to keep those with us with our value and purpose? so in the 2011 time.

after superstore's sandy we needed to make change and for a number of years. >> and it prompted you to think about that which is typically what we do which is more costly to do the rescale but the question is how do you do this with your current and future needs and is it just technology and then particularly those large

scales? and it can cost five or six times as much and in this environment it makes a lot of sense. now we know it will not be 100 percent but companies over to their people. and for all of them to try to do this. . . . . and internet td

and that ended up taking nine months so after that i said we need a new technology platform. we need to be a location independent. the story is in the book we hired dean to be the cio and he mapped out a plan and it took about five years to move from the data center infrastructure and in doing that required a massive rescaling of people. many of them were given the choice whether they would like to stay in their current jobs but they were told it's not

going to be forever or whether they would like to rescale or retire. many people started to be rescaled into the new technology so from that kind of early when we have had a number of programs and really focused on developing a learning culture. but guardian isn't the only one and in the book we have many examples of companies large and small and we talked about the way they did it. we did receive some outside help and there are many companies springing up now. i know companies like yours know a lot about this. while it's possible to do it internally and on one's own it's also possible to get outside help and do it more quickly. >> it's not just technology.

can you talk a little bit about those programs where other skills were being changed. >> they automatically think technology. a large number of the jobs we have rescaled have been technology that i've been looking at research that talked about the top ten skills for 2020 and they are changing very rapidly. things like video design and videoconferencing given no surprise the environment that we are in it is now a hot technology. communication skills, breaking down silos is important when you are doing things remotely. it's not just technology. certainly they are important. i was on a call recently with a ceo of microsoft that said soft

skills are it right now so we need a combination of both hard and soft skills if you well. >> will. >> so the obstacles that you faced, what are some of the obstacles your company and others are facing when presented with of that task. >> other companies say this is a massive project how can we resale and i say start small. do some pilots, be prepared to fail and then focus on developing a learning culture. so find a problem that is vexing today and to say if we had a different skill set, how far could we go and figure out how to get them into the organization. there are a lot of ways to do that everything from working

with your local community college to looking online to retraining programs to go and get outside help. this isn't always going to work the first time and then finally i think the most important thing is to develop a learning culture because if you develop a learning culture in the organization, not everything is going to have to be chopped down. people in the organization will start applying knowledge to solve their problems and were going to start looking for and asking for help. >> you speak about this learning culture because the career is gone. people are going to turn over so you are saying it's okay to rescale people and then they go elsewhere.

that is actually not a bad thing because you may get people from other companies but some would say i don't want to do that i don't want to lose my top employees but you talk about it as a social obligation to make this happen. talk to us about that. >> if you look at what is happening in the world right now, this problem is a big one. we have a big problem not just in the united states but around the world of people that have lost their jobs through no fault of their own because of the situation that we find ourselves and the government isn't going to be able to solve the problem entirely on its own. our education system isn't going to be able to solve the problem on its own and certainly the people affected. maybe it would take a leadership role to develop public and

private partnerships it's too big for any entity to handle on its own. what if i retrain people and they leave. i would say what if you don't retrain them and they stay. the customer expectations, and we have seen that they are changing. we need an educated workforce to be able to meet customer needs and so i think it is incumbent on all of us to try to make this happen. >> many of them should be local it's important to reach out in

the communities. we have done that in a series of partnership around the country. we started out saying we want to help you but we ended up being helped as well it wasn't a source of hiring and it turned out to be great assets to the company so reaching out to your local community college, we talk in the book about the school that is a fairly well-known story at this point but how ibm reached out to high schools to develop a five-year program where the graduates not only has a highave a high school diplomat associates degree and not only had they developed their own schools but they put out a model other companies can use and we talk in the book about a small business in upstate new york, a

cabinet making business so that they could have trained cabinetmakers joined them after high school graduation. it doesn't to be a large company phenomenon. small towns across the country are being affected pretty hard right now and will also have to find a way to rebuild their economy and their workforces. >> and in doing that, giving them apprenticeships or internships you are also going into some of the underserved communities are you not for people to come up on vocational training and you also challenged the degree is it necessary.

>> thank you for raising the point about inclusion and diversity which is on everybody's mind right now. 50% of the interns come from underserved communities or diverse backgrounds and we are finding that we also admit people that have high school certificates as their credentials but certainly a college degree when they arrive at guardian that's worked out very well for us. we recently started a program with the university where one can earn a bachelors degree online at guardian, free of charge, and we looked at the statistics and who is using that program and found it is by far a majority of women and people from underserved and diverse

backgrounds and also people in the first five years of their career. they maybe have a certificate or high school degree or associates degree they can take college classes and earn a college degree without undertaking that it really helps us to make our population more reflective of the communities we live and the people we serve. so, it is a win-win for the employee and customers and guardian. >> we sometimes have to have our clients look at people a little bit differently and you i think

are suggesting that there's going to be different backgrounds people are going to hire before they may have wanted that four year degree or some experience but it sounds like you are saying you can hire a great person that has had a different background. >> the business roundtable has taken up the cause on this idea of skills backing certification. a four-year college degree is a great thing. i'm not going to say people shouldn't get a four-year college degree however sometimes it can teach you how to think that doesn't teach you necessarily the skills you need for a specific job. people who don't have a four-year college degree but have the skills needed to do the job they've been left out of the job market because many had previously used a four-year degree and we are finding

increasingly companies are not using the four-year degree. we want to hire people with specific skills whether they have a degree or not and the business roundtable is trying to make it easier to identify the skills and we are hoping to make it easier for employees to identify their skills. we have a way to go on the society but if we can move from more of a degree is based to a skills-based hiring situation i think we can both more people to work productively and move faster in this environment where the skills acquired are changing. it doesn't and when you walk across the stage and collect your diploma. the learning journey these days

is just beginning. a. >> people come in and are meant toward by others to build the skills up and stack them as such. i think it's important in any learning organization and culture based on skills who may not have done the work before or quite frankly may not have worked in a company before to understand the way things happ happen. we did a lot of men touring and now these brought up that

in-house and find a pledge so we've had a lot of employees bring in the organization and a lot of people that have skills but may have learned it might need them to bring to life in a corporate environment. >> how was the pandemic impacted working virtually. a. >> like many we have had success working virtually and have seen a lot of increased productivity and managed to issue some new products and bring them into the

organization working remotely but i was on a call this morning where they were debating whether or not it's happening in this remote environment and the research hasn't really been done yet. i know we have continued to offer our online courses but we have to find ways to mentor if we're going twe are going to bey successful going forward. >> so within its challenges at this point. >> going back to the tips of how to make this happen in the organization, start small and then develop a learning culture. everybody has their share of failures and i think one of the failures is if you assume everyone wants to do this and

not everyone is going to sign up and that's okay because i think another misconception people sometimes have is that age is a barrier to this end w and we fod that not to be true at all going back to the data centers we didn't find that it was a factor and the employees that were successful in rescheduling the data-driven digital jobs they found the number one characteristic with a deep knowledge of the subject matter and as a matter of fact 50-year-olds were the categories that they found that had the most success.

everyone certainly is going to want to do this and it's important to just go out there and you might be surprised. >> the skills gap and the estimated 85 million jobs would be under filled globally by 2030 because of the gap so the serious implication could be competitive. how do we mitigate that and -- >> that is new research that was done by a large search firm and it's higher than other estimates

if you think through the experience we've had in the last six to nine months we've had to learn more skills. we've learned more about managing our technology and environment from home even making videos from home as we were discussing looking at things like lighting so just that little example the number of people that learned skills in the last six to nine months is huge and if you roll that forward ten years and think about the acceleration i heard someone say i wish i had a dollar and we found that at guardian certain things we wanted to change or were

planning to change if that continues to be the case going forward that's how you get those jobs because the skills requirements are changing rapidly and we need to make sure we work together in public and private partnerships. education, business, government and employees themselves taking responsibility is how we are going to get through this. >> to re- skill the employees, retaining people and at the same time cutting some costs so it is a balancing act and it's

interesting to know what you are seeing in this regard. >> i don't think anyone has had an easy time. we haven't had the tremendous pressure you have seen in some industries because of the shutdown and obviously all categories of employees like people in entertainment or the restaurant business or the airline business that need to be rescheduled. at some point that becomes larger than an individual company can take on and the government does need to step in and help and we see two exampl examples. this isn't a partisan issue. i've heard examples of

retraining from a lot of different states saying we have to engage with business so the people in our state some of whom were on the precipice before this happened can be trained to get new jobs. >> we are in the pandemic. what do you see as the workforce tomorrow and work place tomorrow, your vision of what that might look like. >> that is still evolving and is the topic of a lot of conversation. it's a conversation we will be part of for the next few years.

i personally do not see 100% remote in all cases however i do think there will be more work than there has been in the past. at guardian we were about 30% remote before the pandemic and we had flexible hours and locations of situations. we are certainly going to continue that and we will probably find many of our employees are going to think whether they want to be remote and may be some will be but we always have places for people to gather and have come artery and pass that down the corporate culture. a lot of what we have done the last six to nine months is building on culture and relationships we've already built in person before the pandemic started its force him

in person contact. there's always going to be the world for cities people want to gather and experience culture and go to great restaurants. it's going to take a while what do you hear from employees themselves in terms of what they are looking forward to doing and working remotely and at the company what is the sentiment they hear backs. >> we have been staying close as we always do but especially during this time period we found our engagement scores have gone up and they have long commutes

so we find people are using part of that to be productive in their jobs and we have had to encourage them to remember to take time off. because of the situation we are in, some people find that difficult and we have put in new family and parental leave programs because quite frankly people have lost relatives, friends and loved ones to the disease so as we go to try to be more supportive i do think that people are looking forward to getting back together though and seeing their colleagues in

person and having social interaction as i think we all are, but we don't know yet when that is going to happen in a safe way. >> president obama had you on the advisory council it was a public-private partnership and we had representatives from treasury and education, consumer representative and people from business and education outside of the government and also from not-for-profit and think tanks. one of the things we decided we were talking about financial

literacy and capability and how to make sure they graduated from high school and college, the ability to manage their finances and we found one of the problems they had in finding a job so working on this advisory council got me to thinking about the content of the book and how do we make sure young people can get jobs. we brought students from a community college where we were men touring and teaching financial literacy to the president's advisory council meeting which was a great experience for them they brought us down to reality and talked about the difficulties they face just of boarding school in the o transportation and computers and seeing their families.

it was interesting. they received credit in the report for their contributions but what i had underestimated as they did a wonderful job finding their way to dc and we helped them and they were excited to be there but they had never been in a big meeting before so this wasn't something that they had learned and it is just a microcosm of what we are facing when we try to bring students into a corporate environment and it showed us how important it is to have that men touring function when we are bringing in people that haven't had a lot of work experience. >> i want to talk a little bit about, i know we are getting close to the end, but leadership and how the leaders have had to step up during the pandemic

talking about it in 2008 public-private partnerships are doing good in the world and it wasn't really quite the popular topic as it is today five or six years ago when i started this book, it seemed a little pushy for the ceo of a company to be taking this on but i was driven by what we were experiencing and what i was seeing in the outside

world, so it was a little countercultural at the time but now everybody is kind of hopping on the bandwagon. the experience that sticks with me is we had a small number of people five or six years ago we were phasing out operations they were using machines and scanning it into the system and we were going to automate the process. we had about 30 people and we were worried about what would happen to them because they didn't have college degrees and we were not sure how the skills would transfer we did make them

the offer we would pay for tuition at the local community college and one of the college partners was very helpful to us in saying we do have jobs in the community we think your employees could qualify for they could take to requalify or earn an associates degree and we said we will pay for an associates degree and i did receive a note from one person who said no one in my family went to college. no one ever told me that i was college material until i came to guardian i never believed i could do that and they ended up earning an associates degree. it shows me the impact they can have at very little expense on

people and change their lives and maybe change their families life and the trajectory of a whole generation so it is important it just takes a little more time and planning and it's a lot less expensive than people know and it's better for the internal culture and the people that are left and inspired by what they are seeing and inspired to go out and learn more so it is a virtuous circle they try to make this work which has great examples.

thank you very much. it's an honor to be here anybody thinking about doing that as i would say start small. pick one problem and then start small, be patient, expect failures and welcome it because it is part of the learning journey and as an executive you need to model the learning culture and show you are learning and it isn't as easy for you that you can be vulnerable and you can try new things. >> i know you've been a purposeful leader and led a purposeful life and what is next for you now that you've stepped

down as ceo but are still currently the chair? >> i'm busy with my guardian responsibilities right now but i would say looking ahead we have a lot of challenges i'm looking forward to whatever form that might take. a. >> it is an insightful discussion about what we all need to take charge of. john i will turn it back over to you. >> this is a terrific conversation all the things you discuss and again thank you both for participating in this wonderful discussion.

during a virtual event with the center for biography. here is some of that conversation. >> what they do generally is follow his life, political

context there's a political biography but they are kind of a standard one volume. there's the classic biography in the preface this is from lincoln's point of view because he didn't have too much connection to the society and culture of his era. he was self educated and the ultimate self-made man. he entered the presidency the least prepared of any president that we have ever had. i'm taking the opposite point of

view. for the entire realm of experience from the highest to the lowest until they believe in him. anderson thought the same way about shakespeare it's all the scraps of old plays and he transforms them into something new. lincoln early on was popular humor sometimes rather dirty humor or whatever but he also memorized long poems by shakespeare and he didn't do this to impress people at cocktail parties but even on

april 9th, 6, 1865 when lee was surrendering to going from virginia to washington he had been visiting grant and everybody around him i would rather talk about shakespeare. he spent several hours discussing poetry from shakespeare and others about death and of the 750,000

americans who died in the civil war, that's where his mind was. it wasn't mission accomplished what i'm the greatest or whatever, he was thinking about those that have died. it is quite moving and that is part of for the democracy comes from and the ability to identify with people of all classes and backgrounds. >> to watch the rest of this, visit booktv.org and search for david reynolds or the title of his book using the search box at the top of the page. ♪