and i'm very proud that in australia, there is a woman who has started a group called the male champions of change. and she has got 12 ceos of significant organizations in australia who have said they're prepared to stand up in the press, in their organization, and talk about why wasting talent has to stop. and until we get women on four different areas, politics, company boards, senior management positions, and academics, in places that can change our community and the values about community and the way we operate in a consensus way, then i feel sorry for the social area that i have left for my children who are now in their

30s and as i watch my four, nearly five grandchildren coming think new and guess what after two boys, i now have three granddaughters and one grandson. and i'm really serious that i want the situation to be different for them. they should be able to have families, be in businesses, and on the other hand, men should be able to also do things with their careers that allow them to show a very different side of their character. thank you. [ applause ] >> what would happen if men, >> what were to happen if men, women, blacks, hispanic, whites, asians and every flavor in between got together and went to work and actually could do their best work because the one thing

that they had to carry with them was respect for one another? sounds like a simple experiment. i've been doing that now for 22 years -- actually 26 years. and here's what i found out. one, that there's really no reason to quantify, stipulate, administrate something that i will never quite understand, diversity. i don't even know if it's inclusion. it just seems to me that's the way everything already is. not regionality. i'm not talking about whether we're all sitting here at the same level of population and concentration here in boulder,

colorado. no. i'm saying on the world, in the world, there's certainly enough of us to get together and do the work that we do without much concern for things like gender, things like ethnicity, things like race. now, here's what i found out also in this experiment of ours. people act badly. doesn't matter what color and race they are. i've had african-american men be 13-year-olds with one another. or white guys appear to be well understood but chastised by the rest of the population. or women who use their bodies to achieve without much consideration for whether or not that was right or that was wrong, and the one thing that

i've determined is that if there was some rule against a-holes working in business, we all would be unemployed. it's okay to have those kinds of sides of ours show up. i also think that if what you do is allow people to achieve and you make some flexibility for the station in life they are, maybe you would still get great work. for example, what would i do if one of my best copywriters was intoxicated one night and ran his car into a barrier and ended up let's say in jail? he's okay. nobody died. nobody got hurt. and i needed work.

would i slip him a piece of paper and pencil like they did martin luther king in the jail in birmingham? you bet i would. you bet i would. same thing applies to women. just because a woman has two children, sick husband, and wants to write copy doesn't mean that when she goes home and she can't drink beer in a bar with the boys that she can't do her best work. on the contrary. sometimes the work is extraordinary. sometimes the work is extraordinary when you're in the bus and you're on the way to a meeting. it really doesn't depend on the circumstantial evidence of work. work is what it is when it's presented. leadership.

some interesting challenges with leadership, and we have a bunch of them of different flavors in our group. i can say that for women for the most part, whatever the challenges are, they seem to be driven by a bit more emotion than men. men's inabilities are pretty much based on their own physical and mental stupidity. you know. emotion doesn't figure into it. it's kind of over the top. so in some ways it's easier to conduct business with a guy who has a problem with listening if what you're able to do is find that moment where he listens. as opposed to a woman who may have a problem with the leadership and the cultural distinction of leading when she

has a pull based on culture to be a bit more submissive. now, i don't think you can change either one of them. >> i do think that tolerance as an executive and the commitment that you hold for that person to achieve can give you just a good a results as beating them over the head and threatening with being terminated. sometimes patience and held commitment is all that it takes to give rise to opportunity and to advancement. and sometimes there's just getting fired. it's okay. you know, first black coach of baseball was frank robinson, and i think when frank robinson was chosen as a coach, one of the astute sportscasters said he'll

be the first black manager fired, and, of course, he was. i think two or three times. so it's not the end of the world to be bad at something or to be chosen as being a failure. sometimes it's a bigger opportunity. so here's what i say in closing. the women who have any interests in the work i do, in communication, i offer you a challenge. 80% some of all products and services in the world are bought by women, decision--makers, to some degree, and maybe 6% of the creative population who make those ads, the creative directors in advertising agencies around the world, are women. now, how does a woman become a creative director? di, you're a creative director. that's as simple as it is. it's an advancement in

perception. and the men are the ones who are able to do it. so having men be more involved in advancement is the key to diversity on all fronts. you know, wouldn't it be great if we had two token white guys on this panel who ran corporations who felt the same way? maybe not. maybe this is the way it should be. but in the interest of time, in time i'll consider it. that's it for that. [ applause ] >> this is my second -- well, this is my sixth panel of batting cleanup so i've sat by jo twice and one more tomorrow and i told him i hated that because he just says it because it's his life, and you can't

actually say it better than people who do it because it's what they do, so to speak. and i want to actually say something more about that because what we're missing right now, we have very ambitious and talented women, but holding men accountable is scary to people. they don't want to blame men. they think to hold men accountable is to blame men, so we need male allies who say men can do this, you know, and that's great. and i thank diana for calling attention to the fact that we needed to have men in this room. she actually does say it like it is which is very good. and we do need to have men in this room. thank you, men, that are here. we should acknowledge the men that are here. i actually hate to thank the men that are here, but in this case, okay. i just hate it. but i'm glad you're here. and i want to appreciate donna for lots of things. i share with you a career in entrepreneurship and getting women into entrepreneurship and diversity, et cetera, but i

appreciate that you talked about the brain, because i think one of the things, one of the things that i've been looking at a great deal is the fact that i've been working on this issue of women's leadership for a long time, and i find how hard it is to go into companies and to talk to men because they immediately feel like you're against them and react. but what i found is with the new neuroscience, if you go in and start to talk about -- we start with gendered brains and, you know, 80% of i think of us it is start with gendered brains, and this is coming so we have to look at it. i'm always scared about gendered and whatever that's in the brain. however, what i've found that's very promising about all this new research is that the breaks are so collaborative. male and female brains are so collaborative. i mean, working together gets you exactly a much better thing. and i was telling my host the other day who brought me in who was here -- i'll give you this as a bonus because it's helped me so much. what we also find out

historically is that male brains have learned to rest and women's brains never rest. and partly because of the history. i mean, as the anthropologist who taught me this said men were standing actually behind a tree trying to hit something with a rock for a long time, you know, and so they had to rest, and women were always in the -- you know, working around the area, and, therefore, they just never rested. and it's so helpful to my relationship with men because i've spent years asking men what they're thinking. and they always say nothing. and i always say -- and i have lost relationships by saying i know you're thinking something, and they say, no, i'm not. and then i say you don't want to tell me what you're thinking. and then they say, well, nothing. so anyway, it's helped me a great deal with my relationships. i've been working actually since leaving the foundation for 20

years, i got tired of women who had great ideas and were changing policy around work and changing the very things that we're dealing with in this country. we were funding them, and they came up with living wage campaigns, and they changed the things that helped men and women be able to have family medical leave. they made amazing changes in pay having -- and in how work is done, as has been said. but i got really tired of them not being in the seats of power alongside men. so that we could change things permanently. because we keep putting women into advocacy positions and so i started advocating differently. which is training women to run for office, training women in corporate america. and really looking at the media that doesn't show enough women in leadership. you can't be what you can't see. and if women are not shown as leaders, they don't see them in corporate america and they don't see them. and men see them, and so they think it's normal for it to be done. i work across race and gender and class because if you don't work across those three things, you don't get a great deal done

either. what i've found, though, in this country is this is an auspicious time in the world and this country for women's leadership. a very auspicious time. what is needed is women. but you have to know the time you're in. and i'm afraid we will not use it because there's so much pushback and fear about women coming into power, and i'm thinking that we need to think about the business we're in. for instance, i could tell you all the stats because we've benchmarked women's leadership for years, and america does believe it's a fair country. it doesn't want to think in this country that there are differences. that's a horrible thing. i didn't realize that there are so many people who think women are in leadership who don't know they're dropping out in mid-level management like in every company in the country.

and that it's not about child care. it's about the fact that they don't see opportunity and people at the top. and so they finally go and start a small business or do something that allows them to do things. this is an urgent issue. this is not an issue of fairness anymore. this is an urgent issue because we need people who have different kinds of thinking at the table. or we're never going to get out of the morass that we're in. you have to watch the trends. and the railroad business, that was his families thing, the railroad business failed because it thought it was still in the transportation business. i mean, the railroad business. it didn't understand that it was moving to the transportation business. it didn't know that it had moved from the railroad business over. and we are not in the gender business anymore. we're in the transformation business. and so if we want to transform anything in this country, we have got to take on this issue of women's leadership. because i have a limited time, i'll just remind you -- maybe you have to hear these numbers one more time. we're only 15% of boards, only 13% -- 13% of boards have no women on them.

we're only 16% of corporate officers and only 3%, you know, of fortune 500 companies in leadership in that way. we are the majority of education, of people getting degrees, but in every mba program across the world, across the world, the brightest and the best women and men have a differential of $4,600 worth that they start at in terms of where they enter and they never catch up. and they never catch up. so we have got to start to do differently if we want to change things. i want to focus again, because we can have lots of conversation and having trained -- it has to be a diverse group of women. i know diverse is not as great a term as we would like it to be, but there's got to be difference at the table, not just any women. there's got to be diverse women at table because, again, it has to mirror the kind of changes that we need and make it normal. i have thought as was said years

and years ago at harvard to get numbers, because numbers make it normal, and then you stop thinking about gender. i've done research on women running for office. one woman has got to always be man enough on the job and we report on our hair hemlines and husband. two women is a cat fight. or in comparison, three women, it messes the press up. they actually have to focus on their agenda, so we have to get enough women. it's a matter of numbers to get enough women to where we can focus on an agenda and not gender. finally, i want to say something about boards. we have opportunity because of what started in europe. what europe and australia are doing is wonderful, getting women on boards now, because boards have a lot of power and executive groups in offices -- in companies have a lot of power. so because there has been

initiatives asking for quotas. and by the way, i don't believe quotas are bad. we don't get this on merit. if we called it quota, would you feel better? we don't get there on merit. we're not a meritocracy, i'm sorry. we put people in power who we know. therefore, i just want to tell you that we have an opportunity now. more men are putting women on boards and i've actually heard white men stand in front of audiences and say i love this. they're not as interested in being right as doing the right thing, and it has been great, and i want to just announce that there is a campaign called face it facebook because i want you to know young women started this, and they are trying to get zuckerman to actually put a woman on his board, two women, three men. they have an all-male board, therefore an all-male board, and he's about to do this huge going public with no women on his board, and he says he's a company that's about the values of society and fairness, so i

just want to alert you to this because we have a campaign, these young women and young liko you should go on facebook and ultraviolet will help you sign on to help mark do the right thing. thank you. [ applause ] >> i would like to ask the panelists if you have any comments, anything else you'd like to add on the discussion so far. >> i wanted to just add to what was said about percentages on boards. australia had not managed in our top 100, 200 companies to get above 10% of women on boards until they were told, you know, the quota target thing. they were told that they would have to report this year at the end of our financial year in june on what they were doing to

move to get more women on boards, and they were warn that had if there wasn't a significant change, then it would be mandated. the interesting thing was having spent the last five years saying we can't find suitably qualified women, in the first year of this threat, 25% of the new board positions went to women. so it's about forcing people into an uncomfortable place. so that instead of looking for the person who looks like them, they actually go looking and say this is going to be really embarrassing if my end-of-year plan shows what my numbers look like. and all of a sudden they can find people with skill sets. amazing. >> that's amazing. >> well, i'm going to beg to differ with diane just a little bit. i see that perceptions are at

the heart of the exclusion of women and minorities in business boards and such. i've been on a lot of boards, and i haven't really met a truly twisted, non--god fearing man who is somehow conspiring to hold women down. i think it's actually a lot more simpler. i think that sometimes men are . i think it's actually a lot more simpler. i think that sometimes men are thoughtless and prefer it that way because it gives them a chance to hold on to power, perceptions. so i offer the possibility that treating each one differently, encounters that don't necessarily start off as force,

could produce bigger results. it all depends on the guy you're talking to. the force thing i think just kind of puts you back in this exclusionary cycle. >> we haven't forced it them yet. we're just -- >> she just said force. >> i said i'm supportive of that if they don't mandate change. what i said is the difference of that is if we don't see a change, but what we've mandated is that they must report on it. until that time, 67% of board positions were handed out to friends of the guys on the board. answer somehow you have to get change and that will be uncomfortable. >> i think that's the question. somehow you have to get change. when i hear force, i hear a kind of control that i wouldn't want. no matter who i was. white guy, black guy, white female. so there's other ways to produce the result.

and the inquiry should be to finding what those ways are. pressure, different than force, and certainly interacting with men in a way where you're their equal is a preferable spot, i think, for the rationale. >> jo, how long do you think we've been doing that? we've been doing that. >> it's multi-generational. it's not over. it's just happening. >> but you said about the civil rights movement? >> whatever the civil rights movement is, it certainly isn't an example of the success of force. it's a success of legislation. >> well, we would love legislation and protest around these boards, believe me. i would sponsor legislation tomorrow to get 30% women on the board. >> i would, too, but it wouldn't be force. >> okay. i think it's a definition of force. asking them to report on it is not force. >> that's right. >> what i'm saying there isn't a

change, they're aware that thereby targets. like norway, like sweden, where they have made significant difference. see, we'll go for the whole time. you better -- >> six panels where i actually had a real disagreement. i love it. >> it's okay. it's all right. >> wonderful. >> and from you. >> now we can open it up, if anyone has any questions? and we can start right over here. >> so, if the population of women that is in the realm of consideration for boards, is so small, what can we do, well, i mean, you know, as you mention, the number of ceos and the number of women that are in these areas, in the visibility of men that are creating these boards, how do we create more visibility of highly qualified

population that we know exists and push women into the arena that makes them viable candidates and desirable candidates for these boards? >> well, we are doing that, a story, diana can talk about in terms of the champion program, and most countries, companies, states that i'm working in, in new york, we are lifting up women who are visible or who have those qualifications. i mean, we're taking responsibility for actually finding the women ourselves and putting them in front of people. we're working across the states sometimes. we're working in the women's forum. actually, for the facebook campaign, there are 27 women so far that they found that could be on the board of facebook, because of what's needed and who are the people on there? i think -- i guess i wanted to say, i believe in quotas because we have tried about 1,000 other

ways, and the women, while you are right, they're not as many women who have been in that executive suite that makes them available, but there are enough women who have enough competencies and enough history and you don't just have to come from the executive suite to be there for us to go and say that you could have actually a third woman on your board without stretching what you need. it's not about taking people who don't have the qualifications, but we have those women. >> right, right, yeah, i guess that's my point. there's a lot of qualified women who may not have made that executive level that create the visibility out there. >> yeah, they're not as visible, but they are people who have the qualifications. >> so, one of the things we do in explore for success is encourage women in things that aren't natural things for them. and i would like the women in this audience to think when someone says you did a fabulous job on that project, could you use the two words thank you rather than say i had a fabulous team, or it was nothing, or

something else? just say thank you, i enjoyed the challenge and i had a great team. could you make sure that at least five other people you work with know where your career, not just women, mainly men, in fact, 4 to 1, because that's where it is up there, know what you would like the direction your career to go in. because, if you don't let that be known, and it shouldn't have to be known, but we do know in australia that a woman, i say, one, two, three, the engagement ring is strike one. the wedding ring is strike two. and pregnancy is strike three. therefore, they know that your brain is going to atrophy, and you're not going to be useful at anything. and most of our men in senior positions in australia have women who are at home, with the family, or who have gone into part-time work that doesn't necessarily take full use of their skills. so, at this stage, women have to

be able to articulate where they want to go, and that's what explore is all about, taking the women and ensuring that they can become visible in organizations. because if they are not coming through in senior management, we're not going to address the board thing. >> i think we're in the same place around board representation as i was mentioning before around access to capital issues. we still live in a world that pretends that the best and the brightest, the biggest, smarty pants people on the planet, are middle class white boys. it's still where we are. and so when i'm recruiting board members, there is an abundance of talented women. there is an abundance of indigenous women that offer incredible resources to my company. because i'm not just looking for a particular thin slice of qualifications. i'm not just looking for people who have made a lot of money.

we do have, you know, a really talented middle age, middle class white guy, former cfo who knows lots about how to chase a single bottom line hard, and he's on the board. but he's one of a group of collective people that are contributing to build a business that is more than just the pursuit of quarterly profit down one single track, which is what men's brains are so darn good at. i appreciate that he carries that intelligence into the mix, but it's not the only form of intelligence. so, we're back to the stranded asset, stranded talent, wasted people, all over the world. and we have to learn to see those other aptitudes in ourselves and in other people and in people whose pigment is really different. >> i just want to build on that, because i love this. i mentioned this in a couple of panels, but warren buffett