00:05I was catching up with a friend
from business school,
00:08a Turkish executive who, on the surface,
seemed to be thriving.
00:12She had a great career,
a beautiful family,
00:15and she was just one of those people
who seemed to have it all together.
00:18But in reality, she was struggling.
00:22The Turkish government had started
going after business leaders
00:25whose views it disagreed with.
00:26Some of their companies
had been shut down.
00:29Others were in jail.
00:33And she felt guilty because she
and everyone she knew
00:37had stayed out of politics.
00:38They had focused
on building their companies
00:40and raising their children,
00:42and now they were paying the price.
00:45As she left, she said to me with urgency,
00:48“In Turkey, we’re in season 10
00:50in this series we call
‘The Demise of Democracy.’
00:54In the US, you're in season three."
01:00On January 6, 2021, I could hear
the sirens from my home.
01:05Living six blocks from the Capitol
01:07in a neighborhood more typically
occupied by strollers,
01:10not angry insurrectionists,
01:12I asked my children to stay inside
and play in the basement
01:15where they could not hear the violence.
01:18And I watched in fear as our institutions
and our leaders came under attack.
01:26The next season in the decline
of American democracy
01:33OK, so this is not the problem
I thought needed solving
01:37when I got an engineering degree
and an MBA in the '90s.
01:40The Berlin Wall had fallen,
01:42and every leading
political scientist assured us
01:45that communism and authoritarianism
were in permanent decline.
01:51Democracy was the clear winner
in a long Cold War battle,
01:55and economic growth and development
was the new imperative.
02:00So pursuing a government job in boring,
02:04inefficient-seeming path seemed illogical.
02:08And so we went off to get our MBAs
02:10and change the world through business.
02:12In Johannesburg or ...
02:15Beijing or Moscow
or New York or Silicon Valley.
02:19Our big challenge was innovating enough
to create opportunities in new markets.
02:26Standing here today, this is not
the future I imagined in the '90s.
02:31Communism might be a distant memory,
02:33but authoritarianism is on the rise.
02:36And for those who build
careers in business,
02:38assuming that rule of law and democratic
capitalism would remain intact,
02:44we now have the obligation,
the opportunity,
02:48the power to take action.
02:53And, my generation, Gen Xers,
have a particular obligation
02:58because we now lead the majority
of companies in the US.
03:03And I don't just mean the C-suite,
03:04I mean the investors, the entrepreneurs,
03:06the executives who saw success
as our public institutions faltered.
03:13OK, so some of you might be getting
a little skeptical, thinking,
03:18"Is she suggesting we need more
corporate influence in politics?"
03:23OK, look, I am not suggesting
03:26we need more checks
written to advance specific,
03:28narrow corporate interests.
03:30What I'm talking here today
is about a different challenge,
03:34and I'd suggest an even bigger one.
03:36That the pro-democracy business leaders
will stay out of politics
03:40because it's the safe thing to do,
03:42it's the respectable thing to do,
03:44and what history tells us
03:46that when business leaders
stay out of politics,
03:50from Nazi Germany to modern-day Turkey
03:55and they passively enable autocrats,
03:58democracies collapse.
04:00But when business leaders engage,
04:03we have a better chance
of democracy surviving.
04:06As occurred in South Africa,
04:08when a group of business leaders
played a pivotal role
04:11in ending apartheid without a civil war.
04:15OK, so what does the solution
really look like?
04:19I'm not suggesting we need more corporate
virtue signaling and CEO statements
04:24on every issue of the day.
04:26And the Silicon Valley dream
of techno-optimism,
04:30I fear, also can't help us.
04:32I don't think tech bros
inheriting the Earth
04:34will answer our problems for us.
04:36What we need now are courageous leaders
04:39who understand that it is
squarely in their self-interest
04:43to protect our elections
and reform our institutions,
04:47to ensure that disinformation
doesn't dominate politics
04:50and to really play their role
04:57in protecting our system.
05:02saving American democracy
was not part of my professional ambitions.
05:06I was advising companies at Bain,
05:08I was part of building a management
consulting company across five continents.
05:11And even when I went into government,
05:14it was to focus on boosting
private investment
05:16in newly-emerging economies.
05:20But when I got to Washington
and joined the Obama administration,
05:24here’s what got me scared:
05:26was that our public institutions
that projected so much power
05:30seemed underneath
to be fragile and disruptable.
05:36it was clear that that disruption
was well under way.
05:41And it was time to pivot to a new mission:
05:44to focus on bringing business leaders
05:46into the project to renew
American democracy.
05:50I consulted with some
of the most thoughtful academics
05:53studying the US political system,
05:56and pulled together a group
of my Harvard Business School classmates
05:59to design a different kind
of political organization.
06:02We started to bring together business
leaders from different industries,
06:05geographies and political persuasions.
06:08We call it the Leadership Now Project.
06:10Since 2018, we've been deploying
our time, dollars and networks
06:15to preserving democracy.
06:17And we've seen that we can make progress.
06:20We now have members
in more than 20 states
06:22and some real successes under our belt.
06:26And our members are individual business
leaders who come to this work
06:29not as Democrats or Republicans,
but as Americans.
06:33We focus our efforts on the highest
ROI strategies at a state
06:40We really work to make the economic case
06:43that an unstable democracy harms
business and our economy.
06:47And increasingly, we’re clear
at what’s really at stake:
06:51that when democracy falters,
the rule of law goes out the window,
06:56innovation is crushed along with dissent,
06:59leaders reward friends and punish enemies,
07:01and wars become far more likely.
07:07We've built Leadership Now
applying modern business thinking
07:10to an old-school political model:
07:12the dues-paying membership organization,
07:14which some of the most
powerful players in politics
07:17have employed for decades,
07:19like the Chamber of Commerce,
07:24unions, the Sierra Club.
07:27They’ve all used this model
because it helps us and them
07:30to play the long game.
07:32We're not just seeking silver bullets,
07:35and we don't give up when we fail,
07:37but we can replicate and scale successes
across different states when we win.
07:43And our members are taking
real action together.
07:46Let me share a few examples of how.
07:48Where we’ve sought to uphold
trust in elections.
07:51Where we’ve sought to protect
the people and policies
07:53that are working
to shore up our democracy.
07:56And how we’ve pushed back
on political retribution,
07:59which we see continuing to increase.
08:05we issued the first public statement
by a business organization
08:10seeking to reinforce the legitimacy
of the presidential election process.
08:14More than 200 leaders
from across industries joined us,
08:18and later major business associations
and corporations also joined
08:22in calling for the certification
of the election and condemnation
08:26of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
08:30We've worked to support
some of the leaders
08:32who are willing to push back
on threats to democracy.
08:36So in 2022, a group
of Wisconsin business leaders,
08:41asked their candidates for governor
08:43if they would be willing
to certify elections
08:47regardless of the result.
08:48A basic, nonpartisan question.
08:51When one of the candidates
refused to agree,
08:53they endorsed his competitor,
08:55who went on to win
a closely-fought election.
09:02we worked with our member, Paul Tagliabue,
09:04the former commissioner of the NFL,
09:06to pull together his long-standing
networks in business,
09:09sports and the military
09:10to support legislation to protect
future presidential election transitions.
09:16Later that year, Congress did just that,
09:18passing legislation to reform
the Electoral Count Act
09:22on a bipartisan basis.
09:25We stand with companies
09:26that are threatened
with political retribution.
09:29The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis,
09:31had threatened Disney
with political retribution
09:33and actually had exacted
political retribution
09:36for the companies disagreeing
with him and his legislature.
09:40We argued that this was something
that was more typical in autocracies,
09:43not democracies like the US,
and set a dangerous precedent.
09:47Our amicus brief on the case was filed
09:50and we continue
to support Disney's position
09:53as the case moves forward.
09:55We take a clear position against laws
that damage democracy.
09:59In August 2023, Jeni Britton,
10:01the founder of Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream,
10:03joined more than 50 business leaders
in her state of Ohio,
10:06making the case that a cynical measure
10:07that sought to limit citizens ability
to weigh in on ballot initiatives
10:11was bad for democracy.
10:14The ballot initiative ultimately
was defeated 57 to 43 percent,
10:19with both Democrats
and Republicans voting against it.
10:23Look, this is just a start.
10:26There are many more successes
that we can have together.
10:29And here's the good news,
you don't have to act alone.
10:32Our polling of business leaders shows
that the majority care about democracy,
10:37they would like to protect
democracy in the US.
10:40So here's a few things you can do together
with like-minded business leaders.
10:43Remember that small actions have power.
10:46If election administrators
are threatened in a city,
10:49even if just 10 executives
come together and take a stand,
10:52they will be seen as courageous leaders
and the unexpected voices
10:56that are standing up for our system.
10:58Now imagine if in every city and industry,
11:01a dozen executives came together
11:03and made a plan for how they will respond
when democracy is threatened.
11:08Look, we're at a tenuous moment,
11:11and I am certain
that we can win this fight.
11:15But we have watched too many seasons
of democracy's decline in the US
11:19and around the world.
11:20And we need to work now, in urgency,
together to save our democracy.
11:26And I'm more convinced than ever
11:28that business leaders
have a role to play in that.
