Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. So the firm Morgan Stanley has been committed to ESG stewardship for many years before it was popular on Wall Street to have a group focused on this. We established what we call our global sustainable finance team back in 2009 to recognize that this would be one of the major secular trends that were likely to impact the financial services industry and the capital markets more specifically. And so, we think we're at the early stages of this evolution. But what has happened in the more recent period is that the trend has accelerated. And we felt that in addition to all the other things that we had put in place, including establishing a chief sustainability officer and focusing on our stewardship by basically being the first US bank to make a net-zero financing commitment, being one of the first US banks to make a plastic waste resolution.

We did all these things from a leadership perspective but felt that given the acceleration in the trend and the focus on this area of activity, we needed to make sure that for our private side clients, in particular, meaning corporations and governmental entities that we cover in our investment bank and our capital markets practice that we were bringing the ESG lens to our client dialogue around our traditional investment banking product, suite of debt underwriting, equity underwriting and also M&A advisory. And that's when I was asked to head up this effort to ensure that we could bring the deep domain expertise established in the form over many years to our client dialogue, specifically around these product areas. It's been great. It's been a very exciting time to be associated with this growing area of activity.

Absolutely. Well, now, at the end of the day, people think of Wall Street as being about numbers and analytics. But at the heart of it, Wall Street is really about relationships and people more than anything else. And at the end of the day, I think we're social creatures, and we need the ability to interact physically with one another. So we've been back now for about six to eight weeks in the office, fully staffed for all our vaccinated professionals, and have had the ability as a consequence of having kind of everybody back in the office to have us engage and have that social connectivity that's so important to what we do. So crucial to the innovation and creativity and the formation of new ideas that we depend on effectively to bring the best thought leadership to our client base. So it's been a great change. We also are a business that relies heavily on young talent coming into the business from undergraduate campuses and business school campuses. And we are a business that teaches people by doing. It's an apprenticeship business where people learn by doing so, the ability to have the interaction that we are so accustomed to with our workforce, broadly speaking, including the most junior professionals who are just starting their careers, are at the early stages of their careers. It is essential to our culture and the overall productivity of the institution. So it's been a lot of fun to be able to resume, if you will, some semblance of normalcy in terms of how we conduct our activities.

Surprisingly, it's been a relatively smooth transition, I would say. And that's in part because the senior leadership has been coming in occasionally, not throughout the pandemic. And so I think we have offices. We were able to come into our offices with all the appropriate controls around temperature checking and symptom checking and social distancing and mask-wearing, et cetera. So I think many of us have been doing that. Still, we've been doing that really in isolation, not with the benefit of our teams or a lot of our colleagues, which sort of left a sense of isolation or emptiness, if you will, associated with being physically here. And so now that there's the buzz back on, I work on a trading floor, for example, now that the buzz is back and there's critical mass if you will, and it's a great feeling. So I think we are, surprisingly, it's been pleasantly surprising to me how well people have adapted to being back. Now, as you say, with the Delta variants. And I think people are observing. And I think that we have told our workforce that they should do what they feel comfortable doing. So for those people who, for one reason or another, don't feel comfortable, we certainly are allowing for flexibility for them to work from home or from wherever they are situated. And we are also encouraging people that if they feel more comfortable being masked when they're in the office, they should do so. So we're trying to ensure that people understand that everybody has a different tolerance level. Everybody has a different kind of risk appetite. Everybody has a different health situation or circumstance. And we need to be respectful and mindful of each individual's comfort level.

So as you noted in the quote that you put up earlier, for me, I am of the view that I think it's been evident that the dual pandemics of a global health crisis and a racial crisis that we experience in this country and more broadly in the world have shone a light, as I said, on the pillar of ESG. And as a consequence, I think businesses appreciate much more how social risks or social considerations are both risks and opportunities that need to be managed. And I'd say one of those risks and opportunities that it's getting a lot of attention is the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So clearly, those dual pandemics have laid bare many of the structural inequities in our society, whether it be in the realm of education, health care, or income. And as a consequence, I think there's a real call to action on the part of the private sector to do its part effectively to help create a more just and equitable society. So I think that is an area that we're seeing tremendous amounts of interest in on the part of all of our clients, really on both the buy-side and on the sell-side. Real focus on this issue of diversity, equity, inclusion, and really more precisely, even around racial justice.

So in general, what I would say is that I do think that we have experienced an inflection that I think I'm hopeful will continue, which is that I believe business leaders and CEOs are much more comfortable these days talking about some of these issues than they have been historically in the past because I think there's greater recognition and appreciation for the idea that to run and to build a resilient and prosperous business long term, you need to have a focus on a multitude of constituents. You cannot just be focused exclusively on the financial interest of shareholders, for example. So it goes back to even the Business Roundtable, right, where the purpose of a corporation back in 2019 was redefined to be that of serving a multitude of stakeholders, not just your shareholders. And I think with the advent of that statement and some of the other things that have transpired since, including the things that we just referenced last year, I think there is just a much greater appreciation for the fact that businesses have an obligation to serve the communities in which they operate.

Consequently, I think you've seen a real surge in corporate social responsibility as an example. Many companies have gone out and made all kinds of pledges and upped their game in terms of philanthropy and various initiatives designed to help improve the communities in which they operate. And I think that you're going to continue to see this governance model of multi-stakeholder as something where, just as Larry talked about in his letter to CEOs, Larry Fink, where people are thinking about not just their shareholders, but also their employees, their customers, their regulators, certainly, and then more broadly, the society at large. And so, I'm encouraged by the fact that I think there has been much more recognition and acceptance of this idea that you do have to speak out on certain issues. I mean, I think the challenge and I had the good fortune of actually interviewing Larry Fink earlier this year, and I asked him the specific question about how he decides what issues he should speak out on. And he made the point that BlackRock gets asked, and he gets asked in his current capacity to comment on just about anything and everything, and that you do have to decide what things matter to your stakeholders. You have to have a perfect sense of the various interested parties and constituents you must serve. And you have to be asking yourself constantly, are you helping those constituents appropriately? Are you doing each of them justice? And in some instances, that will necessitate you taking public positions on specific topics that are of grave importance to those constituencies.

No, I think that's right. I think that the reality is that time will tell. I say last year was an inflection point because the data substantiates that good ESG stewardship pays to do good. I mean, you not only are doing the right thing morally, but you're also doing well by your constituents, including your shareholders. So if you look at ESG strategies, they outperformed traditional strategies in equities last year by about four percent. And suppose you also look at the data over our time horizon. In that case, you see that companies that are really focused on good environmental and social stewardship, generally speaking, have experienced lower downside volatility by about 20 percent over the last 15 years. So I think there is more evidence to substantiate the thesis that there is a correlation basically between good ESG stewardship and financial performance. And I think that is starting to be appreciated, that you want to do good not just for the sake of doing good, but also to do well. We're seeing that show up in the data to a great extent now. I think time will tell. I get asked all the time about, well, is this a cyclical thing? What happens, of course, in a bull market. Maybe that is the case. And we went through this recessionary period over calling it, and we had a flight to quality and a consequence of the flight quality.

Naturally, people emphasize some of these softer, more intangible things. But will that persist throughout the cycle? And so I think it remains to be seen. But one thing I would cite if you look at many emerging growth companies, a lot of new ones. We spend a lot of time, and we're constantly working with emerging growth companies and taking them to the public markets, debuting them to the investor base for the first time. And many emerging companies, particularly the ones that are most disruptive and experiencing tremendous levels of growth, are very focused on these issues of good environmental and social stewardship. And if you look, for example, just around this whole concept of multi-stakeholders, and there's a growing trend towards some of these companies, particularly in the consumer space coming to market as what's called with B Corp certifications or as what's called a public benefit KORPS and these public benefit corporations have a special charter effectively and a different fiduciary obligation than a traditional C Corp, which is a multi-stakeholder approach to governance that essentially says they have to serve not only the interests of their shareholder but the interests of other stakeholders as well, including their public benefit purpose. So these pieces are a public benefit.

KORPS, as they're called, also have a stated public purpose that they have to abide by as well. I think you're starting to see a lot of high-growth emerging companies come on to the public markets and really exhibit this very high commitment and level of environmental and social stewardship. And that makes sense if you think about also some of the other secular trends that are going on in our country, the focus that there is from the millennial and the Gen Z, yours in particular, around this trend, many of whom are going into entrepreneurship and are innovating and at the helm of some of these fast-growing companies. I think there's a mind shift that's happening generationally as well. And that mind-shift is going to ultimately also be accompanied by a wealth transfer that will happen over the next several decades to these younger generations. And that's another force that's likely to result in a continuation of this trend.

Absolutely, I think employers now, I mean we look at our business as an example of your talent is our most valuable asset. We are constantly trying to recruit the best and the brightest to Wall Street. And we recognize that they care about different things than the previous generations cared about. And people want to work for organizations that align with their values. They want to work for purpose-driven organizations. And suppose you don't offer that up as a value proposition to a value proposition to prospective employees. In that case, you're not going to be able to attract, retain and develop the best and the brightest talent that's out there. So I think that's right. I think I look at my children as an example, and I think about what they tell me all the time and how they're essentially preparing to assume the helm, if you will, of leadership in society. And they're very focused on these issues.

So I don't know the story, actually.

I think to some extent that is what has happened last year. I think that the tragedies of this health care pandemic and the tragedy of the George Floyd murder did exactly what you just described. I think it got the country and the world's attention, and it got. And that included the business community. And I think as a consequence, the business community is more woke. I mean, they're much more woke than they were before these events occurred. And there's been a lot of research now that's been done to sort of put a finer point on some of the disparities that exist in our society, around health care, around education, around income inequality. And I think the business community recognizes that they have to play a part in helping to level the playing field and helping to close some of these gaps. And so I think there's been a call to action, basically, and I think it has resulted in people causing feeling a tremendous sense of having to be introspective around just their whole raison d'être, their whole purpose and being and reflect on that and think about how they can contribute to changing the world. I look at them as an example, what our CEO, James Gorman, did coming out of the George Floyd murder, where he really, I think he went on a listening tour to some extent with many of the senior leaders around the firm. And as a consequence, he took some very decisive action, including standing up for this Institute for Inclusion, which we endowed with twenty-five billion dollars to start focusing on a lot of issues that we see in society that need to be addressed, educational attainment as an example, focusing on also trying to spur activity in the black and minority underserved business community.

So thinking about what we can do from a products and solutions standpoint ourselves to help black and minority-owned businesses thrive and to create more wealth in that community. And then also looking at our internal workforce and efforts with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so this initiative that he put underway is just one of many examples, I think, of how corporate America has tried to respond to the experiences of last year. And so the hope is that this doesn't die, right, that this continues to accelerate and to result in lasting change. There's a lot of work to do. And I think that lest we not forget, I mean, we did a webinar with immediately following that the events of George Floyd, where several leaders of the firm, myself included, were interviewed by our then vice-chairman, Tom Nides, who's now gone on to be the US ambassador to Israel. But he interviewed several of us, and many of us spoke up about not letting him die in vain. And so I think that we have to make sure that we don't forget that moment, that awakening that we had, that we don't go back to sleep and that we continue to do things that we know need to happen in this society to create a more just in a more equitable world. And that and in turn, I think ultimately will also contribute to longer-term, more prosperous growth for the country.

Well, there are so many I probably would cite just the example of so many of our young people basically who have now taken it upon themselves to help the organization kind of lead the way. So as an example, we had a black managing director and our sales and trading division who initiated a program that's now being adopted across all of our institutional security business called the Morgan Stanley Experienced Professionals Program, where we've had a targeted lateral hiring initiative around black professionals, specifically bringing them into the organization. These are individuals who've had, let's say, two to as many as ten years of experience working in other industries and who are looking for a career change and whose skill set we think is transferable to this business, but who may not have had any experience working in financial services, are working in the investment banking industry. And we're bringing them into our various businesses, whether it be equity research or capital markets. And we're employing them for two years, really allowing them to be an apprentice, to learn the business. And then, depending on how the two-year period goes, there could be longer-term employment opportunities for these individuals.

So this allowed us to accelerate the number of individuals of color. One of the issues that we're trying to build a more diverse workforce is to widen the funnel and get more people in the door. And we've had a lot of programs historically that we have had for our new talent, our campus hiring from either business schools or undergraduate institutions. But this is something we're doing kind of at the lateral level with more experienced professionals. And it's yet another way for us to get access to a highly talented pool that is diverse. And so that is an example of something that just one individual took the leadership to initiate in his division. He got buy-in from many other constituents, and he was able almost to start a movement and put these programs in place programmatically across many different businesses. I think this is the kind of leadership that can lead to real, lasting change. I could cite initiatives that have taken off due to people showing individual leadership, picking up the mantle, and taking action.

Absolutely.

Sure. Happy to talk about that, I will say. And we hope we can come back to this. But all of us that are in positions like me, I think, stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. So a lot of my ability to bring myself to work, be an authentic person, and have the success that I've enjoyed has been a function of the community and the mentors and sponsors that I've had over the years. So we'll get to that. That's a really important ingredient, I think, to personal and professional success. Speaking of standing on the shoulders of other people, those who came before you, I mean, I was a very fortunate young woman growing up. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I was born and raised there. I still live there to this day. I had parents who were fortunate enough to be highly educated and provide access to an excellent education for me. So I feel like I always tell people that I had the best education that money could buy. I had great schooling at the primary level. I had great schooling at the secondary level. And so I feel like education is the foundation really for the personal and professional success of any kind because I feel that by educating yourself and becoming an informed citizen, that's really how you can appreciate the myriad of perspectives that it takes to essentially create a fair or just a successful, productive world and society.

I mean, any of us who've been in any of these educations of higher learning that are focused on teaching, about leadership, citizenship, critical thinking have had the good fortune of basically learning as much from our fellow students as we did from our professors learning as much from each other as we did from those who were there to teach us. So I think that I feel very fortunate. I grew up in a household with a father who was a medical doctor who had gone to school in Europe. He had gone to medical school in Switzerland at the University of Zurich due to being black back in the 1950s and having very limited access to medical school opportunities here in the States. So he emigrated elsewhere and had that experience and, consequently, really came back, sort of a global citizen, multilingual, and spoke three different languages: French, German and English.

I had a mother who grew up in a single-family household, but because of, again, her education and our focus on her academic achievement was able to attend a historically black college or University at Fisk and then go on to get her doctorate in a Ph.D. in anatomy and physiology from the University of Chicago. So I had parents who were highly educated and had the good fortune to be. And that is kind of the foundation that helped me to be the person that I am. And when you have parents who were able to achieve that kind of educational attainment and yet came from much more adverse circumstances than you do. It gives you an appreciation that to those much is given, much is expected, and that you really can be and do anything you put your mind to, you can overcome adversity and obstacles. Education is one good avenue or means to do that.

I would say one of the things that my parents were very focused on was hard work. They would tell me it's its reward, and I always tell my children that hard work is its reward. I think that you get out of things kind of what you put into something, and you should work hard for yourself as much as you do for anybody else, because it is its reward and that you get fulfillment from actually doing a good job. You get satisfaction, and you also gain mastery of something that then helps build your confidence, which builds your confidence. And I think having confidence and feeling good about yourself and self-esteem is an important part of success. I mean, you talk about some of the challenges or some of the issues of being an African American woman, as an example, in a business that white men have historically dominated, and I think I had a colleague of mine once told me, one of my many mentors, that this business is a confidence game. We're in the business of giving advice, and we're advising very powerful and influential people that have a lot of responsibility out there that they are in charge of. And to be able to have them trust you and respect you and feel like they want to take your advice, you have to be confident in giving that advice. You have to have a point of view around issues and substantiate your point of view.

You don't always have to be right, but you have to have a perspective on things and to be able to back that perspective up with facts and information. And you have to be able to do that confidently. And I think one of the challenges for minorities and organizations, women and people of color, and other minorities is that if you are the only one who looks like you in the role, that in and of itself can undermine your confidence. So there's a special effort that needs to be made when you're a person of a minority or somebody different from the norm. A special effort needs to be made to ensure a culture of inclusion that allows that person to have a voice to enable that person to develop the confidence that they need to be considered competent and good at what they do. So I feel very fortunate to have learned from my parents that that hard work is its reward. And to put that work into building my network of relationships that have helped me develop some of these intangible skills, like the confidence that I need to be successful organizationally.

I'll make one other point that I often talk to people about. Linda Hill is a professor at ABT as a black woman, tenured professor, and has been a long-standing head of the leadership of initiative at Harvard. And then David Thomas, now the head of more of the president of Morehouse College, but previously on the faculty at Georgetown. And I often think of the research about where they say stars are made, they're not born. This idea that people just come out of the womb and they're destined for greatness is just not true. And that it's this the research and the data substantiates the fact that knowledge in a business context, it's this combination basically of your competency, coupled with your network of relationships that then, in turn, get you access to stretch assignments. And those stretch assignments, in turn, enable you to build your confidence more. And that gets you more exposure to more people. And so that grows your network. And it's this virtuous cycle, basically, of combining your competency with your network of relationships. And in turn, that's what catapults you to the organizational hierarchy.

So I think the issue for women and minorities often is that they don't have access to that same network of relationships. And so they don't have that same opportunity to build their competency and have that virtuous cycle work in the same way. And I think that's the issue that organizations need to focus on to help. That's why people look around when you're looking for a successor to be the CEO, and you don't see any women who can be the CEO. It's because the women have not been groomed to be the CEO over the last two decades. And now what needs to start changing is that we have to be much more intentional and purposeful about grooming a diverse set of people to be at that place where they can ascend to the top jobs at some later stage in their career because they've had access to that network of relationships and those stretch assignments that have built that competency that makes them qualified to take the top job.

Well, I know the one you and I sometimes talk about, and I've shared with you in the past. And I have another one that I want to talk about, if you don't mind, which is I think about the first time I was up for promotion to managing director, and I did not get promoted the very first time that I was up for promotion. And I often tell these stories to many people to let them know that it's not always a linear journey. And I had been one of these people that had been promoted on the fast track every single year that I was up for promotion. And when I didn't get promoted, the head of the department came to me. They said, Melissa, I want you to go around and talk to these individuals about why you didn't get promoted and cultivate relationships with them so that you were in a better position for next year because I want to see you get promoted next year to managing director. So I did that. The first gentleman on my list was a guy who was a managing director at the time and capital markets. And he was a gentleman who a white gentleman who had had a reputation throughout the department as being incredibly assertive, aggressive, probably the most aggressive, assertive person in our department at the time. And one thing he said to me was, well, you're too aggressive. And I thought to myself, wow, that's strange, I mean, how hypocritical is that? And I thought this is just a classic example of somebody basically seeing behavior in a woman and then a black woman, in particular, that is identical to behavior that white men exhibit by perceiving it differently because it's coming from a black woman.

I discounted it, and I kind of went on to my next person on the list. And the next person on the list was the deputy head of our investment banking division, with whom I had a very good relationship. And I went to him, and I said, can you believe that I have to go with these people? Can you believe he gave me this piece of feedback that said I'm too aggressive? I just dismissed that out of hand. And I'd be interested in your point of view about what else I should be thinking about as I try to advance my career. And he said something to me that has stuck to me to this day: he said Melissa, you need to be a good leader. You have to have a very high level of self-awareness. You have to be able to step outside yourself and see yourself the way other people see you. And you may not agree with those perceptions, but as my colleague, Carla Harris, often says, perception is the co-pilot of reality. And you have to be able to at least acknowledge that those perceptions exist. In some cases, you do something about them or address them so there won't be obstacles or impediments to your success. And so when I thought about the feedback that I'd gotten from this first individual in that context about the fact that I'm a six-foot, African-American woman, I'm intimidating to some people just by being in their presence. It can be intimidating when I have that kind of perspective through which I was considering how I was being perceived. It allowed me to reflect and be more introspective about how I might be coming across in certain settings and environments without the intention of coming across that way. I think self-awareness is a lesson. Learning the lesson of self-awareness was invaluable to me. And that would be an example that I would cite.

So, no, I think that's exactly right. And I think, look, at the end of the day, it doesn't mean that you have to change your personality or change who you are. It doesn't mean that you have to do anything differently. You just have to be aware of that information. The awareness in and of itself is valuable because it will inform your perspective. I mean, the reality is that whenever you're talking to an audience or talking to people about something, and you're trying to sell or which we do you're trying to sell, or you're trying to convince people to do something, you have to know your audience. And you have to understand what's going to resonate with them. And so I think that it did help me appreciate that there are some environments in which I am going to want to be more mindful, maybe moderate my perspective, maybe make sure that I come across as inclusive. Like one of the things that this individual had told me, as well as saying I was aggressive, as he said, you seem very aloof. And I thought about that, and I thought again, back to this point, about my presence can be physically intimidating. I don't want to come across as aloof.

I certainly don't want to come across as aloof to the junior people that I'm trying to manage. If this is how this individual perceives me, maybe I don't want to change my behavior with him because maybe that's the only style he understands. But there may be other people that are similarly perceiving me. And I need to be mindful. And as long as I'm mindful and I know my audience, I can decide if I want to alter my behavior or not. So I think it's an appreciation that says I mean, it's absolutely the case. I mean, I would make this other point that the ability to really take constructive feedback or criticism is a gift when you get it right. Whether you agree with it or not. And you need to view it as such, and you need to reflect on it. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to change what the person is criticizing about you. But it would behoove you to reflect on it.

No, this was what I thought you were going to when you were asking me about the other story. I am going to tell a story. I thought it was the one I had told you about when I was put in charge of. I ran our corporate lending business for many years, right after the global financial crisis. So there was a lot of turmoil and change that was happening in the leadership ranks. And I got called into the head of the department's office at the time and told that I was going to be running this business. And it was a great opportunity for me. It was a stretch assignment of sorts, although I had been working for the guy running the business for many years. So it was something that I was capable of doing. And so I stepped into these individual shoes who had left the firm, and I was put in charge of this business. And we basically oversaw all of the lending activity and underwrote all the LBO and acquisition financing that we were doing on behalf of our corporate and financial sponsor clients. And so it was a big responsibility. And somewhat to my surprise, another individual ended up running a different part of our lending business. And I guess he had hoped or expected to be able to run the whole thing in totality. He didn't expect them to kind of divide the business in two and give half to me and half to him. And so he came into my office one day, and he said, well, I just want you to know that I wanted to run that part of the business. I think I should be running both parts of the business. And I'm going to go tell management that I think I should be running this business.

So I'm just letting it out. And I thought, wow. I mean, I was so taken aback, first of all, that somebody would say that he felt so entitled now and he felt so deserving of running both parts of the business that he didn't think that I deserved to run the part that I was given. So I thought that was really an interesting insight into one approach that somebody can take who's ambitious and looking to advance a career. But I thanked him really for being as transparent with me as he was, and it really enabled me to kind of really think about how I went about doing this business. You're not to presume that you have everybody's support. And to remind me that I needed to go around and again, cultivate those relationships and cultivate those allies to ensure that I did have people's support. So he did me a great favor at home.

Or some of what you're saying is true? But what I would say is that I heard one of my colleagues say this recently in a panel that she and I were on together where she said she's an Asian-American woman. And she said that basically, she doesn't buy into when people say I don't see color. Because she feels like when people say, I don't see color, she feels like they don't see her. She said because I'm an Asian-American woman. So I don't say I don't see a difference. I see a difference all the time. But I think what I focus on is the commonality, what we as humans do have more than basically more in common than we do than we have differences. And I think we sometimes fixate basically on our differences instead of looking for those points of intersection or commonality we share. For example, I had a young gentleman in my office a couple of summers ago who came to me and said he was a summer intern working at Morgan Stanley. He felt very out of place, and he felt like he didn't belong here and he said he came from a very different background. And he started to tell me his story of not being able to relate to anybody that worked in capital markets. I was on his team. I told him to stop.

I told him he was an athlete. He was a football player at an Ivy League school. I told him that he went to an Ivy League school. He was a division one athlete. How many people do you have something in common with on the floor just in those two respects? I told him to stop fixating on just how different he is and start thinking about how much the same he is with some of the people out there. And so I think that's the key to just remember that as humans, there's more that binds us than that divides us. And we need to start focusing on those points of intersection, those points of commonality that bring us together as humanity, as the human race basically, and not necessarily upsets all the time on the things that make us different.

Absolutely.

That's the beauty of having children because they teach you all the time, and I often comment that the student has become the teacher when I'm referring to my children. I'll tell you an example of basically how I really sort of a moment when that I recognize that very fully in the wake of the George Floyd murder when I was having a conversation with my children. So, they very much are in the eye of the storm as it relates to this whole issue around racial justice, just given the difficulties that black men, generally speaking, have in our society. And so I was trying to explain to my middle son, who was 18 at the time, that we were talking about the rioting across the country due to the George Floyd murder. And he was sort of really sort of admonishing the rioters for basically taking to the streets and engaging in vandalism and doing things like that. And while I wasn't trying to justify the vandalism, I was trying to help him understand the anger and the frustration that many of these people felt. Years of having to deal with years of systemic racism and oppression and discrimination and that this was just all were coming to the fore. And this is how they were kind of exhibiting that frustration. And I just wasn't getting close to him like my husband, and I was at the kitchen table talking to him. And he was saying, well I mean, to tell me if I was out there in the street and I was basically breaking the glass of police vehicles, that you would condone that you would say, that's okay. And I was like, no, Spencer, you're missing the point when my then 20-year-old or twenty-one-year-old came along, and I asked him to join the conversation.

I'm trying to make a point about how these people, how broken they feel, the social contract has been with them and with their community, and why they are exhibiting this kind of frustration. And my oldest son said to my middle son, okay, Spencer, let me explain it to you like this. He said I'm a sociology major. I took a class on sociology, on social movements, and they said that there are three different types of social movements. There are peaceful protests, which tend to be the most successful kind of social movement. Then there are social movements that involve the destruction of property. And you said and then their social movements that involved the destruction of lives. He said those are wars. And he said, what history has taught us is that peaceful protests are the most successful. But when peaceful protests don't actually work, the destruction of property tends to be more successful. He said look at, for example, the movements of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. He said one of the reasons why Martin Luther King's peaceful protesting was so successful is because people had a more threatening approach to civil rights and social justice. In Malcolm X, that was scarier, and as a consequence, they paid more attention. And now Martin Luther King was able to have more impact as a consequence of that. And so he said let me put it to you another way. Like sometimes, the only thing a bully understands is a punch in the nose. And it was like an epiphany, like the light bulb went off in my middle son's head, and he finally understood what my husband and I had been trying to explain to him for hours. And I think that was a moment for me when I said, wow, all that investment in education for my son has paid off because the student has now become the teacher.

Well, I think a great message is that hope springs eternal and keeps hope alive. And I think that our children are the future. So I think we need to value them, educate them, embrace them, and empower them because I think they are the future. And when I am, that is what I'm hopeful about. I see hope in them, and that is what inspires me. And when I am feeling, for whatever reason, demoralized or down about something, I think to myself, I'm so glad that this next generation is coming along, and they will pick up the mantle where we left off.

Thank you. Take care.