What Does It Profit Podcast
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Spoiler alert: Nothing. This bible verse has endured over the centuries as a reminder that we can't put our price tag on what matters most. Yet, time and again, businesses have put profits above all -- leading our world to the brink of a climate catastrophe, an inequality crisis, and the greatest extinction of other creatures since the dinosaurs (except this time, the meteor is us). Can we align growing returns with the greater good? Former investment banker turned business ethicist Dr. Dawn Carpenter believes we can -- and that figuring out how just might save the world. In What Does It Profit, Dawn talks with the world's leading thinkers and researchers, entrepreneurs and executives, exploring the most innovative ways we can reconcile capitalism's demand for profit with the long term well-being of people and the planet. From socially responsible investing to conscious consumerism to business ethics in this age of extremes, Dawn is your guide to the cutting-edge ideas and experiments driving the purpose-driven business revolution. What Does It Profit?
Episodes
As we head into the 4th of July holiday weekend, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation from October 2020 with The Assassin, famed short-seller Fahmi Quadir.
Now that meme stocks are a thing and short-selling and hedge funds have made their way into social media lexicon, we thought it was time to take another listen.
We'll be back in two weeks to share with you a conversation with Dr. Dawn and the fo...
In this off-season episode, we dig into the WDIP back catalog to revisit a conversation with Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) CEO, Lisa Mensah where we talked about the idea of "finance justice." The original conversation was released in December 2020. The work keeps pressing forward as OFN seeks to build coalitions of investors that believe that investing in people pays rich dividends by building lives of greater economic...
This weekend is Memorial Day weekend-- the unofficial start of summer... at last! At What Does It Profit, we are officially in the "Off-Season" and busy cleaning house, tuning up, and otherwise getting ready for Season 3.
During the off-season, we wanted you to get to know more about our host and the ethics work behind the show. We also want to introduce new listeners to insights from our back catalog in mini-episodes beg...
We’ve reached the end of our second season. This is the time when we take a pause and look back. In today’s episode, it means looking back to our pilot episode about shareholder activism and our Season 1 bonus episode called The Price of the Ecuadorian Chernobyl. This is the story of Chevron and the decades of oil dumping in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
In this episode, we jump back into this epic David and Goliath story and get to know...
We’ve reached the last regular episode of Season 2. Hold on to your passport. We’re still travelling. We start in New York and then head to India with Megha Desai. Megha is the former ad agency protégé, who after a decade in the business, answered the call of the ancient Indian philosophy of Dharma. She has energized a newly transformed family foundation into a leading voice for economically and socially marginalized women in Indi...
Despite being in the midst of a global pandemic, we’re going to take a trip around the world. We're talking about the Economy of Francesco (EoF) with Paulo Santori, an economic historian in Rome and with Myrian Castello, a “human-right-to-dream” activist and facilitator in Brazil. EoF is a global youth movement inspired by Pope Francis and Saint Francis of Assisi whose members and their co-operators believe that now is the time...
This week we stay in the co-op space a little longer and get a two-for-one. As an homage to Women’s History Month, we talk with one of the most celebrated marketer of co-ops-- and one of less than a handful of women responsible for driving the development of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, DC. We talk with Roberta MacDonald, Senior Vice President for Brand Strategy at the Cabot Creamery Cooperative about life and the ...
This week, we’re going to switch things up a bit. We are going to talk about the idea of inclusion, but from a slightly different perspective. We are going to learn all about economic structure called a co-op. Sure you likely have heard of housing co-ops, maybe even grocery co-ops… but do you know just how common they are? Let’s talk co-ops with Casey Fannon, President of the National Cooperative Bank.
Meet the WDIP Team at ww...
This week, we talk with Logan Scott, Manager for Diversity and Inclusion at The Walt Disney Company. Logan's work during Black History Month on the New York Times' 1619 Project inspired us. Logan talks about superheroes, diversity, equity, inclusion, and what it all means for business.
This week, we take storytelling to a whole new level. We learn that each of us is a “superhero” at something. We talk to the man whose Instagram feed has selfies with the Hollywood Superhero A-LIST. In some ways, we think of our guest today as a kind of superhero himself, building community where it's needed. Today, we talk with the legendary Gareb Shamus, former Chairman and CEO of Wizard Entertainment, and the Co-Founder and ...
The winds of change are blowing in corporate governance. Where will they take us? Time will tell. This week we have a shareholder perspective from a man whose name is well-known in the investor relations offices of many of the most well-known corporations in America. We like to call him a dean of the Shareholder Rights Movement, others like to call him a corporate gadfly. You decide: corporate gadfly or an inside progenitor of the ...
In 2020, JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon’s tenure at the helm of the Business Roundtable expired. But what about this whole new way of doing business? In 2021, shareholder activists put the stakeholder governance paradigm to the test, and JP Morgan said, no. The whole issue got us thinking. It’s time for an update on this new vision for a stakeholder approach to corporate governance. We talk with someone very familiar with what’s been ...
In this episode, we're not talking about bulls or bears. We're talking about the big, fat elephant in the room. The finance industry is ethically-conflicted. We talk with JC de Swaan, hedge fund investor and Princeton finance ethicist, about Robinhood, Wirecard and a few other notable companies-- as a way to frame how to do finance better. The hope is to inspire the idea that finance can be a force for good.
In this episode, we explore the idea that everyone who has retirement assets should have the ability to know where their money is invested and how it has an impact in the world. With knowledge comes power-- the power to make sound economic and moral decisions. Our guest is Congressman Andy Levin, Vice Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee and author of legislation that could make that happen.
In this episode, we’re going to a difficult place. How do we as a society express-- or dare we say-- determine the value of a human life? The question itself forces us to make an important distinction between economic value and moral value. And to help us sort through this, we couldn’t think of anyone better than the Special Master of the 9/11 Victim’s Compensation Fund-- Ken Feinberg. He is arguably the world’s leading expert me...
We start our second season with one of the most notorious narco money men in US history, Jorge Valdes. We hear the story of how a 10-year old Cuban refugee becomes the youngest person to work at the Federal Reserve Bank in Miami and who then goes on in the '70s and '80s to run the international operations of the Medellin drug cartel. Jorge is one of only a handful of the leadership from that era who is still alive to tell t...
In this special bonus episode, we revisit an issue we explored in the first episode of the season and talk with Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams about her work to engage with Chevron at its 2020 annual shareholder meeting, using her activist shareholder voice to urge for Chevron shareholders to be able to call special meetings to discuss significant issues affecting shareholder value. In this case, it happens to be the over $3 ...
Welcome to those who have just found us... and welcome back to our loyal WDIP listeners. This three minute trailer takes a tour through some of what we learned in Season 1 on our quest to explore the moral and social value of business. Season 2 promises introductions to voices you might never imagine on a business show. Think of it as Business Talk 2.0-- listen with your conscience. Join us for new episodes on Wednesdays. Seas...
In this episode, we rewind the clock to pre-COVID days and take an "audio" vacation to the Amalfi Coast of Italy. We talk with culinary entrepreneur Chiara Lima of the famed Mamma Agata Cooking School in Ravello. Family businesses can be found all over the world, and here in Italy the "happy hands" of the entire family are involved. Buon Natale... Saluti!
In this episode, we talk with CSR and sustainability legend, John Elkington. John takes us beyond his "people, planet, and profit" to the "U-bend" and on to the green swans that bring us regenerative capitalism. John is one of the world's leading futurists and is here with us to share his hopeful vision for the future.
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