Katy Graddy:
Actually pleased that I get to hear from Amy and Joanne about how to manage and lead in these times of crisis. Let me first introduce a little bit about Amy and Joanne. So Amy Kessler graduated from the Lemberg program in 1990. After nearly 20 years in debt capital markets on Wall Street, she switched over to pensions. And now she helps pensions funds around the world manage and transfer risk. Twelve years into that venture, she and her team have written over 160 billion of pension and longevity risk transfer businesses for Prudential Financial. Amy wanted everybody to know that she's a single mom with two wonderful, young adult children, and a brand new puppy, who may bomb the meeting tonight, I understand, or may not as the case may be.
Katy Graddy:
She is also a very valued and trusted member of our board of advisors for the Brandeis International Business School. She was on a call this morning with me and others on the operations committee, and I'm really grateful for her advice.
Katy Graddy:
Joanne Aron graduated from the Lemberg program in 1994, and she went on to over a 20-year career at Citigroup. But she has just celebrated her fifth year anniversary at HSBC this past Monday. She is almost through week six from working at home and is certainly working how to do that, learning how to do that quickly in a very uncertain time. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to start with some questions. And I'll ask them both of Amy and Joanne. So I'm going to start with the fact that the title of tonight's program is leading and managing in times of crisis.
Katy Graddy:
I'd like to ask you, is there a difference between leading and managing in a time of crisis? And I think I'm going to actually start off with Joanne.
Joanne Aron:
Okay, thank you, Dean Graddy. Yeah, I think there definitely is a difference between leading and managing in times of crisis and in times of calm. I was actually just, as I prepared for this took a look in one of the Harvard Business Reviews, and they describe leading as referring to an individual's ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute, versus management is controlling a group to accomplish a goal. I think that's certainly true in any time, but leadership is more important now than ever, because I think our priorities are all being sort of jumbled, and re-thought, as we deal with this health crisis but also with this economic crisis.
Joanne Aron:
I think in this time, it's more important than ever to help teams and help those around us not sort of be stuck in a tunnel vision of just what's going on right now, and very focused and almost in a panic. Really helping their teams to see through that and see into the future. We will get through this. We don't know when. I don't think anyone knows when or how, but we will, and really helping to drive the new priorities forward is more important now than ever.
Katy Graddy:
Okay, thank you, Joanne. Amy, managing versus leading.
Amy Kessler:
Yes. I look at leading as establishing trust and telling the truth, and being tremendously authentic, and demonstrating that you care about your people and your customers and all of the stakeholders that your business is meant to serve. And I always say, as people ask me what it means to really be a leader, one of the first things I say is, in order to be a great leader, you have to love your people. And you can always tell, if you flip that around, you can always tell when someone is not in the right leadership position if it's not about how they care for their people. And this is a time of uncertainty and health challenges, and worry for our loved ones.
Amy Kessler:
This is a time where really showing that caring for your people is fundamental, we have to care for our people first before we can manage this crisis.
Katy Graddy:
Thank you. And actually, quite interesting to sort of move on from that. Today in the New York Times, another Brandeis alumni, Tom Friedman, had an article on this very subject that might be interesting to look up after this talk. Okay, so it's important to lead. It's important to take care of the people that work for you in your organization and that work with you in your organization. Can you share a story of what it's like to be where you are right now in your organization? And maybe some examples of how you're able to lead your teams. Amy, I'll go back to you to start off this.
Amy Kessler:
Sure. I have a couple of very short stories. One is, a close colleague of mine has had the virus. And his husband has had the virus. And he chose to tell me that he had the virus after 2-1/2 weeks of being sick and dialing in to calls every day. And that just sort of really hit home about the stresses that people are experiencing and the challenges that people are feeling. And still, perhaps grateful to be able to work and work from home. But I just wanted to make him chicken soup and tell him he should have not dialed in.
Amy Kessler:
Another story just has to do with managing the financial challenges that come at a time like this when the markets are in disarray. We have a very intricate hedging program for some aspects of our business. And for some period of time, it was impossible to effectively execute some of the hedges that were required under our program. And so you have to make good choices about, what do I do in this situation? Is there a dynamic hedge I could have? What can I pivot to that isn't my usual thing that will get the job done at the time when risk is attenuated?
Amy Kessler:
A third story is about our customers and our call centers. We have millions of retirees who have annuities from Prudential. And then in another related business, we have millions of people who are saving for their retirement and investing toward their secure retirement. And all of these people are of course experiencing tremendous anxiety. And so call volume in our call centers was up 80%. And at the same time, we were experiencing a lack of ability. One of our call centers in India, the people couldn't get to work. And they didn't have the ability to work remotely.
Amy Kessler:
While we have 80% more call volume, we have one call center in some part of the world go down. And we fixed that, but these are the kinds of things, you wake up every day, and it could be a people challenge. It could be a challenge of understanding the event and its implications. It could be a matter of business continuation. It could be a matter of market considerations and hedging programs. It could be a customer concern. And then it could be, well, we're here to sell something. Are we going to sell things in 2020? Can we, and this is the way I say it to my team, can we have a 2020?
Katy Graddy:
Thank you, Amy. That's very pertinent. I can very much understand that. Joanne, do you want to say what is going on in your organization? What's it like being there right now and some of the challenges you're facing?
Joanne Aron:
Yeah, sure. Your choice of question is funny. What it's like being there right now, because of course there's very few people who are physically there right now. We're all wherever we live. But I'm amazed how well it's working so far, and I think some of the literature says, people get more and more stressed after a few, say, four or five weeks, which I guess is right around now. So we'll see what happens. Our human resources is certainly sending out an awful lot of communication on that.
Joanne Aron:
One thing about HSBC is obviously, we're a global company with a huge presence in Hong Kong. I guess personally, I had a head start, so to speak, because I had my colleagues there who have been, as like I said, I've been living through this for about six weeks. They're on probably week 12 or 13. We kind of had a bit of a playbook to do with that part of the world and how to deal with both on an emotional and also on a very tactical basis. How do we deal with the call centers? We have, as I'm sure all companies do who are large companies, a business continuity plan.
Joanne Aron:
Business continuity plan called for, let's have split sites if we need to. If the Philippines call center isn't working, well, no problem there. We'll switch over to the one in Warsaw. Obviously, that plan didn't work, because it was obviously an event that impacted globally. I feel like it's been actually quite nimble. People have been pretty adjustable to working in lockdown, and also I think just being very tolerant of what everybody's capabilities are from home.
Joanne Aron:
My son is 15, so I'd say he's self-sufficient, which doesn't mean he's always making the right choices. But for better or worse, I can't really direct him. But a lot of the people who work for me have small children, and they just have to really figure out when they can do their work. And maybe they're not going to do as much as normal. And that's going to be just fine. The other thing that I'm certainly bearing in mind is, this type of stress impacts everybody differently. And it's a very personal thing, because it's a health crisis.
Joanne Aron:
And you have to acknowledge that and be tolerant of people's concerns, and also like I said, their circumstances. The other thing I would say just in terms of leadership that I've seen inside the company and outside, and also what I'm certainly trying to do is communicate as much as possible. I was starting at the beginning to have two times a week so biweekly calls with my team. Just check instead, nothing to do with work, just how is everyone doing.
Joanne Aron:
And then after a few weeks, I thought, okay, maybe we just go to one week. And when I asked them, they're like, "No no, let's continue two weeks." Everybody just really wants to get together and have a chat.
Katy Graddy:
Can I ... I can't. Okay. Are you finished?
Joanne Aron:
Yes.
Katy Graddy:
Okay, fine, good. Just getting together and having a chat. It's interesting listening to you. You clearly both of you have very good relationships with the people you work with. And are able to, I think, probably foster an environment that in this strange time that they are grateful for. Were you able to prepare for ... I'm certain you didn't prepare for a pandemic, but do you think that things that you did earlier before this started have been able to positively influence the way that you have responded to this unknown event that just occurred? Actually, I'll go to Joanne and then I'll go back to Amy. Do you want to continue?
Joanne Aron:
Yes, sure. Thank you for that question. That's a good question. I would say, absolutely yes. I mean, if everything goes according to plan, you shouldn't have to make massive changes when there is a crisis, whatever it is. Because you should be operating in a well-organized way that's prepared for things to go awry. If you're relying on everything as just in time, which I think a lot of companies are finding, that really isn't going to work. Probably in many circumstances, but especially now.
Joanne Aron:
You should have your procedures and your policies and so forth that are set to be sustainable regardless. One thing I've certainly instilled in my global team is our team. I guess you'd call it our motto or our mantra, which is to proactively enable risk management. And that can look very different in different times. You know, what we had to proactively managing risk, we had our 10 goals in order of priority in January that I'd set. Obviously, maybe some of those 10 aren't even on the list. Maybe something that wasn't is on. But we're still trying to proactively manage risk.
Joanne Aron:
And I think it's really setting people up, in my job but probably in most, to be able to not just survive but to thrive in a world of ambiguity. Because the world is ambiguous, obviously more now probably than ever. You want to be ready for that, because things are not always going to go according to your plan. You want to be again, set up for that in a business as usual setting, so that now, yes, of course things have changed. But hopefully the team was set up. And that's the way the world is now much more than it used to be is, you have to be agile. I think it's sort of one of the new popular words. You have to be agile and nimble, able to pivot is another popular word to whatever is coming at you. Amy, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Amy Kessler:
Yes, so I think of three things when you asked the questions. The first one is business continuation planning. The second one is financial risk management, and the third one is management reporting. And I'll say just a teeny bit about each one. If you think back 10 years ago, our business continuation was focused on a hot site and a backup site. And those sites were bunkers, and they had generators and they had diesel fuel. And you'd assume that everybody could get to them, or essential people could get to them.
Amy Kessler:
And at the time of Hurricane Sandy, we recognized that actually, you know what? The whole East Coast could go down, and then your hot site and your backup sit and your third backup site, they could all be down. And it was at that time that we completely changed our business continuation approach to, people need to be able to work from anywhere. And that has helped us, but it has also set us up for creating flexible work arrangements and remote work arrangements. And that's been good for talent and good for a lot of other things. So that's one area where things we did before allowed us to seamlessly take all of our U.S. businesses, and that's tens of thousands of people, and overnight send everyone to work from home. And it worked. And that's a miracle. I'm going to throw a party for the business continuation and technology teams when it is lawful to do so.
Amy Kessler:
The second thing that we did that is just making all the difference in the world right now is our financial risk management, where we are just boring. And we've been boring, and we've been managing ... matching our assets and our liabilities and hedging things to very tight tolerances for a very long time. We often lose business, because we're very careful. But we win plenty, so it's not a problem. But this financial risk management, you realize in a time like this when the markets have completely fallen out of bed, that all of that careful financial risk management and all of that hedging, this is the moment that that is built for. And thank goodness we stuck to our discipline in that area.
Amy Kessler:
The third thing that we've done is management reporting. And I focused on that, because what I've done is I've brought together a team of people who represent all of the different major functional areas. We get together literally every single day to talk about what is it that is a crisis today? And we don't all stay on the phone to work through it, but we're able because we have the right management reporting, and we have the right insight and information as to where challenges are arising, and the communication is very good, we've been able to have this sort of leadership team that then can very, very quickly pivot and delegate to the right folks to get a challenge handled immediately.
Amy Kessler:
And the folks have totally risen to the occasion to manage things in no time flat. And that agility that Joanne spoke of has ... you have to know what you're trying to manage, and that's where the reporting and the communication come in. But then you have to with agility turn and try to solve it.
Katy Graddy:
That's good. Careful preparation has helped, as it should. Another thing that's going on right now is because of all of these changes, people are facing adversity. I mean, they're being furloughed from their jobs. They're having to just do things differently and think about their lives even slightly differently. Have you in the past, and I'll start with Amy, have you in the past in your careers had to pivot? Or can you give advice to people perhaps now that are making that pivot on how to do this?
Amy Kessler:
Yeah. I was a principal at Bear Stearns just before the financial crisis, and in the midst of the financial crisis. And like all good captains, I went down with the ship. And I learned a lot at that moment. The first thing I did was, I reminded myself that even though my circumstances had changed, I was still the very same person that had done all the other things that I had previously done in my career. And of course, I would be able to go on and succeed and thrive, even if I had to change careers, which actually I did. I went from banking to insurance. But I felt, well, even if I have to change the kind of company I work for or the kind of work I do, I just said, "I'm still the same person. I'll be able to thrive and succeed at that. I will rebuild."
Amy Kessler:
And I think that attitude, that mantra, even if you don't exactly believe it when you first start saying it, that mantra is so helpful in the moments where it's feeling very stressful. Because it helps to build resilience. And the reality is that, we're now 13 years later, and there have been many, many, many days, in fact, most of the days in the last 10 years where I would tell you that I feel fortunate that I had to make a change at that time. Because I have so much more confidence now that I can thrive and succeed in a variety of different situations. I have so much more confidence in my own leadership. I have so much more confidence in my own ability.
Amy Kessler:
Because before that, I thought well, maybe I've succeeded because I'm at Bear Stearns. Or maybe I've succeeded because of the people around me. Or maybe I've succeeded because the market was so good. And so sometimes this bumpy road, pressure makes diamonds.
Katy Graddy:
Thank you. Joanne?
Joanne Aron:
Sure. I guess I was lucky, if you want to call it that, that I was in Citigroup's workout group when the last crisis hit. I was certainly guaranteed employment for that time. I had been in project finance before that, so I'd been structuring and selling syndicating projects for the Americas, mainly U.S. power. And I loved it. I did that for seven years.
Joanne Aron:
Then I had my son, and I realized I couldn't really be on a plane to Mexico at a moment's notice and off for a week. So I moved to the workout group in 2005, thinking my career was doomed, because at that point, that was July 2005. There wasn't one nonperforming mode in the entire Citigroup U.S. portfolio. Workout group was a pretty boring place to be. And then along came fall of 2006 when the subprime crisis started, and all of a sudden, the job got really interesting. We're obviously in uncharted territory. The banks, including especially Citi was not capitalized. They weren't capitalized at all like they are for this crisis.
Joanne Aron:
Citibank got a $25 billion bailout from the U.S. government, and I was lucky enough to be then a part of a very small team. I was a risk management representative to make sure those government assets that were ring-fenced were properly protected by anything the bank did. I mean, that was an extremely challenging and stressful situation. Obviously, it went on for an awfully long time, but it certainly is something ... I wouldn't be who I am today, wouldn't have learned as much. And not just the content, because you can learn content anytime, anywhere. But I think the word I'd say is the grit.
Joanne Aron:
When Amy described to survive, and it was, "Wow, I can survive that. What worse can happen?" Sure, things are different now, and they're bad and maybe worse in different ways, but having been through that, I certainly learned that I can get through it.
Amy Kessler:
Yeah. And I think it's so important to be focused on the fact that we've come through a crisis. It was a very different crisis, but also a very severe one. And I think having that experience of the rollercoaster doesn't only go up. The rollercoaster goes up and down. And as difficult as these situations are, we will get through it. And some of that hope I think comes from experience.
Katy Graddy:
Thank you. Okay. Knowing that things will continue, and in a good way. As leaders, who do you look to for inspiration and guidance, and examples of leading during these times, or when you need to get through something? Are there particular individuals that you would cite as being very important to you? I'll start with Amy.
Amy Kessler:
Yeah. Okay, so there's a woman named Brene Brown. Millions of people have watched her TED talks. She is all about being vulnerable and authentic, and living life in a wholehearted way, which effectively means, you give everything you do everything you've got, basically. And so when I'm sort of struggling to get recentered to have the energy to try to figure something out, I usually read a Brene Brown book or usually do it on audiobook so that I can hear that wisdom of what it takes to just live wholeheartedly, be vulnerable, be authentic, tell the truth about the situation we're in, which is a very, very difficult one. And there's no sugarcoating what's going on.
Amy Kessler:
But with a real commitment to authenticity and people, and all of our stakeholders, if we keep them at the center of the work that we're doing, we will do our best. We will get through it.
Katy Graddy:
Okay, thank you. Joanne?
Joanne Aron:
Yeah, so I just want to ... Brene Brown, she's one of my favorite authors too, and I'd recommend everyone, listen to her on Audible, because she reads her books, and she's just absolutely fantastic. Such an authentic leader. But actually, when I was thinking about this question, I guess you think of people like Abraham Lincoln or Gandhi, but honestly, who I'm finding as leaders now during this time is quite unexpected.
Joanne Aron:
Zoom. I had never used Zoom before six weeks ago, and I don't think HSBC was quite ready to roll it out, but then they did really quickly when we all ended up at home. And I'm finding it so surprising in terms of the leaders that come forth. Because to me it really gets rid of hierarchy. Everybody's got this little same size postage stamp picture on the screen. It's not like you've got the big boss sitting in the corner, the analyst sitting at the back of the table or even at the second row. Everybody's got the same voice and the same. Basically, I feel like it's a real equalizer.
Joanne Aron:
Like I mentioned, on my team meetings, I feel like people are very open. They're certainly being more transparent. But the wisdom coming from everyone I just find really inspirational. One example is, one of my team members is in our service center in Calcutta. And she has become such a part of the team now. She'll join all of our meetings, and just the wisdom coming from her and hearing how things are going for her in India is just really inspiring. And there's just one other story.
Joanne Aron:
I had my global team call this morning, about 60 people. And normally it's very, okay, here's what we're doing with our framework. We did talk about, here's the economic scenarios, here's what's going on with climate risk, very specific things that we're working on. But I opened up by just asking, what are people doing differently. And again, it's a group of 60 people, you can't really have a chat. But one of my team members who's based in Dubai said, he was so stressed, and he read a poem that he'd written about, it was titled Lockdown. And he just wrote how he was feeling. It just made everyone open up, and one person started showing pictures. He was putting together his photo album. Someone else in Mexico City who says she hasn't cooked in a decade said she's learned to cook. Anyway, I guess not exactly one leader, but just very inspirational leadership coming from all over the place.
Katy Graddy:
Thank you. It sounds like you manage a very international team. And again, it's probably nice, because you're probably doing more on Zoom and getting everybody together in a way that you didn't before.
Joanne Aron:
Right, exactly. And that's an interesting point, because HSBC obviously, the head office is in London. And being in New York or somewhere else, you're normally at a disadvantage, because most of the senior leadership is sitting around a conference room in London. Not so anymore. Everyone's got their equal spot at the table. That's been, if there were a silver lining out of this terrible tragedy, that would probably be one.
Katy Graddy:
Yeah.
Amy Kessler:
I like-
Katy Graddy:
Go ahead, Amy.
Amy Kessler:
I think there's another diversity and inclusion thing that comes out of this, which is, I used to mistakenly believe that only some roles could be remote or flexible. And I now certainly believe that every role can be remote and flexible. And I'm kicking myself, because I am a single mother. And it took this to prove to me that basically every role can be remote and flexible, so I'm learning. But I don't think I'll be the only hiring manager who recognizes going forward that there's a lot of wonderful talent out there that isn't three miles away, that isn't going to come into the office every day, that may have caregiving responsibilities for children or parents, who can work from home. And I know I'll be thinking that way in the future as I hire people when this is all over.
Katy Graddy:
Good. Thank you. I'm going to ask one last question. Then we're going to open it up. But I'd like to end on asking, can both of you share ways in which your Brandeis experience, and I'm going to put it broadly, either your experience from many years ago while you were there, or your identification with Brandeis values, how has this stayed with you throughout your career path and perhaps helped you today in today's environment? And I'll start with Amy.
Amy Kessler:
I firmly believe that what I learned at Brandeis was that the environment changes all the time. And you might have had a perfectly good strategy yesterday, but it could be completely unsuitable for the environment we're in today. And I know I learned that at Brandeis. And when you think about how quickly the world changes, and when you think about what's going on now, I'm very glad I learned that at Brandeis, because I sure need it.
Katy Graddy:
Thanks. Joanne?
Joanne Aron:
Yeah, I would say also, Brandeis certainly, the Lemberg Program in International Economics and Finance taught me to be sort of nimble. Things are ambiguous, and I think I certainly learned that lesson there. But I also learned that some of the core skills like Amy was talking earlier about, the financial risk management, I mean, it's not all about, well, let's just be agile. You obviously need the core data underlying it, and I certainly never forget sitting in Peter [Petri's 00:33:51] statistics class and just learning all the nuts and bolts of statistics and accounting and all those things that they underpin the data. And then obviously, we can build on that. That was 26 years ago, but I do remember that.
Katy Graddy:
So the technical basis for what you do today was-
Joanne Aron:
Exactly.
Katy Graddy:
... learned at Brandeis. That's good. Okay, so thanks for answering these questions. We're going to now open it up, and I believe people in the audience have questions. And I think Shane Dunn is going to moderate that part.
Shane Dunn:
Yes, thank you Katy, and thank you Amy and Joanne. I think it's been a really great panel so far. I think our first question is from Tania Zouikin. Tania, I'm going to try to unmute you, and if you're able to be on video, great. But go ahead if you can hear. Okay. Tania, can you hear us? Okay. We'll work on getting Tania access here, I apologize.
Shane Dunn:
All right, there's one question here I have. I'm going to read it in the chat. This is from Rick Cohen. He says his son will be starting at Brandeis in the fall. One of his roles at MetLife Property and Casualty is that he leads the risk management team. During a team huddle this week, one of his team members asked him what keeps him up at night. He actually responded, I'm having the opposite issue now. I'm so exhausted, I'm falling asleep each night quickly as I'm so exhausted. What is it that's keeping all of you up at night?
Amy Kessler:
The fact that people are dying alone. I don't know what to do with that one.
Shane Dunn:
Joanne, do you have anything, or Katy even?
Joanne Aron:
Yeah, I mean, well, I certainly echo that Amy, and lots of other aspects of this terrible health crisis. But I can relate to, is it Rick who asked the question, of being exhausted. I think being on camera all day, because I am calls and on video all day is exhausting. And I have to tell you, I'm sleeping all night, but I'm also pretty tired during the day. And I have to admit, I'll slip off for a nap sometimes when I don't have a meeting. And then I end up working until 2:00 in the morning, so my schedule is completely messed up too. I think just by the fact that we're not having that division between work and socializing and home. I think it's just very hard to keep ... They say you should set a routine. I must say, I haven't been very successful at that.
Amy Kessler:
I do have a lighter answer, which is my puppy does keep me up at night.
Joanne Aron:
Oh, that's a great answer.
Katy Graddy:
I would maybe take that one too. I think I have a busy answer. There's so much going on, from trying to get new students coming in, enrolling new students, to trying to make sure that our classes, especially our online classes are as good as they possibly can be. Can we bring them up a notch technologically? To how can we structure our programs next year so that students, maybe they don't want to graduate in December, but they can graduate in May, because the job market really stinks right now. And it's all of these things are going on, and then at 2:00 a.m., I think, oh my goodness, I didn't get back to that person. And I'll wake up and write a note to myself to do that in the morning. And that's what's keeping me up at night right now.
Shane Dunn:
Thank you. Tania, we're going to go to you after this next person, but I think the technical issue, if you can unmute yourself as well, we should fix this. But I want to, so I'll come back to you in a second. The next person who has a question, his name is Jimmy. Jimmy, do you want to go ahead please?
Jimmy Vulembera:
Yes, thank you Shane. Thank you for both panelists. My name is Jimmy. I graduated from Brandeis in 2016. I was in the MBA program. And as I said, my question is to both panelists. I believe that since they manage risk at both their companies, they probably have a view on what's going on in the world. So I'd want to know, at both your organizations, when did this come into view that coronavirus was going to be an amazing risk that you needed to monitor? Is it when things started escalating in China, or were you caught off guard like everybody when this became a serious problem in the U.S.?
Amy Kessler:
I was communicating with my teams in the first half of February. I'm a longevity expert, so maybe it's not fair, but it was very clear to me that this would potentially be a significant event. And the thing that helped me identify it was I've studied very carefully the H1N flu event in 2014 and 2015, and the impact of the H1N flu on mortality. And especially on mortality in the lowest income decile in the countries where we write risk. Because the H1N flu in that year really impacted low-income people significantly more. A disproportionate share of deaths were in lower income groups. And so, it was fairly early on February that I started thinking, I wonder if this will be like the H1N.
Amy Kessler:
As it turns out, and I'm gratified to say that the mitigation that everyone is doing by staying home, we have the possibility that the coronavirus event may end up being similar in magnitude and perhaps even smaller in terms of the mortality that occurs than the H1N event. But yeah, I was pretty early February thinking, wonder if this will be like that.
Joanne Aron:
Jimmy, I do not have nearly as insightful an answer as Amy did. I was in London for the last week of February, first week of March for work. And when I flew over, whatever that Monday was in the last week of February, nobody was talking about it here, other than, it's something happening in a province in China. And it was interesting, because when I got to my office in Canary Wharf, there was hand sanitizer everywhere, which I'd never even seen in London before. And it was just everywhere in the office, big signs, wash your hands. And it just seemed like that week London was really much more attuned. Like I said, when I left New York, it was something that may as well have been on Mars. It certainly felt that way.
Joanne Aron:
But then that first week in March, I think that's when the New York Times came out with an article about how to wash your hands and how to stay safe. And then Italy got hit. Certainly from my perspective, it seemed to come really quickly, and as a surprise. Maybe other people in the bank were prepared, but certainly it was seen as pretty much a geographic issue I think for quite some time. And then just the speed with which things shut down was ... I found it pretty incredible. We went from pretty normal life, I was at a Broadway show, to everybody was told.
Joanne Aron:
Then we went to Team A and B at work, so you had half the team coming in one week and then half another week. And then that was over within four days. I would say probably St. Patrick's Day was really when things hit.
Shane Dunn:
Thank you. I think we have time probably for two questions. We're going to go to Tania, and then I'll take one from the chat. Tania, looks like you're ready to go.
Tania Zouikin:
Okay. Can you hear me now?
Amy Kessler:
Yes.
Shane Dunn:
Go ahead, Tania. Oh.
Tania Zouikin:
... debt that we are incurring, not only here but around the world. What is going to be the economic fallout and the fallout on our people from these trillions of dollars of debt that's being added to our system?
Shane Dunn:
Joanne and Amy, it looks like I don't think we have the full question, but do you understand the question, just to make sure?
Amy Kessler:
I think it's a question for Katy.
Shane Dunn:
Be confident.
Katy Graddy:
What is the economic fallout? I mean, I'm a microeconomist, so I'm going to step back a little bit. I'm not so sure I have any greater insights than people who are working in the markets right now. I mean, we are taking on a tremendous amount of debt. Can we ever grow fast enough so that we can get through the debt? I believe there probably will be a period that we grow pretty fast once we get out of this. But it's probably going to hang over our heads for a very long time. Do either of you who work in the financial markets have any insight on this?
Amy Kessler:
Yeah, I mean, if you just pull four, five, six, nine months of most of our discretionary spending out of the system, and think about what that means for negative growth, the challenge becomes, there's so much destruction of value in small businesses, in restaurants, in the businesses that don't make it to the other side. There's so much destruction of value there, that I worry about the recovery. Then you turn to the stimulus packages and the aid packages that are coming through. And the real question becomes, show me that those packages help businesses actually exist on the other side, so that we can have that recovery. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for signs that the stimulus is enough to avoid that massive destruction of value.
Amy Kessler:
But clearly, if you look at credit spreads, it's very clear that default and downgrade risk is attenuated, that in this crisis there are some industries, just a few that are gaining substantially in terms of the importance of their business models in this environment. And many other businesses where I pray they make it to the other side, so that the recovery can be robust and rapid.
Shane Dunn:
Thank you. This is going to be the final question. I'm sorry to those we didn't get to. We do have several really good questions in the chat. Thanks to folks for chiming in. We have a question from Lisa [Klein 00:46:32] in the chat, and I'll just read it. Lisa's an independent consultant to a bank that is dealing with a similar customer service issue, closing contact centers. And she's finding that they are just jumping from one fire to the next. She's trying to advise them on the value of planning and taking a moment to pause, evaluate and plan. And she's wondering from the panelists, maybe we start with Amy, have you had any similar situations of leaders wanting to jump to try and solve problems without taking a breath to plan and evaluate?
Amy Kessler:
I think taking a breath to plan and evaluate is the right advice. That would be the good advice. You can't jump from one problem to the next without solving the one you were just on, or at least putting it in safe hands and delegating it to someone who you know will get the football into the end zone. I think that some of these operational challenges, one of the things that I've felt really grateful for is that we never off-shored all of our operations. Lot of companies did that. In this situation, I'm not sure what I would have done.
Amy Kessler:
I would tell you that with our off-shore call centers, we have in fact been able to get people functioning remotely. It's been challenging, but it can be done. But it takes focus, resource, and significant investment in order to make sure that things actually continue to work smoothly.
Shane Dunn:
Joanne, would you add anything to that on the taking the breath to plan and evaluate-
Joanne Aron:
I'll to do it really quickly. I mean, I think I wouldn't call that leadership. I'd call that management people who are trying to be very tactical. But one thing that we're doing, and I don't think we're alone, I think many companies are is coming up with something. We're calling it a clearinghouse, but basically somewhere where anyone who's doing anything abnormal, and what I mean by that is outside of policy or outside of procedure, or maybe even something that would be probably not outside of regulation without the regulators approving it. But something, maybe it even would be, and then you'd seek their approval, because we're not in normal times.
Joanne Aron:
And then, we're not just saying, okay, throw caution to the wind, just do whatever you need to. Training from home is a great example, because you can't do that. It wouldn't be worth the risk. But we're taking these things to a clearinghouse where people clearly outline the risks, explain them, discuss what they're doing to mitigate it, discuss whatever protocol like I said, whether it's going to the regulators or some higher governance form for approval. And then, given that the process has been gone through quickly, documenting it properly and keeping that inventory so that we're not madly rushing through things and saying, yeah, train from home, we're in an emergency. And then we don't know what we've done.
Joanne Aron:
We have this list, and then when we're back to normal, we can either see, okay, now we're back to normal. Let's reverse these things. Or actually, hey, we've actually come up with a more pragmatic way. Let's keep it. But I think that it's really important to balance pragmatism with discipline, especially in a time like this.
Shane Dunn:
Thank you. Katy, do you have any final word you want to share before we move on?
Katy Graddy:
No. I just want to thank both Amy and Joanne for providing some really insightful answers from leaders, and just thank you.
Shane Dunn:
Yes. Thank you to Joanne, to Amy, to Katy. I think if we were physically in the same room, we probably would applaud and say thank you, and then go off to networking. I'm sorry we can't do that tonight, but we are really grateful to all of you for joining this evening. On behalf of Brandeis International Business School, we hope to see you again in a future event. Please keep in touch with the school, brandeis.edu/global to learn more about what's going on at our school, as well as university. And again, everyone is in our thoughts during this time, regardless of where you are or what you're working on, as well as the health of your family and friends. I'm going to end tonight by turning it over to Talee Potter from the Brandeis Women's Network to close things out. Talee, can you join us please?
Talee Potter:
Absolutely. Oops. Trying to join.
Shane Dunn:
You're good Talee, go ahead.
Talee Potter:
Okay, great. Hello? Thank you Katy, Amy, and Joanne for a timely and insightful conversation. My name is Talee Potter, and I'm co-chair of the Brandeis Women's Network, which cosponsored tonight's event. I'm also a member of the undergraduate class of 1997. The Women's Network was launched nearly a year ago to bring together Brandeis alumni and friends to share ideas, insights and experiences through engaging in events and programs. And to capitalize on the dynamic community that was created while we were on campus. We've held in-person events in New York.
Talee Potter:
We launched a Facebook community, and we've been holding virtual events on Zoom, including various learning sessions, happy hours, book club, wellness events, even cooking classes. If you're not familiar with our group, look for Brandeis Women on Facebook and join our community. I promise we're fun. Some upcoming events including our first book club gathering on April 28th. We have a session on successful parenting and working parenthood amidst COVID-19 on April 29th. We have guided meditation classes beginning May 6th, and even a primer on maximizing LinkedIn on May 14th. The full schedule could be found in our Facebook group.
Talee Potter:
Again, thank you Amy, Joanne and Katy for leading this very important session. Thank you Brandeis community for coming tonight. Please be safe, healthy, and connected to Brandeis.
Joanne Aron:
Thank you.
Shane Dunn:
Thank you everyone-
Amy Kessler:
Stay healthy.
Shane Dunn:
Have a great night. Or day. Bye-bye.
Katy Graddy:
Bye.
Shane Dunn:
Okay.
Joanne Aron:
Thank you.
Shane Dunn:
Think we're good, right.
Katy Graddy:
We're back, oh, okay. Good.
Gina Parente:
Sorry, so I'm trying. Good.
Katy Graddy:
Thanks to all of you.
Amy Kessler:
Yeah, that was awesome. Well done.
Joanne Aron:
Yeah, thank you. The idea was really good, and Shane was awesome. Do you have, I saw all these chats. I guess I can still see these. Can we read them? I'd just be interested to see what people were saying during the questions and so forth.
Gina Parente:
Yeah, actually. We will have that, yes.
Joanne Aron:
I just don't know how if I leave meeting, I don't know if I'll lose all that. I probably will.
Gina Parente:
Yeah. Give me one.