Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

When it comes to recruiting, motivating and creating great teams, Patty McCord says most companies have it all wrong. She argues that the old standbys of corporate HR—annual performance reviews, retention plans, employee empowerment and engagement programs—often end up being a waste of time and resources. McCord was the chief talent officer at Netflix for 14 years and helped create the company’s culture deck. Since its posting, the culture deck has been viewed more than 15 million times. She draws on her experience and offers a different path for creating a culture of high performance and profitability.

Twenty years ago, Heidi Kuhn, a former reporter for major media networks, founded Roots of Peace, a charity dedicated to removing the worldwide scourge of land mines and creating thriving farmland in countries dealing with and recovering from conflicts and economic instability. In Afghanistan, for example, over 5 million fruit trees have been planted. Kuhn, who has received numerous prestigious rewards, will discuss her work for Roots of Peace, an organization that turns seeds of terror into seeds of hope.

An unspoken fear haunts many women today—the fear that breast cancer is inevitable and that the clock is ticking. Everyone knows someone who has been affected. That’s because breast cancer has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. What can we do about it? The answer is: a lot. Research shows that breast cancer is a largely preventable disease. In this seminar, Christine Horner shares lifesaving information, including the many research-proven natural approaches—what to do and what not to do—that can dramatically protect against breast cancer and help women who have this disease improve their chances of surviving it. Horner spearheaded legislation in the 1990s that made it mandatory for insurance companies to pay for breast reconstruction following a mastectomy. Join us and learn over 30 different lifesaving dietary, supplemental and lifestyle choices proven to be highly effective against the development and progression of breast cancer. These same techniques also help protect against many other diseases and help one achieve and maintain excellent health. MLF Organizer Name Adrea Brier Notes MLF: Health & Medicine

This event is the latest in the San Francisco Foundation’s series on People, Place and Power. Less than a month into his presidency, Donald Trump tweeted that the “fake news media is not my enemy. It is the enemy of the American people.” How does this rhetoric change the public’s trust in the media and the role journalism plays in a democratic society at a time when social media has changed the way we receive information? With misinformation and partisan content influencing public opinion, journalism is reimagining its role in what has become a fact-free, post-truth environment. According to a 2016 Gallup poll, only 32 percent of Americans felt “they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.” The media are finding ways to adapt in this current environment while continuing to inform an increasingly divided audience. The San Francisco Foundation is bringing together the Bay Area’s leading journalists and social media professionals to discuss the convergence of journalism, social media and the news. Notes This event was recorded in-front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on January 17th, 2018.

Ai Weiwei is an artist who uses many canvases to express himself. From art installations to architecture, social media to the big screen, Ai is one of the most transcendent figures in the world. His latest project, Human Flow, details human migration and the refugee crisis. The film was shot over the course of a year and covers human movement in 23 countries, people looking for safety and shelter. Whether they’re fleeing from war, politics or climate disruption, Human Flow is a thought-provoking, poignant journey through a harsh reality that large parts of the global population are not yet free. Ai, whose father was the renowned poet Ai Qing, spent his early years living in political exile with his family in Xingjian, a remote area of China. That experience, he believes, helped him empathize with the hundreds of refugees he interviewed over the course of making the film. “So since I was very young, I experienced all those very harsh political conditions like the discriminations, all those,” Ai remembers. “So that make me much easier to approach this film, Human Flow, and to see this human tragedy as part of my condition, you know. I feel there’s some connections in there.” Climate change is one of the factors that has contributed to the global refugee crisis, Ai maintains. One example? Drought conditions in Syria. “I think before the Syrian war there’s seven years of drought,” says Ai. “Many people think that also contribute to the upheavals in the nation.” Ai’s hope in making Human Flow is to shine a light on a worldwide crisis, “to see humanity as one, you know, human rights as one. “If someone’s right is being violated, we all get hurt,” he continues. “If we don’t have this kind of understanding the problem, you know, someday we all can be get hurt. Because if we only have for this kind of visual condition to see us as one family…then we can have our empathies and we can come up some kind of solutions.”

When the tough-on-crime politics of the 1980s overcrowded state prisons, private companies saw potential profit in building and operating correctional facilities. Today, more than 100,000 of the 1.5 million incarcerated Americans are held in private prisons in 29 states and federal correctional facilities, with annual revenues of $5 billion. Lauren-Brooke Eisen’s work blends investigative reporting with quantitative and historical research to examine private prisons through the eyes of inmates, their families, correctional staff, policymakers, activists, Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, undocumented immigrants, and the executives of America’s largest private prison corporations. Neither an endorsement nor a demonization, Eisen’s Inside Private Prisons details the complicated and perverse incentives rooted in the industry, from mandatory bed occupancy to vested interests in mass incarceration. This book is a blueprint for policymakers to reform practices and for concerned citizens to understand our changing prison systems. MLF ORGANIZER NAME George Hammond NOTES MLF: Humanities

World-renowned primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall talks about her life’s work, the link between deforestation and climate change and why she sees reasons for hope. Yvon Chouinard, the reluctant entrepreneur who founded Patagonia, Inc., explains how charting his own path through the wilderness led him to create a multi-million dollar sporting goods company committed to environmentally responsible design and production. Jane Goodall, Founder, Jane Goodall Institute; U.N. Messenger of Peace Yvon Chouinard, Founder, Patagonia, Inc. This program was recorded by the Commonwealth Club of California.

San Francisco and Detroit are each home to highly diverse and vibrant communities with strong community leaders and anchor institutions, but they suffer from historic disinvestment and are in need of greater economic vitality, more investments, updated infrastructure and civic attention—especially for issues relating to children. In neighborhoods across these two geographies, community leaders, advocates and policymakers are seeking solutions and looking for equitable development strategies that can allow communities to thrive. In this forum, Fred Blackwell, CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, and Tonya Allen, CEO of Detroit’s Skillman Foundation, will discuss with KQED’s Mina Kim how they have attempted to tackle the enduring challenge of strengthening communities in their regions. What have they learned? What went well? What would they do differently?

Droughts are drying up lakes, floods are washing away homes and melting glaciers are raising sea levels. Rising waters represent the most visible and tangible impact of climate disruption. Protecting people and property from all that water, while simultaneously ensuring billions have enough to drink, will have unfathomable costs and alter the lives of most people living on Earth. Join us for a conversation about too much—and too little—water on a planet that is entering unchartered territory.

Rebecca Tinsley, who graduated from the London School of Economics and was a BBC reporter, became a humanitarian after reporting on the war in Darfur. She will discuss her work for Waging Peace, the first nongovernmental organization (NGO) she founded. She will also discuss Sudanese dissidents and her second NGO, Network for Africa, which helps forgotten survivors (e.g., former child soldiers in Uganda) as well as communities torn apart by war and genocide. She will sign copies of her novel, When the Stars Fell to Earth, which is centered around the conflict in Darfur. MLF ORGANIZER NAME Celia Menzcel NOTES MLF: Middle East