Resilience

Fei-Fei Li’s life bridges two countries and two industries. She moved to the U.S. from China when she was 16 years old and just a few years later, graduated from Princeton with an undergraduate degree in physics. Fast forward to today, Dr. Li is the Co-Director of Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute. But on her sabbatical from Stanford in 2017, Dr. Li served as Vice President at Google and as Chief Scientist of AI at Google Cloud.

Her main research areas are in machine learning, computer vision, and cognitive and computational neuroscience. And if that’s not enough, she’s a really good person—harnessing her expertise and stature to be one of the nation’s leading voices in advocating for diversity in STEM and AI.

Vincent Stanley is informally known as Patagonia’s chief storyteller. Day-to-day, he’s the company’s Director of Philosophy, where he works to ensure that the company’s culture remains true to its origins, while also adapting to and being resilient in the face of the challenges it faces today.

As one of the original Patagonia employees, Vincent has seen the company through its most important transitions, particularly when it made the decision to be a pioneer in the retail space in thinking about and addressing its impact on nature.

In addition to his role at Patagonia, Vincent guest lectures at Yale’s business school part of each year, and advises other companies on how best to lead with purpose. 

In this age of anxiety that we’re living in, it’s arguably more important than ever that all of us learn to meet uncertainty head-on. As my next guest, Ama Marston, would say, “It’s imperative that we learn to deal with challenges not as a passing state, but as a condition of life.” Ama is a strategy and leadership consultant who’s worked with many Fortune 500 companies and the United Nations. She recently published a book called Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World that introduces an innovative new framework. Ama argues that while much of the world still believes that Type A people are our best leaders and innovators, the future actually lies with what she calls “Type Rs” —people, businesses, families, and even entire communities that turn challenges into opportunities in times of upheaval, crisis, and change.

The story of Darren Walker’s life is a quintessential American story. He was born to a single mother in a charity hospital, lived in a shotgun shack in a small, rural community in East Texas, attended public schools and colleges. Darren was in the first class of Head Start in 1965, received Pell Grants, and private scholarships. Today, as he put it himself recently in a commencement address at the University of Vermont:

"I am black. I am gay. I live in Manhattan, that tiny island moored off the coast, and a little unmoored from reality. And I spend much of my time traveling across the country and around the world, meeting visionary, courageous, resilient people fighting poverty, inequality, and injustice."

Darren is the type of person who can put you at ease and spot your hidden talents. He is down-to-earth and relatable. Darren is also brilliant and helping to change the world of philanthropy, and as a result, making America a better place.

Judith Rodin began her career as a psychologist thinking about stress and coping mechanisms. She wanted to know why some people seem to do better with comparable stressors. This area of interest continued throughout her career when she later became the President of the University of Pennsylvania, and then the President of the Rockefeller Foundation; the first woman to hold both roles. In 2014, while at Rockefeller, she published a book called The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong. The book defines five principles that all resilient entities have, and so if you find yourself wondering how you can develop some of these—don’t fret; it’s possible, and Judith tells us how.

Arianna Huffington helped to disrupt and reshape the newspaper business as we once knew it when she co-founded The Huffington Post. In its first week online in 2005, HuffPost had postings from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Larry David, Gary Hart, John Cusack, and Walter Cronkite. A little more than 10 years later, the site had become one of the most-visited news sites in the world. At that juncture, Arianna stepped down from the site to devote her time to a new startup of hers called Thrive Global that’s focused on health and wellness information. That same year, she published The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night At A Time. Her book shows how our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted compromises our health and our decision-making and undermines our work and our personal lives. 

Not many people serve in an Administration for all eight years at a senior level. It’s exhausting, often daunting work. But, Cecilia Muñoz, New America’s Vice President for Public Interest Technology and Local Initiatives, did just that. First as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, then followed by five years as Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Before working in government, Cecilia was Senior Vice President at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US), the nation’s largest Hispanic policy and advocacy organization, where she served for 20 years. She is soon to release a fascinating and timely new book called More Than Ready: Be Strong and Be You . . . and Other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise. As the daughter of immigrants from Bolivia, and one of the most successful women in Washington that Anne-Marie Slaughter knows, she wanted to find out from Cecilia what resilience has meant to her own life, both personally and professionally.

Ertharin Cousin has been called one of the world’s most powerful women, and rightly so. For five years, she was Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, the largest humanitarian agency in the world solving hunger. During her tenure, Ertharin oversaw a 15,000 person global staff who provided food to people in need in more than 70 countries. Her mission today remains the same: solving hunger in her lifetime. Ertharin is now a Lecturer at Stanford University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, as well as the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

Ertharin spoke with Anne-Marie Slaughter about resilience as it pertains to the intersection between hunger and society, and what she thinks governments around the world, the private sector and everyday citizens need to do to combat the effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable communities. It’s an inspiring conversation that will leave you wanting to step up and do your part to help make the world better.