Anyone here who has a problem with Hindi? You won't understand much Hindi? Okay, alright, I'll keep that in mind. So, I'm Smita Mishra and I'm the founder of our pool wallet. It's a P2P person-to-person payment app and what we are here for is discussing a quick case study of what we did, how we started, where we realized that we are not doing so well. I wouldn't really call it a failure, but yes, we were not doing as well and then how we pivoted and why we pivoted and what were the results of it. And frankly I didn't really invest a lot of time in making big slides because this is more of experience sharing. I would like to hear from you and I would like to share my thoughts. So, I would say it's better if we have quick conversations and not focus much on the slides. Okay, so let me start with who all here are entrepreneurs or planning to be one soon. Okay, how many of you build apps? You build apps? Okay, how many of you have stayed here in this room for last three sessions? You might as well just not hear anything I say because most of what I'm going to talk right now has already been covered in bits and pieces in different classes sessions before this. But yes, I have something very specific to talk about pool wallet which would be of, I am hoping of some help for you. Considering that only, I think I saw only one hand go up for building apps. Okay, we build apps. Pool wallet was an app that we built we consider ourselves as very smart people because I've been into IT industry for 14 years. So, I'm like, I'm obviously, I know everything about the apps and I know how to build apps and what are the steps for it. I've read it, I have practiced it, I have, in my eyes I have actually, I'm an authority on it, right? So, that's where I thought I felt very comfortable going ahead with pool wallet just as in the way it appeared to my mind. So, that's where we just started and these are four steps that we took to build the app which are very standard, I wouldn't say standard but really they are a progressive way of building an app. You first narrow down you define your product, what your product is going to do, you define your personas who are the kind of people who are going to use it, what are your storyboards which are the use cases for which they are going to be used, identify your target users and keep it narrow. Narrow in the sense, do not have a wide variety of users that says Indian woman of 35 years, that's like a, that's really wide, that's not something that you can specify, I mean you can specifically think of a person like that but you still cannot, there are so many aspects of that person which is like is she working, is she married, is she a school going, is she an educated, is she literate enough to handle her working. So, we have to keep it narrow. Then build your MVP, we've spoken about MVP right, a whole lot. This morning, I think in Tim or Timothy who was telling, no not Timothy, sorry, Arvind's session who was from Intuette, he was showing us a burnt pizza, right, that was a minimum viable pizza for him. But that wasn't something that his customer could have experienced. There's a burnt pizza and you're trying to validate your idea of building the cheapest pizza and you realize that you've failed but the fact is you've failed before your customer could even experience your service, your product. So, you've not really validated your idea. So, your idea when you're developing your product, it should be minimum experience product where your customer can have some minimum experience with your product, some meaningful experience and then decide whether he needs more, he needs less. So, that's MVP. I treat fast, speed is king. So, we followed all of this. We tried to build up our features as fast as we could and we kind of understood that if we do not do that quickly, we're going to be out of market. People who are going to download us today are not going to download us tomorrow if they don't find us useful and if they're not going to keep us on their devices anymore. Use tools and analytics. Anyone here? I know a lot of tools we discussed. Any analytics tools that we have used? So, anyone who has used for any activity? Google analytics. Anything else besides Google analytics that you use to analyze your traffic or anything like this on your app? Sorry? Anyone here who has heard heap? Heap is under startup. That's analytics. It's from the Bay Area. But the good part about heap is like in Google analytics, you have to actually paste the code in every page that you need to track. And what happens is you may have pasted it on 20 pages. What if you just forgot to do it on 2, 3 and you didn't think they were important. And after you do all the analysis, now you need some data. So, heap is the good product which will actually help you there. They'll take all the analytics. So, we did all the tool. We implemented the right tools. We used the right analytics. We did everything that was right to the as per the book. We tested. Now, there are different ways to test an app and the user experience of it at different stage. When we are strategizing the product, when we are actually executing or developing the product and when we are actually once we are done with the development and then we are assessing the product. So, there are different stages of a product and we tested differently. We did that all. Then let me just quickly show you how we define our product. The last step is simplify which once you've done all of this, I'll come back to simplify. But these are the two things I want to quickly share with you how we defined our product and what are the different ways of user research method that we applied. Can you define this? What is this project right? So, we picked this that how we defined the product like I think TV showed in his last session also a way to define this product. It's a generally relatable tool. So, when you are a when you have to actually mention about your tool, a lot of times people say Uber for food, Uber for truck, Uber for bikes, something like that because they're trying to refer to something which is already existing in market and then trying to say you know what we are doing this which is very similar to that in that domain. So, you should be able to relate your product to something unless it's obviously out of this complete domain. That allows target users at least add two adjectives to your target users what kind of users you are looking at and we do the to use case to do that particular activity. So, this is a projector which is like a probably a video showing tool or something like that whatever you would like to put in there that allows conferences and meetings people to share the same screen or be able to see the same screen together at a large number or in a larger room. So, you could define as you like. So, we did this we also understood that when we are designing our apps we don't have to focus more on the beauty of the apps, but we have to more focus on the good user experience which is anyone here who is seeing Reddit yeah which site is this I'm sorry it's small but Amazon which is this Craig list yeah how pretty are these sites one of the I mean going by the standard and technical beauty terms these are one of the really poor ones. I wouldn't call them ugly I mean if I could I would but so these are but how popular are these these are the leaders these are market leaders in their own segments everywhere they are right and this is what and we understood this as pool wallet we understood this also so we were like we don't have to focus on how beautiful you are making it we will make it in the best way so that the user is able to perform the activity that it is supposed to we followed this also we followed all the possible research methods we went to subject matter experts SMEs we did one on one interviews we did we tested our product as users we tried to take it to different kind of users that we thought real-time users and we made them use it before us so we did everything though there are so many ways of user research methods we did whatever we could apply on pool wallet why did we do all of this we wanted to be successful we wanted to be an app that is used by maximum people adoption and use these are the two metrics key metrics that typically defines an app how many are the download numbers and how much is the actual transaction happening on that app right anyone here who uses the patreon yeah how often once in three months TV how long how often two to three times a month you also use patreon right very rare four times a week that's right alright okay and I'll mention why we spoke about that this is what people think about right TV again showed the confusion part but I know that I have to develop this app I know that there are people who have answered me themselves that they want this app they would like to do something like this so I'm on the perfect right path I'm going to be the next unicorn and pool wallet is the thing now and I'm all set to do that and what happens actually and yet this is this is a far-fetched dream that we would be still successful but in the mid this is all the confusion and the ups and downs that are coming up let's let's just transform this for our plan what does it do to our development plan what you think is there is you have a clear goal you understand what you're planning to do you understand why you're doing it you've worked that through you've gone through the right processes so at the end of day you know that it's right there you could just approach it but what is the reality there will be days nobody downloads then you have to figure out what happened and then there will be days that people who have read are uninstalling so you have to figure out what's going on wrong today then there are days you walk into somebody and say it's like have you ever has anyone of you ever done a sales shop have you ever walked into a shop and said here buy this and they just bought it even B2B even after all the discussions have been done in the email you can't just walk to the person and say here it is we don't need to talk what we didn't probably I wouldn't say we missed but we should have probably talked a little bit more about what the app does before we started to send it to the users so this is what and look at this line that and there's a reason why I have this particular picture it is not mine I've picked it from Google but look at this graph and here's the graph it has such striking similarity that I was like okay this is something true this is actually what happens this is the number of downloads we started but this is after pivoting this is after pivoting so this is still a better diagram better graph okay so let's after all the all the gun let's come to what pool wallet was we did all the right things we understood how do we build apps we went through step by step and then we finally realized let's now come to we were not doing what we were supposed to we were not going there we were thinking that we will go anybody here who had heard pool wallet before he came to this conference that was because they are connected any other payment apps that you use wallet I'll come to a very good aspect of these wallets that we missed so this was the everywhere if you switch on the television you have got oxygen back then there was this cricket team that was coming to India around September October and oxygen was heavily promoting it bring them as guests and things like that so we were like so big them fixed every wallets are doing so well we are also we researched out everybody is downloading wallets there were apps which were downloaded 6000 per day there were 6000 downloads per day such apps we are not wrong right we can't be this wrong so we said instead of a user going through X wallet then Y wallet because we have we have named here four there are pockets in India chiller anyone else all the banks are coming up with their own wallets so every new day there is a new wallet that is coming up so what does a merchant do if a merchant has to cater to all these users how does it happen he will have to technically integrate with each of the wallet to be able to use the money from there what we did was we are going to be the pool of the wallet and we are going to be a plug-in for the merchants and what we are so this is what we thought in our mind but when we started to and our key metric constantly was number of downloads for some reason we were very hung on the downloads number of downloads what we sold our pool wallet as it's a wallet of wallets and it's like okay how many of us actually share I'm sorry do you with your friends and actually share your bills anyone here who actually shares the bill and says okay split amount going Dutch split wise okay how often have you done that every day okay alright that's an interesting thing so what we were suggesting people was we were we thought this is our ideal customer right right here who splits every bill if he goes out to eat if he goes to movie if he goes to gift something he'll split the money right that's our ideal customer who are these kind of customers we did not imagine you sort of we imagined college going kids we imagine kids young people young professionals have just started to earn but they don't have a married family so their spending trend was their spending trend is different and that that's where we started to sell this as a app which you can actually use to pool the money together if he has moped quick you have oxygen you have a patium you all can pool in together and spend spend the money there right that's how we started to sell people started to ask where do we use that how do we because we don't share so where do we use it and we started to actually tell them okay you could share it you could use it for shared services you could use it for caps you could use for movies if different kids are in different countries you could use it to share your parents health care bills so we even we even went to that extent of giving them use cases corporate giftings but what actually happened after all the efforts and these are the original after my cousin he lives in Chhattisgarh my cousin he saw this app he called me up and he said he's the elder to me so I said yeah bhaiya he said yeah karun kya main saab se that means what should I do with this app I was like yeah it's for sharing right it's it's go ahead where your sharing amounts just use it where is the sharing I was like right there come on create a wow is wishes and wants so whatever you want to and we created multiple number of youtube videos explaining that wow but we never thought why not just change this wow take it off because when a person looks at it nobody looks at an app and then says let me go to this youtube video learn the app and then come back and use it nobody does that right so it should have occurred to us that let's get rid of this wow word and start with pools or something what we did was have a wow word where we have the discussions and we literally made the pooling app exactly how we talk I'll invite you guys for the sharing and if you guys accept it then you have to pay for it so it became a whole lengthy process the pooling process the product and then once you accept the payment then converts into a product which is a financial product it was such a huge lengthy process and that was the only thing you could do in the app so if you could not understand that one aspect of the app then God alone knows what you would do with it because you didn't have anything else to do in that app you had payments but it was so layered it was underneath and on top of it there were so many things that was difficult okay guys wake up anybody who is sleeping so what was the result of this what did we do we had some downloads don't look at don't look at that part of it just go from the first half to this half and can you see we somehow we pushed downloads because when we actually started the app we pushed for it and lot of people did download it and we were happy to start with they were happy but then it started to decline we couldn't get new downloads the downloads we got were actually getting installed so we needed to understand where are we going wrong and that's when we moved on to our new business model now this business model was nothing new besides the fact that we just highlighted what we were doing anyways we had all the wallets we had credit card debit card net banking and we highlighted that so we just highlighted that we added features like DTH recharge mobile recharge how many of you actually use any app for their mobile payments bill payment which apps not app banking app okay for electricity bill okay DTH recharge but most of us may not still be using a single app for doing lot of things right so we thought this was an area where we could help Paytm obviously has that but then Paytm expects people to have wallet some money in the wallet to be able to spend so we said we don't even want that and frankly when we actually put all of this we realized that at the end of day what we are only talking about is requesting payments and making payments we don't care if it is as a pooled one if it is one on one if it is between merchant and consumer if it is between one business and other business all we are talking about is requesting payments and making payments so that's what we did what were the results here actually somebody said the hockey stick or the J curve and things we actually saw that happening to us very recent but it's there and we actually now happy we are now getting busy which is a good problem to have now we come to our session this was all the background alright we start what is pivoting what do you think it is and there is lot of text here don't even try to read it because if you read it and you understand this part then you might as well just walk on because this is the crux of pivoting what we are saying is and what I actually want to hear from you do you think pivoting is bad do you think it's sign of weakness or failure you failed and therefore pivoted have you ever pivoted in your life forget apps forget okay so we will come to both the parts do you want to say something pivoting as per Alan spoon is when your team realizes that your plan A is not working let's put together a plan B and let's see if that works for you and if it doesn't then you have to go to plan C you have to keep iterating until and unless you get that scalable business model and if we come to a different definition that I picked up it's the same thing it's a strategy for iteratively searching for a repeatable and scalable business model what was what did Amazon do before like today it sells everything right what what did it sell earlier only books right that's that evolution where it decided that they could actually sell something more that's also a way of pivoting what is Google was a search engine right that to 12th on its rank when it started what is it today it's everything it's actually everything it's got droid it's got apps it's got ecosystem it's got everything it's got maps by Chromebook is not so popular you would have to search it on yeah it's not so popular compared to maybe there are things that they want to pick up later I mean I really would not have the right answer for it right now any other pivoting that you could cite that you are aware of what pivoting is I mean which companies have actually pivoted type of things that they were making anyone here twitter do you know why it has only 140 characters why not 120, 180, 160, why 140 SMS because it was originally an application for subscribing and downloading and listening to podcasts and then which was called audio and then iTunes was coming in so they knew that they would get killed they have to pivot from there that's where twitter came in and it became a communication app there within the company therefore it had SMS 140 characters and so these are Instagram was bourbon which was a gaming platform and they had all the elements of that mafia wars and all those kind of games and then they realized there is so much of clutter let's cut down so that's what we also did for coming back to the pivoting thing so it's a strategy for iteratively searching for a repeatable and scalable business model so we at Cool Wallet understood this that we had to pivot but where were we going wrong we were unable to figure that out and so we looked at the business model and this is again this is a lean canvas for standard business model cite your problems where does an app take birth at which stage where do you think that app starts this is where the concept of app is there where do we start it what does it start with an idea is a belief necessity problem to solve I would go with that yes there is lot of times what happens great men think alike right so I am going to think same way that you are going to think so we all will have great ideas which are actually good but where we fail is at the execution somebody executes the same solution so well they are successful and that's where we were trying to understand what are we doing that's not so correct and we looked at our business model so this is a standard lean canvas where you put your three problems features key matrix that you want to measure on the product side on the market side there are a lot of market market factors also which are beyond your control so even if I am doing my best as pool wallet there are things which certainly patium comes and pumps in 600 crores in the fintech market every other wallet which was otherwise doing good is not doing good now it's not their fault it's not like they failed it's just that somebody else did something which was which is an unfair advantage to them given by the market right so we were we kind of analyzed ourselves on this and then we actually now this is where our pivoting story starts so we had our users we I actually myself try to understand and I spoke to 120 of our initial users one on one 120 calls which ranged from 5 minutes to 30 minutes each could be spoke to each user why because at the time that we launched pool wallet we were invited by nascon product conclave to showcase there in Bangalore they were selected for it they are also the nascon product of the week for sometime in November and then we keep getting a lot of attention from two different aspects one is from the product and printech aspect one is from the woman in tech aspect that maybe that's because I'm the founder so we keep getting very a lot of attention from these two areas and they want to see it grow because a lot of investors keep talking to us and every time the point at which we stop is traction and we knew that traction is super important for us every day and I know that a gentleman here this morning talked about organic growth but if you have to really scale up in the way that is like you can sustain in the market and his business model was different so I can't comment on that but I would think that for such for a pool wallet kind of business you need capital you need good investment to be able to do good marketing and be able to take it forward so we were running around investors and we got stuck at traction that's where we did the 120 calls what we realized was and because of all the attention that I mentioned we were getting I got invited to a college in Lucknow Babu Banarasi Das University which has 10,000 students across their MBBS engineering MBA dental everything so I was speaking there and Rana Athea from dogspot.in was also there speaking he's just got funded by Tata that Mr. Ratan Tata so we were speaking about the apps and how we should grow and think like that I spoke to the kids there and they were all like yes we share we eat together we go to movies together I was like this is the perfect platform you like 10,000 students they are there I could just get this app through them and when I started to talk to them they were like yes yes ma'am we will do it we'll do it most of them downloaded then nobody did anything then a lot of them uninstalled I was like what happened and so half of these 120 were actually students from that university and what we realized was they said things like madam we share to karthi hain but asa nahi hota ki rose ka hum hesaap kar hain it is like what we do is is baat to pay kar de aagli baar mape karunga types of discussion like you pay it this time we pay it next time if you go to movies one person pays it this time another person pays it next time but it never happens that you exactly excuse me share the amount each time it didn't happen so I was like ok so somewhere you must be sharing right so we came down to gifting marriage gifting birthday gifting baby showers everything but things like that happened once in a while and so the use case that we had was ok so once in 3 months when you have to do that sharing you will go to app store or play store download pool wallet and then do the sharing and that's that's unrealistic to expect of the users. Jo apps hain wa hi use nahi gata hain and Paytm is there so popular but we have I mean only one out of so many people 3 out of so many people are using Paytm. It's an app which just caters to one use case which you do once in 3 months so you this rare chance that this will ever scale or succeed that was our main point where we realized that our use case is not scalable it's there it's a need but it's not a need that everybody would want to use for so what do we do now so we went to our next and then whenever we used to explain the app to anybody they would be more interested in everything else but the pooling part they would be like pooling to the or can I make payments can I accept payments can I request payments yes you can can I plug it in as a payment gateway yes you can so a lot of traction that we got we realized was from there so I would like to compare this situation to anyone who's had Wrigley gums chewing gum Wrigley you like it anyone who doesn't like it so that guy his name was Williams Wrigley junior he used to sell soap in an open market in Chicago in 1980s and he used to give chewing gums as a free offer so that the people would buy their by his soap what he realized was his chewing gums got so popular that he eventually started to sell chewing gums and now you know where he is so kind of we are also trying to build our history so we realized that everything else that we never thought was important because we tried to put everything underneath the pooling so pooling is the main thing and then under it you have payments you can be integrated with merchants you can be used as payment gateways everything was there but we never highlighted them and when we spoke to our users that's when we realized what we'll be doing wrong our entire you understand anatomy yeah what is the anatomy anatomy is the outline the outer structure of something so our anatomy of our research user research was perfect we did everything right it's like the anatomy of being friends and networking it's the same two people come they have coffee they talk something they go back friends also do that what is the differentiator is that the networking people talk work also in between they go back and follow up but just by looking at it you can't say they can be two friends they can be two friends similarly everything that the user research needed we did we spoke to the users we built the app stepwise we narrowed down our target users we did everything that was really important what we forgot to do was ask the right question we asked them the question but we asked them will you be will you do you pull do you share of course I share who's gonna say no I don't share Sarajit shares every day right but it's like I should have asked how often do you share or maybe we should have put a question which tells us which actually was meaningful for the use of the app in terms of frequency in terms of volume of transaction we never really focused on that focus on the fact do you do this yes we do this with whom friends family okay so that's where our app which I got made so it kind of failed at the right questions there so okay that and then what happened after we actually started to ask the right questions we segregated the feedbacks and what we realized was that most of the people like I asked you how many people do this payment that payment bill payment payment or mobile bill payment so what we realized was lot of us have similar kind of expenses similar kind of spending trend but we spend through different ways so we segregated those top 3-4 use cases where we realized most of us do it this way or that and then we put them in the we highlighted because you already had those features we had to highlight them and make them more so that people understood that they could use it home delivery is one such case which actually gave us has started to give us lot of traction so an app imagine and a pooling app which just has payments in it now we go to a home delivery guy and we say do you do what do you do if your customer is not at home and their son is there at home and you have to deliver food we said okay how about how about you giving a call to them and saying I am handed out the food to your son make the payment and they make it payment right then using pool wallet because they have your pool wallet ID and all they have to do is make the payment there then we went to new upcoming retail house retail shops like women entrepreneurs who are doing lot of work from their homes or boutiques and places like that they can't afford to do COD cash on delivery they have all the e-commerce set up so many carts there are so many what do you call them rocket cart there are so many template based e-commerce sites where you can just list your products sell them but for COD you have to manage your own stuff we went to them and we said why do you do COD why not do POD pay on delivery do not collect cash but the same thing that they do not the same amount that they can pay cash they could pay through their net banking credit card or debit card once they receive the delivery you don't need a swipe machine you don't need anything your pool wallet ID is there your user can actually just pay to it right so that's one and then market revisiting wallets can you again raise hands sorry I forgot how many of us actually does use wallet 1 2 3 4 5 okay when we went to markets frankly we got a very poor response for wallets multiple kind of questions do we have to put money because and unfortunate for us unfortunate for pool wallet that our name I mean even if it is fortunate but our name is pool wallet so anybody who hears us because we started as a pool of wallet anybody who hears our names thinks we are a wallet so they think okay so we have to keep money from you but what we didn't what the wave that we wanted to ride on that was being a wallet and collection of wallets that actually was a on the flip side it was a bad decision from that perspective because a lot of people are still not comfortable using wallets they don't want to use wallets they are not digitally active I myself don't buy a lot of things ecom I mean online so I don't I was like yes maybe I should not talk about that so we actually explained our merchants again it's called pool wallet so you can actually use credit card debit card so what anyone of us here who does online shopping what do you shop for I mean if it's not for sure electronics books electronics books nobody clothes clothes many baby products okay and how do you make the payments okay it said that 70% of ecommerce of India is still COD I don't like to believe that but it's just said I don't make that data is correct more digitally active yes yeah and going just to add to that point Amazon has Amazon doesn't deliver in UP anybody knew that the pilferage is so high in that state they have stopped delivering there they don't deliver in there in the UP sorry they don't take orders from their area Amazon doesn't take order from that area that includes Noida also which is surprising yeah but very specific and in that also I thought that at least the bigger cities of UP would be given some preference they absolutely block those pin codes from there yeah especially in electronics okay another pivoting that we took was channels to reach our customers we were earlier thinking of individuals the college students the young professionals and we were actually approaching them what we did was we are still approaching them we still want them to actually use us for pooling as well as payments but we pivoted from there and we started to say that okay let's be merchant driven let's go to merchants and say you use us so we are now anyone heard no filter there is a famous pub and bar in SDA in Delhi so we are talking to them we have bakeries like rainbows and pretty popular bakeries there which have registered with us as merchants so what it does is there you will go to those shops you will see pooled wallet ID hanging in there so all you have to do is pick your stuff get your invoice and wherever you are standing you just make the payment and you show them and you move so especially during the festival times or times when or party times or times when there is really good crowd at that place you don't really have to wait for your billing and stuff like that you can just do it and move on that's catching up that's one use case which is working very good for pool wallet right now another was e-commerce sites so a lot of people like Baibo, Baibo is a Chandigarh based e-commerce card what that does is it allows you to list your products they offer you the shopping card and you can in short have your e-commerce website we are there plugin for payments so each of their customer who makes a buy there on their any of their partners goes to our payment so those are the kind of use cases which are coming up better for us than what we were doing earlier yeah just kidding so we actually came up with new story boards so when we decided to pivot what all things we really did was user research again do the right question ask the right questions figure out new storyboards how we could use this app differently so those those are the various steps that we did here but how is it how is it different we understand this and we measured them so we obviously showed the graph which was a J curve which went better now I have this last question before we go through how is pivot we also agreed that pivot is not a bad thing because pivoting means that you are probably not scaling up doesn't mean you are wrong you just need to figure out that right thing that you can actually scale up with so you can iterate and keep iterating and then obviously if not one then maybe tomorrow if pool wallet doesn't succeed with this we will figure out some new storyboards try to scale up with them would it be good for us to actually at some point give up and say I don't know yeah this doesn't seem to be working let's let's find something else let's do something else yes no how many yes let's go ahead how many depend on the context okay how many are flat no that no don't do that no point giving up okay most entrepreneurs are indeed very passionate about their dreams about their the problem that they are solving so when we are pivoting we are still attached as we are still attached to the problem but we change the solutions we try one solution then and there but we are trying to more or less solve the same problem if we are trying to it may not be exactly same but we are trying to solve the related problem we are actually moving towards our dream a particular passion that we share but at some point in time there is a limit when how much you can pivot when that stickiness is over when when that stickiness to that problem is over maybe that's the time when you need to jump because as long as you are sticking with the problem and you keep changing your solutions you still have scope to pivot and scale but if you are if you have tried everything if you pivoted like he said in context how many times you pivoted if you truly tried all your all your ideas you used all your brain power you talked to everybody possible everyone that you could possibly talk to and you have came to that point where you realize I don't know I'm running out of ideas I don't know what more to do I don't know what more to do with this app how many what kind of more users I can bring in that's the time that maybe you need to take a jump that's the time when you need to say okay enough with pivoting let's move on but in any case the best part about all this the faster you fail the faster you realize what's going wrong instead of putting in more investments but having more users that are disappointed you need to fail fast and the moment you see yourself failing you need to pivot through the next step does that make sense to you alright thanks for all of you any any questions anybody which one that was the third version actually when we let me show you a graph which will I don't know if you can see from can you see some dots there yeah we messed up there on those points and we have new versions there like it's like almost deleted the previous one is deleted and there's a new version ideally it should have been an upgrade and why we did why we messed up with that was we changed platforms on which we built our apps we couldn't upgrade so at the end of it we finally now the numbers that you are seeing are this is March right so it would be like 12th of March that you would be seeing we have now if you put all of them together 515100 about from that okay so if you are here who heard about think test that happened last year November there was a testing conference that we held in Delhi what happened was and it's our app only the reason we are not talking about it is because we actually made it for our use but we'll see how it goes for example all of us are here but we are not connected socially right now tomorrow he goes back he puts loads of some pictures he uploads some experiences I will never get to see it because I have no idea who he is I am not connected to him so we created Winker and we had that experience when I was organizing a conference in Delhi think test so what I did was I would see every random like third day some picture shared through X through Y through Z then finally it comes to me I was like oh okay this was also click that also happened oh this this was happening at this corner so as an organizer I was a little I was disappointed I really wanted to see all of them so we created Winker where all if anyone can just go and load pictures and you don't have to really know them socially to see it but we are it's that's the reason because from the same company you're seeing it


Hi everyone. My name is Melody Friarson and I am the project manager with the Office of the CEO and President and Chief Transformation Officer at New America. I am so excited to welcome you to today's event to discuss Ann Marie Slaughter's renewal from crisis to transformation in our lives, work and politics. This event is presented in partnership with our bookselling partner, Solid State Books. Please support them. Ann Marie is the CEO of New America and author of eight books, including renewal. Renewal is Ann Marie's candid and deeply personal account of how her own Odyssey opened the door to an important new understanding of how we as individuals, organizations and nations can move backward and forward at the same time facing the past and embracing a new future. The moderator of today's conversation is Kiece Lehmann. Kiece is the inaugural McAlexander chair of English at the University of Mississippi, my alma mater and award winning author of best sellers like Long Division, how to slowly kill yourself and others in America and heavy an American memoir. I'm really excited to have Kiece in conversation with Ann Marie, and I just have to do a plug I don't have Ann Marie's copy in front of me, but I have a couple of Kiece's books, please, please go by them they are so wonderful and Kiece reading you is like going home and being at home. So thank you for all that you do and I want to thank everyone who has joined us today. I hope that you enjoy the conversation. Thank you. I want to thank Melody for being so incredible and also being one of the reasons that I came back to Mississippi. I found a lot of hope and faithfulness and actually like possibility for renewal in our conversations so Ann Marie, I am really, really, really excited. So I talked to a lot of people about their books. I've been talking to a lot more people about their books over the pandemic. But this is the first time I really believe that the author like wants to kind of get in there get messy. And let's see what can happen so but but I want to make sure that that's true. So, can we make this a sort of rigorous conversation as rigorous as we can get for 40 minutes. 100%. Yeah, if I can if I can't handle it I shouldn't have written the book. Okay, all right, all right. I just have ideas that I want to ask myself. Um, and so some of those ideas I want I want to push you on. Um, and there's a lot of things that you do in this book that I'm still sort of astounded by so I want to jump to the first chapter. When you invite us as readers into a crisis that you experienced as the leader. My first question was, were there people who told you, I think you're revealing a little too much about the insides of how New America works. When you wrote that initial chapter. Yes.  I wouldn't have written this book, you know in 2018 or probably 2019 2021. And we've, we've come through it long since I was very careful to both show our board chair and our, you know, our communications team, and, and at least key parts to my leadership team because obviously the last thing I'd want to do is to drag things up and or hurt, hurt New America. So I got approval. The other thing is, though, that, you know, the point of the book is okay this was my crisis. It is not the worst crisis anybody's ever been through and I'm very clear about that. I'm basically saying all of us have had some kind of crisis and I do think that my own experience can be instructive it was bad enough for me to really shake my confidence my sense of who I was. And that that's sort of the trigger but I was, yes, I was careful. You know there folks who said you just shouldn't reveal that much about yourself, you know obviously people who are close to me. But I, I think I couldn't write this book without bringing readers into where where I started in my own journey. Yeah, I mean, and one of the things that you do also is, you know, you ask us to risk. Right, I mean I feel like this book, and I think the us the subject positions of us are something you pay a lot of attention to but every single subject position in this book, must risk. I'm interested in how you thought about the consequences of risk for different people in different social strata. Right, because one of the things you also write about is this common past. In there and mix that up a little bit before we can get there. I want to, I want to hear you talk about the ways that like your risk in telling that story might differ from somebody else's risk within a different subject position, yet how you still believe and know that risk is something that we must do if we are to renew. That's a great way of framing that question. So, in the first chapter I say, you know, we had this crisis, I went and talked to a board member, he told me run toward the criticism. He actually said I didn't put this in the book but he said, you know, imagine you're having a fight or a conversation with your spouse or partner, and you're confident that your spouse or partner is 98% wrong, but maybe 2% right. He says run toward that 2% and that sort of launched me on a quest to ask a lot of people but what I was doing well but more importantly what I wasn't doing well. And I then say, and this will go directly to your question. I decided it was critical for me to look in the mirror and to see not only what I wanted to see, but what other people see. And I would say that the country should do the same thing. Now that is, I would not, I would give that advice to other white people of privilege, right, because I also and not all because I spent a lot of time mentoring younger women for instance, and what other people see is covered by bias and if they're young women of color then that's that's doubled or tripled. I'm not actually telling everyone to look in the mirror and see what others see and take it, you know, as given, and even some of the criticism I got I said, Oh, you know you wouldn't have said that if I'd been a man or you know absolutely not but what I am saying and I do think this is right. And all of us are defensive about something. You know Van Jones always says all of us have a blind spot in the sore spot. And we, and it, I think you have to find the courage to explore that. You know I that sort of standard therapy jargon if you can't name it you can't change it but I wanted to show what it's like to take that risk. You need to keep your confidence and and I'd frame that differently for different people. But I think an awful lot of people in this country need that advice. And when I'm talking about the country looking in the mirror.  But mostly I'm saying to folks like me, you know, we got to look in the mirror and we got to look in the mirror as a country and see a very different reflection. I love that I love that you write early in the book. My larger goal is to encourage us all to reflect more on what individual experience can teach us about the path to collective renewal. I'm a writer who's really big into sort of bombastically letting folks know early on what they're getting into and I think you do that in this book, a few times early on, but I really want us to kind of untangle this idea of individual experience, teaching us about collective renewal. How can you, how do you, and I think you've done this in the book, but for those folks who have not read the book, how do you prove to us. Let's just call us possibly cynics that their effort has been something that could be renewed. And for those of us who find very little kindness, perpetual organization perpetual care reciprocity, and this American experience. How do you talk to that person and say, we need to renew when that argument is like no we might need to raise, right, right, like raise, like, yeah, why raise the right, not right. Yeah, so talk to me about renewal, as opposed to raising. Yeah. And I think that's one of the hard parts of the book. And I'll just say I'm married to one of those cynics so not that he has not had a terrible hand dealt him but he he's, you know, I'm definitely the kind of person who keeps the hope alive in the family. So I write about this also that in early when early on a new a new America when I when I joined new America we already had renew as part of our mission statement and I kind of sharpened that, and would talk about renewing America and then I and I would talk about it like a renovation, you know I'd say, you know you go into a house and you tear down a lot of stuff you do raise stuff you know if you've got asbestos you wipe that out you, you look at things that people thought were beautiful 100 years ago and you think it's awful and you get rid of that. And then you renew the parts that are good. Even that, I think is not enough. If we're really going to look at the country I've settled and I was educated I'm not going to lie. Really had to hear people saying just what you said you know like I, there's not parts of America I want to renew. I've settled on renewing the promise of America, and there I basically looked at Martin Luther King, you know that idea that the Declaration of Independence is a promissory note. And it was right where we're announcing that we believe we now here we is white men of property, you know and in 13 colonies but actually in the decorations fewer than that, saying, you know, all men are created equal. They meant all white men of property but we, there is a promise there I think, in part because they didn't say all Americans they said all men of of what it could be, if you really were created equal if you really lived in an equal society. So I now think of it as renewing the best of yourself, if you're thinking about it individually, if you're an organization or a country renewing your commitment to principles that you espouse, but that you always fall short of. And I can understand why for some people that's not enough. I say it's between restoration and Revolution, we don't want to make America great again. I wasn't great for a lot of people, but I for one, I'm worried about Revolution. I'm not at all sure who's going to win I don't want to go there. And, and I will say also this. This is a book designed to speak to multiple audiences and I know that if I'm speaking to the white people I grew up with. They're going to have to find something to hold on to. And that's very deliberate. Yeah, I mean you know I really liked how early on in the book you you're very specific about the audiences that you want to speak to.  But I think, in order for big ideas to actually be, you know, to saturate us. Sometimes we need to hear from authors like where they situate us audiences so I really appreciate how you did that. I want to go back to this idea though of a common past, which is tied to this if we're going to make a schism schism between folks who might say renewal, and folks who might say, raise, or you know folks who might consider themselves. You know, glowingly right, folks who might consider themselves neon left. Why is it so hard for us. And I think it is hard to accept a common past. And does your idea of renewal necessitate that we accept the common past. So, you know, at the end of the book I say, I would like to see in 2026 that we change the national motto from e pluribus unum out of many one. Yes, to Pluris at Unum, many and one and I'll just say I had to have my Latin corrected because I said pluribus at Unum and somebody wrote back and said pluribus is not the right. But, and that is how I now think of it, I don't think there's one common past indeed what I am saying I mean I you know above your head is the word is passed you know by Clint Smith. And he was a new America fellow when he wrote it and that is a book that is retelling the story of Monticello that I grew up with right as Monticello plantation. And it's going through place after place, and I could give you a narrative of most of those places that I grew up with the past he's telling is not my family's past, except probably. I mean I come from the south I'm there are certainly people in my past to enslaved the enslaved others enslaved African Americans so, but that's not a common past, but I do think. I think we can be many and one at the same time and and for many people that's frightening. I think for many others it can be. It's not a rainbow coalition that's that's just too sweet for me but it's, it's that multiplicity of stories that if you can hear them and sit with them. You can learn this this is not been easy for me initially, then you can start to appreciate the richness of the country in a way that I still think you can say is we are one. I don't think you can say we are the same that's the point that you have to be able to be different and the same at the same time. Right. I love that answer. So, you know, we're reading the book. I kept thinking about growing up. I'm sure before this but I remember my early teens. It was the first time I started to remember a lot of older men started to use this sentence. I don't regret anything because if I did do something different I wouldn't be the person I am today. When I was 13 or 14 the first time I remember thinking man that's faulty logic, because it would be, I would hear it from people who had every reason in the world to want to be different today than they were yesterday. But but that sentence right something we've heard from Trump, something we've heard from lots of powerful particular man, right I don't regret much, because those mistakes made me. When I hear that now I hear a particular person who does not have the stomach to remember. Yet your book is calling on us to have the stomach the gall the will the skill to remember to actively regret and to do different. How do we get to the do different. If we collectively right now don't even have the will to individually remember when we've done harm to ourselves or other people. So I think part of the answer is to redefine what strength and courage are, and that is exactly why I try to be as unsparing as I can be on myself by by saying look.  And, and I think it's not accidental that you say men. And I think this is this is written into masculinity and you've written about this right then there are codes of masculinity there. And I've written a lot about you know about gender that say you know never explain never complain never examine and you know interestingly I thought a lot of men would really just not even want to open this book and there probably are a lot of them like I've heard from a number of male leaders already saying, you know you kind of gave me permission. And what I want to do I'd say it to my sons I'd say it to a lot of those men you're talking to, you know if you're really the man you think you are, then you've got to have the guts. And I want to say that to the country to that's again, a way of saying, you know I'm not anti American there's a whole part of there that really talks about patriotism and love of country. But I don't think you can do that honestly, unless you are willing to say, you know, I'm gonna look at the past and I was wrong. Right, right, right. And, and, and I think from a leadership sort of position, there's one way to talk and write about it. But I think I think what actually makes it harder for me is that, you know, we often want lead, I mean I'm putting myself in a collective weed and I don't necessarily feel a part of but this conversation. We often want leaders who don't do that right like because strength, as you say, is somehow equated with not looking backwards. Yeah. And what I love about your book is like if anything it is a tutorial on the importance of every single individual looking back every single individual looking back at the ways that they've harmed somebody. Yeah, directly, indirectly, and by harming that some person, I think what your book really is is arguing subtextually at least is that you are harming yourself.  But I want to get to this idea though, that it was really percolating in the text and also that I saw in the text as like an art object right like this to me feels like a narrative experiment. Like, it seems to write this book, it seems like I mean I don't know I don't know you I don't know, but it seems like a, I mean, like, there's a part of me would be like, we need leaders. We need leaders in this in this nation to write books like this and I would say it and never expected to be done. So you've done something that I've not seen done before it in and of itself is an experiment. If the experiment fails, there will be consequences but you will be okay. So you did in how you see renewal and experimentation, sort of relating when we think about the groups, the millions of people and particularly like younger people in our country, who are not given the leeway to experiment, and not only is that experimentation like sort of disciplined. Often, it is incarcerated. So like how do we deal with experimentation, which this book is really calling for when we see carcerality sort of hitting us in the head some of us from the time we're one to the time we die and telling us do not experiment in this particular way. How do we do that part of what you're calling for. So I think there are a couple possible answers. And one you're absolutely right the books and experiment. I've never written anything like it was by far the hardest thing I've ever tried to write and wrote. It's also an experiment in form right it doesn't have subheads there no subhead heads it's it's really I tried to write it more like my favorite novels that kind of weave together different pieces, and you can kind of weave them together differently. And that so that was an experiment as well. One point on leaders. I do think we're in a time that leaders who just are rigid and I'm right and I'm not going to show any weakness that you're going to, you know, it's like the, the, the whole thing about the, the read bending before the wind rather than the wall get knocked down. Things are coming at you so fast. Nobody can actually know what to do you need a lot of people and you need to be able to say what I thought of this but I thought this was true but it isn't and now I'm going to revise. Probably I think the times we're in are more conducive to a kind of leadership that is flexible and adaptable and to do that. Again, you just have to to be willing to say no, I thought this I was wrong. I often I say somewhere that their days at New America where I measure how right I am by how often I change my mind. Right because I was really listening hard and and kind of adding evidence. But the point that you're making this goes back to that my discussion of risk risk is is a marker of privilege. Right, so I talk about you know the risks I've taken and I, you know I went to law school I thought I was going to go to a big law firm and I dropped out. I didn't drop out I became a research assistant to a law professor but they're about four years there where I didn't really know what I was going to do. You know, by my fellow students and my peers, I was taking a risk, but in the larger scheme of things that could always go home to my parents and I had, you know, fancy degrees, I was going to be fine. And I talk, I cite a lot of research that shows if you really want people to be able to experiment to either, you know, start a company or invent something new or get a degree that's very different than you know the path their parents wanted them to be on. They cannot be in a situation where one false step lends them in prison, or where you know if they take a risk and lose some money they're going to lose their house. People will not take risks in that setting. And if the United States as a whole narrative of being risk takers and entrepreneurs, we actually are going to have to provide not just a safety net but a whole foundation for people. We want more people to be able to take those risks.  No, in those settings and a lot of parents in those settings say stick to the rules, don't make waves. I think we're losing a lot of talent that way but I wouldn't expect somebody who's got that much to lose to take the kind of risks that I can or my kids can. And I love that you say it so bluntly right like we are losing a lot of talent that way. And so and then it seems counterintuitive for the way I imagine leaders because when I imagine a leadership I do imagine some sort of like you know cardboard cut out of morality. But I know there's a lot of million kinds of leadership but my, my understanding of leadership is often very narrow. But what incentivizes leaders who often did not have to fairly compete to like broaden the talent pool that could one day subsume them. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Well, a lot don't right I mean it is clear that a lot of people are willing to, you know, talk the talk of diversity and you know shared power until it comes down to actually moving over or stepping down. You know, for me, no, have I stepped down to hand off my, my job to somebody else who has not had nearly as many advantages as I have. I haven't, I've split my job though. And I think that's something that a lot of people could do and in splitting my job I've created so I'm CEO and there's an opportunity for president. You know, to create space that just didn't exist. Right. So for me to talk about the payoff, the payoff is partly from us, just in general and maybe it's also because I'm older. There is so much talent, and I just, it kills me that we are not tapping it, you know as an American, we have just extraordinary opportunities. And leadership is so much more fun this way. You know, I also had this image that you know I had to know what, what to do and again, I've got to make decisions that are tough decisions and if, if there's really, you know, people can agree, you know, the buck does have to stop somewhere so there is that leadership, but leading with other people, and really sharing the problems of your organization or whatever it is you're leading is, is just much more fun. And I'm also much more confident that that at least for this moment in history, we're leading because I'm confident that I have to hear different voices. This is not just, oh yeah, different life experiences feed in differently. This is, we're in a time of change. I've got a lot of young people who want things that are very different than when I was coming up and I need, I need other voices. But I just want to make a reminder from the audience to please submit your questions via Slido, which is the box located to the right of the video. We're going to make time for hopefully all the questions but definitely as many questions as possible. So again, just the box located right to the right of your video. So fun is not a word that I thought I would hear, but, but, but it's a word that I that I want to, I want to sort of explore a bit more right because, again like when one, the way you wrote the book, I think invites not just different readerly sensibilities, but also different sort of narrative threads. So the one of the threads that I saw was the thread of pleasure and joy. Right. And so I'm interested in what fun, pleasure and joy have to do with something that feels so soulfully like achy as renewal. I've never heard leaders talk about joy, pleasure in relationship to renewal, but I wonder if we could just do that for a bit. Well, of course, one thing is if you, if you, if you've known darkness light is that much brighter than I you know I say like this time of year as the light fades I always I often have a hard time. And certainly yeah that first chapter first couple of chapters, it was heavy. I mean, that's the name one of your books but you know I also write about resilience and resilience being I say resilience is a team sport, which is something else I had to learn I thought of resilience is kind of like making like a rock and hunkering down and just letting things kind of wash over you and I discovered that it's it's much you know forging relationships going through an experience with other people made a made a big difference. And, you know, then as I started to kind of learn and I also think a lot about attaching a larger meaning and purpose to our lives that that is that that is something human being seek. And for me anyway the sense of growing and learning is a deep source of pleasure of joy, you know I I've changed a lot of jobs often because I love to just kind of keep challenging myself and learning and I learned a lot through this process and you know and I read a lot and a lot of what I read was wonderful. And I also you know it's partly during the well it was the only the end of it was the pandemic but you know I write about about birding about grace about books that I love in the bitter sort of my friends. And, and I would say and again this is something I really think I learned it certainly wasn't true when I was needed the School of Public and International Affairs. I love my colleagues, I really genuinely feel privileged to be able to, you know, to work with them on on work that I think has meaning so I don't see why leadership. It's not not going to be fun all the time that's impossible and raising money is really hard, but there's lots of parts of it that are fun. And this idea of of work as a site of potential transformation. But but first, I think you're arguing that work can also be a site of sort of like of fluidity. I'm interested in what happens to the worker who loves to read this book at home, loves to talk about these ideas possibly with someone they love, but feel completely and utterly terrified to bring much more of who they are as a human to a space that historically punish them and people who look like them for being human. So so so so I'm interested in like how we deal with that part of what you're of what you're calling for.  Why, because people were like, you haven't put it out in the world and people have pummeled you anyway, we don't need people looking into our families. And obviously I push back, but but how do you make the argument that not only should we push back, but their sites, their sites of labor, that should be places where people open themselves up much more. I'm speaking particularly about people who have already been made vulnerable by workplaces. Yeah, exactly. Yes, and I will say I should have said that to begin with when I read heavy I did at the end of it I thought wow. If you can do it and you are you are, you know, it's a heavy book, right there's a lot of really tough stuff in there and I was so impressed. And I said I read Darnell Moore's No Ashes in the Fire right it's not very similar kind of I took fabulous books, but he really lays it out and in the same way he's talking about family he's talking about being challenged personally. But so again, I do. You know I write at the beginning, what if I've learned anything over the past decade, it is to be very conscious of the we, you know, as you say that positionality. So, I imagine New America employees reading this book, and I imagine some number of them are going to say yeah she talks to talk but we have a long way to go. I mean, there's no question that we're in a transformation, but it's, it's hard and slow. I think that there is a different responsibility for those of us who have power and privilege I write about I've always talked about leading from the center and I've always said you know instead of being at the top of a hierarchy. I think of myself as the center of a web, but I wasn't thinking nearly enough about the folks on the margin of that web, the folks who really feel as you said that the entire workplace is not designed for them. I can't access that because the workplace was designed for men not women and I've certainly experienced that plenty. But again, it's taken me a lot to realize just how hard it is for somebody who has been historically disadvantaged who's who's gotten to where they've gotten by fitting themselves into somebody else's box, and who, you know, who am I to then say yeah and it's up to you to go and tell the boss what she's doing wrong. I think that's where allies come in, but I also think it's up to me as the boss to try to create the spaces where where people are feel more safe. There's another reason why it's so critical to have folks who you know women folks of color in power positions because they're going to hear stuff that I'm never going to hear. Right and they can tell me because they've got they've got more more power. But I think, yeah, you know this is, we don't need to put more on those who have had not nearly enough to begin with. But we, we should be telling folks who have more power. This is your job. I love that I love that. Um, and the we and we should be telling folks if this is your job. I want to I want to make sure I get this question in because we need to be jumping to the questions from the audience pretty soon. Because so much of this book is about risk is about experimentation. Um, and, and I think you know I'm just someone who believes anytime you write a book, you should attempt to obliterate the genre that people think the book is in and I feel like you've done that. And if anybody, like, thought for a second that you didn't like when you when you jump us to 2026. And, you know, and we are there right like, I love that move. And I'm interested in if there was any fear and just making that move in a book because this is a move that we've rarely if ever seen an American leader make in a book like were you afraid to do that. Jump there. That's interesting. That part I was not afraid, although was so first of all the highest compliment you could possibly give me is to tell me that I managed to break a genre because I was very consciously trying to do something different. And, and I feel good about that, you know, and I again I devour tons of fiction and tons of narrative nonfiction trying to, and a lot of it's pushing these boundaries. And the 20 the CODA says yes it's 2026 and here's what's happening and one of my friends you read it said I really thought that was right I thought that was this was. And I said well it's so part of it is. The agenda that I'm laying out that is also a challenge to me and to new America and a lot of the people I work with. But I also say you know what's your vision of 2026 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And as I start out I say you know in 1976 when I was 18 manning a bicentennial booth at the University of Virginia it was like Jefferson Central. It was triumphalist, you know it was the great United States and 1776 and we conquered the frontier and we, you know, no self examination. The time is going to be very different. And so I thought, and I, I was, you know, the CODA is called the America that has never been yet, yet must be, and that's from Langston Hughes poem, let America be America again. And I thought, you know, if he can have the courage to imagine this America that is never been yet but he says, yet must be. And that's a statement of faith. And if, and if somebody, you know, somebody on the right would say that is deeply patriotic. That's how I read it. So for me it was, I thought, you know, I'm just going to lay it out there but I'm not going to pretend that's everybody's vision and a lot of people would might find that a nightmare. I'm going to ask readers to fill in their vision because I think I do think this country needs that we are so, so mired and division and polarization and hate and sadness and death, and because that's all happening. But I don't think you can change with again going back to the personal I have to have a vision of who I can be before I can even try, even though I know I'll never get there. Right. And I'm sure you've talked to people about this vision. And, and I'm sure you've looked in people's eyes and saw vacancy at some point right. So where else they think I'm just crazy. Right, right, right. I like that I like that a lot better than that. Okay, what's this woman on.  I think anger at home is anger at fellow leader but like how do you deal with looking in the eyes of folks who you know could and should possibly look backwards and revise publicly. How do you how do you deal with people saying no, that's not how I want to leave. Yeah. So part of it is I say, I obviously don't have the power to bring about all this change I have more power than a lot of people. And this is a, as I said at the beginning of this book is part manifesto and this is my manifesto when I want to try to work with others and and it's a manifesto developed by on top of the work of many others right I didn't invent all those things in the in the coda they come from work that I know other people are doing. So part of it, and this is just the way I get up every morning at a time when, you know, the reading the news is like putting a 30 pound sack of rocks on your back. Right, but and in your head right you have to constantly fight to think, we're not going to come apart we're not going to start shooting at each other how can people be like this. This is my act of faith. Right, and I do, I do believe and I know from a lot of the research I've read, we are not as divided as the media makes it out. We really aren't particularly in in towns, you know, in places where people still do know about each other. There is of the possibility of of coming together around a shared love of many things about our country, not everything but things and I find this with southerners it's interesting because you know I'm a I grew up in Virginia you go to the north and everybody thinks you're practically on the plantation if you're white. And then you encounter other southerners many of whom are African American and that you share a lot of stuff, even as you of course have plenty of issues. So that's, it's, it's an, there is a lot of anger, and there's a lot of despair, frankly, but this is, you know it's that old thing about lighting a candle this is my effort to try to do what I can but also to invite others to say, you know, yeah it's hard, it's not impossible. Yeah, you know I play basketball in college and my coach used to always say, you know, if I made a bad pass, we would always say my bad my baby we will try to say, you know we'd be like, look, I'm correcting myself. You don't have to. And I had a coach named Sach Selinger, who was like, no, no, no, no, no, if don't say my bad in this gym, unless you're going to stop and explain to the entire gym why you made that mistake. I actually believe that if you did that, you were then holding yourself accountable. And so one of the things I think you're doing in this, which is, which to me makes it one of the riskiest books I've ever read is that you, you are putting you and your leadership on the table. I mean, look at me, spend me around, look at me, hold me accountable for not just who I've been, but for the future that I want. And I do wonder what happens if we demand that of our leaders of our boards of trustees of our presidents of whatever. I'm still faithful and goofy enough to believe that some sort of change would happen. But then again, I do not think that our leaders have been educated enough to write a book like this to do the work that it takes to look back with will and skill. So how did you, and it sounds like you're saying you sort of collected like memoir and lots of different organizations over here but how did you educate yourself into where this book renewal was a possibility, because I think it is a product of not just privilege and power, but a particular kind of radical education that it seems like you might have had to go out on your own and find. Yeah, and I would say again that's that's part of the from crisis to transformation right if there hadn't been a crisis. I'd have sailed along you know thinking I was doing just fine recognizing that you know there's seen there were there were some tensions here and you had to solve for that there. What happens is so there's a crisis but what really gets me is I realize that I don't have the confidence of a lot of the people I'm leading. And then I look back and think you know this has happened before, not the same way and in a very different context, but something's going on here and I need to figure it out. And that's where, yeah, I mean new America educated me, people who worked with me educated me many I write about, you know, a young woman, who I work with who I had mentored, but she, she mentored me, I mean I you know she really she gave me stuff to read she, but she also, I knew her well enough for her to say, you know when you said that this is what people heard. Right, this is what it sounded like.  And, you know, I, I, I really, I really do think that that has to happen, it's not so bad because the, on the other side, I've been, you know, I've read stuff and worked with people and seen things that are such a richer version of this country that that's what I'm telling people is, you know, you just have no idea what awaits us if we can make this change and all of us are going to make it in generations. You know, when the, when the Woodrow Wilson School changed his name which I came to deeply support my father who's 90 and who went graduated from it 1953. He's not going to change his views. And okay, I get that, but there are a lot of us who can, and we've got a lot at stake, and I'm willing to hold myself to account, I know I will not get to all, you know, I, I'm never going to get all the way there but if you try you'll get further than if you don't don't set yourself up and and and holds yourself count. Yeah. Thank you for that and thank you for making a book that I that I know most of us have never read before. Alright, let's try to get to these questions. As many of them as possible. So the first one sounds sort of like something we might have gone over your book closes with an image of what 2026 might look like. Did you write that imagining it realistically, or idealistically. So I think a lot of the things I wrote about could happen. So I'll give you one example and I hope to propose it to the Obama and Bush foundations I say the Obama and Bush foundations come together and create a commission to identify an equal new founders, right from the original founders and I got that idea because Barack Obama's told said in his eulogy for John Lewis he said John Lewis was a founder. And I thought that is exactly right he has, you know, we're in some ways we're constantly refounding the country but certainly in 2026 that there's this moment of reflection of commemoration of lamentation I mean it's going to be a lot. We could absolutely identify a set the same number of founders as we had originally with a commission of conservatives and liberals and there's some people would be obvious right, and then there'd be other so that's something we can certainly do. Are we going to change e pluribus unum to flourish at unum in five years, probably not but we might get started. And could we have 15 states that have ranked choice voting and so we'd be moving toward a genuinely multi party democracy. Yeah, we could do that because we've got to now. And it's something that that can actually gain steam so it's both it is certainly it's idealistic but it's each one of those things is being advocated by somebody. And gaining support and I want people to use 2026 as a kind of, I got five years I'm going to set a big goal. And even if you fall short, you got the next 25 right because we're really, we're really working for 2050. Right. All right, I like a little bit. I like that a lot. The second one is, if you could give one piece of advice to the next generation. I guess it's connected on renewal and resilience. What would it be. I think it would be two, but so one would be be willing to, to give us a little grace those of us who are older and I cite a situation where, you know whether it's on gender pronouns or race or ethnicity, a lot of us are going to make mistakes and I quote Loretta J Ross on calling rather than calling out and just extending a little grace right we may not deserve it, but it'll be better if you give it and so and you know my sons and I joke about this all the time but that would be one thing, but the other is, don't compromise in what you're asking for, you know, we really are at an existential moment in many ways. So be tolerant of mistakes and failings, but don't give up the idea that really transformational change is both needed and possible. Yes. Yes. Um, oh. Okay, third question. What was the most surprising piece of feedback you've received on the book. Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. Well, all right, I'm going to be radically honest here. I think I think I know where you're going. So, but this book went through three drafts over a good bit of time, and the very first draft, I gave to melody whom you what you heard from and she pointed out to me that my sources were incredibly white.   No, I wasn't reading broadly. And I think this is this is connected to the fourth question which is, I noticed you cited a lot of scholars in the book as you were writing. What works did you find most influential. And for those of you who haven't read the book. Again, I just can't reiterate it. It's travel writing memoir, sort of like literary analysis. Futurality studies, you know, you're doing a lot of different moves in here. But this is a great question. I noticed you cited a lot of scholars. What works did you find most influential. There's so many. So I will, I mean I'm not flattering you I thought heavy and no ashes in the fire and Greg hard lows air traffic which I all read together, those three. They all take risks, big risks. I write about I said, you know, look, this. These are our folks who didn't grow up in with privilege and who are really laying it out there. So those were very important, and I read those together. So then this is this gonna sound funny but I'm not a historian, but there's one chapter in there of history, where I base it's called rugged interdependence. And I say, you know, here's the history I grew up with Emerson self reliance and you know the wagon train and the pioneer and the spirit of the frontier and rugged individualism. And I went back and did my best like really on the wagon train stories I read what women had written women's diaries of who had been you know with the guy up on the wagon. And they told stories that were completely different they told stories of relying on their neighbors you know but for our neighbors we never would have survived but for the other folks in the wagon train.  God, I'm suddenly blanking on the Underground Railroad, I'm blanking on. Right Colson Whitehead. That was really profound and there's a line in there that just just is burned into my brain where he's talking about this enslaved woman Cora who finally makes it to the north. And he says, she looked around and folks are singing a song they used to sing on the plantation and she doesn't understand how they could sing that. How could they do that when they're working. And she says, she realized this was freedom but it wasn't what she imagined it was freedom as community, something lovely and rare, and I thought that is what the United States is missing. You know all of our liberty and I believe in liberty but the idea that liberty that freedom could be community. That was revelatory to me. I mean that's the bedrock of the book. That's the bedrock of your book. So powerful and that's a novel. Right, you know, it's so important. All right, I'm gonna try to get these next two and before we before we have to go. There's been an erosion of public trust and higher education in recent years. What is the path forward for these pillars of American democracy. And just want to add this because so what so we can so we can just kind of go out with a bang. It is often hard to stay optimistic these days the book is deeply optimistic. What are you holding that is giving you faith today. So maybe you can talk about education. Yeah, no I love that. At least at least they didn't ask what I'm on. What do you want to do. Yeah exactly what are you taking. So on the first one this is a really important question and we know that there's a tremendous decline in trust. So what you need to build trust is psychological safety, and a sense of familiarity, and some cross cutting identity, right so kiss a you and I might say well you know we both grew up in the south. Right, we got a lot of differences but we've got these things or you know we both love the same sports team or, but the psychological safety piece is what's so critical so you have these forums and stuff nobody says what they really think you know they're So this goes back to where I started, I think if you are willing to say I was wrong here, this is what I thought, but I was wrong, or this is what I did, and I was wrong. That's an opening that helps you move toward psychological safety and more trust.  And I don't think we can address trust in the macro until we can find it back in our communities and our friends so that's an education should be able to do that I'm not sure it is but it could. The last thing is, again, you know, I read the news and I am scared. I'm genuinely scared I think, you know we are becoming a plurality nation that is a huge transformation, and that kind of change in any country can cause huge upheaval. I guess I do believe, I mean this this is the patriotic part I believe this country has got stuff that can hold it together, and I genuinely believe that that, you know, Americans of every color that that diversity we have is such an asset. And if we can come to see that as an asset that it connects us to the world that we, you know that we have again this tremendous reservoir of innovation and talent because culture and ideas are colliding that that can be the container, as my friend Keith Yamashita says that can be the container for a nation big enough to hold us all. And that that gives my life more meaning as I think about fighting for that. And that's the only way I know how to be otherwise I'd be a little, you know, puddle in the corner. I love that Emory thank you so much for daring to be wrong publicly, which is always like daring to revise publicly. I mean we should not have to thank each other for daring to revise, but we do so thank you so much for daring to revise. I want to thank all of you again and this is just a reminder that you can purchase your copy of renewal through our bookselling partner solid state books by clicking on the button in the right hand corner of the screen. And you really need to get that book and you really need to talk about talk with this book with folks you work with folks you eat with, and folks you really purport to love thank you for giving us more important work to do. Thank you all for spending an hour with us today. Thank you. Can say thank you, and thanks to the audience. That was just a fabulous conversation. Thank you.


Hi, everybody. So I'm going to tell you a story about my pregnancy, which I thought was going to be easy. And my vision was that I would have the baby in a pool of water, and it would just kind of fall out with no pain or anything, and then just sort of swim naturally away. And my friends were going to be feeding me organic strawberries and stuff. And it was so not that, because I was stuck in Long Island in Stony Brook, Long Island. That was one. And then two, I was immediately put in the high-risk clinic. And then three, I got sick immediately. I got nausea that was beyond anything you could imagine. And it didn't stop. It went on as I delivered. I was nauseous. So anyway, I went to the doctor because I couldn't take it anymore. And she gave me this nausea drug called Compazine. And it didn't really help very much. So I just kind of suffered through the pregnancy.  And she's black, but she looks and sounds like a little, little Jewish lady. And so one day, she asked me to go get the mail. So I walk outside. I'm about five months pregnant. And I looked bad, just as it is, because I wasn't feeling well, so I couldn't take care of my hair. So I looked like, I don't know, this might be dating myself, but like Leroy from Fame, or like I just got out of lockdown. So that was already embarrassing to my mother. But then when I went to go get the mail, I put my, I tried to put my hand in the mailbox. And when I send a signal to my arm to get the mail. But when I did that, instead of going in the mailbox, my arm just kind of floated up to the sky and then just stayed there. And I was like, huh, OK, that's weird. And then the other arm just kind of floats up.   And my mom comes out. And of course, it's never like, are you OK? It's all about the neighbor. So she was like, oh my god, get in here. The neighbors are going to see this. So I come back inside. And I said, is there some kind of a pregnancy condition where your arms fly up? And she said, people have been pregnant since the beginning of time. And I have never seen anyone's arms fly up. Put your arms down. But I couldn't. And then maybe 10 minutes later, they float back down. So this keeps happening. And the next time I'm trying to go down the stairs and as I go to grab onto the banister, my arms fly up. Of course, my mom walks by and sees this. She said, you really need to go to a doctor. But I didn't want to go to the doctor, because I was really concerned. I was like, what could this possibly be? Whatever it is, it can't be positive. So I just like, I don't want to know. So one night, I'm sleeping. And I have this dream that I'm running down the street in Europe. And all of a sudden, the streets are like cobblestone streets. And it seemed real. Like, it felt it really seemed like I was in Europe. And when I tried to wake up, I couldn't. Like, I was awake, but the dream continued. Like, it just was still going. So I could see where I was in my mother's house. But I could still see the streets of Europe. So now, I don't want to tell anybody this, because this looks really bad. So I don't even want to go to my mother and say, like, not only are my arms going up, but I'm kind of like in Europe right now. So I'm just trying to act casual.  And I just had to wait for them to come back down before I could finish eating. And I got really hungry, because it was happening a lot. So then, I had the same dream, but now I'm awake. And I could see the cobblestone street. And I could see myself, but I wasn't myself. I was a 15-year-old Jewish girl with some sort of just a dowdy outfit on. And I'm running for my life down this cobblestone street. And I get sort of backed against a wall, because I'm like, it dead ends. And there's nowhere for me to go. And I turn around.  And I know that intellectually that that is not happening, because I can see my mother's dishwasher. But I see Nazis. I feel Nazis. Like, I felt afraid from like just from the core. And the fact that it wasn't real, it didn't matter. Like, I was there. And it was really scary. And my arms were up. And that just didn't help. So this keeps happening. It just repeats. And I'm always trying to get away from the Nazis. And they're spitting at me. And they're insulting me.  And they're threatening to shoot me. And so I'm just, I'm in agony, because I don't understand this. I'm still nauseous. You know, I don't, I just was like, this is the worst pregnancy ever. So finally, the Nazis back me up against the wall again. And they threatened to shoot me. And this time, I don't try to get away. I say in German, which I do not speak, that do what you have to do.  But I'm not going to be afraid of you. Like, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of showing fear. But so do what you have to do. And then they went away. But I got really scared. So I ran out of my mom's house. And I grabbed the keys. I grabbed her keys, her car keys. But it wasn't easy, because my arms were up. So I had to kind of do one of these numbers. And I run out like Superman onto the lawn. And I get in the car. And I'm like this. And I just like peel out.  She's like, where are you going? But I didn't even want to wait for her to take me to the hospital. I was just like, I'm turning myself in. So I get to the hospital. I don't know where to go. Because what department would that be? Nazi's and flying arms. So I was like, well, I'll start with the labor unit, even though I'm not ready to give birth. But let's see what happens there. So I go to the labor unit with my lockdown hair and my arms. And I'm like, OK, I know this looks bad. But I'm pregnant. And my arms won't go down. And I have a Nazi on either side. And she's like, all right. And she's like pressing the button. So security comes and carts me away. And they take me downstairs to this really nice place, which some of you might know as the psych ward. And they take away my shoes and give me these rubber slippers.  I'm separated from the other people because I'm pregnant. And they can see me through the glass room, all the doctors. So I don't want to get out of here, because I'm not trying to give birth in the hospital. So I'm just trying to make it look like I'm OK. It's not really working. I'm in there for four hours. Finally, the doctor comes in with the nurse. And I know this is like, I have to let him know that I'm not crazy. Because I can't be in the psych ward. So I said, again, I know this looks bad. And that my arms are up right now. But at least I'm aware of it. So I feel like that should count for something. And I know that the Nazis aren't real, that are on either side of me. So I'm not crazy. And he's just writing stuff down. So I'm like, OK, I'm going to be locked up. So I start just throwing out anything that I could think of that maybe could help. I was like, OK, I had some orange juice this morning, some soup. And I took my compasine from my nausea. And then the nurse says, oh my god, compasine. She's having a dystonic reaction. So apparently, compasine can cause weird body movements and horrible hallucinations. And maybe 10% of the people who take it. But nobody told me that. So I had actually taken some before I went to the hospital. So I wouldn't be nauseous. And then they said, don't worry about it. Once it wears off, you'll be fine. If you want, you could take Benadryl. I'm like, don't prescribe anything else, really.  So in conclusion, I want to say, be careful what medicine you take. But my daughter is sitting in the back, so she's fine. She's just not looking up. But so it ended well. But yeah, but that was wow. Thank you. Thank you so much.