Ideagen Global - Catalyze Magazine, March 2023

B Y I D E A G E N 

CATALYZE. 

March 2023 

Global 

Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 

Ideagen's Future 

Global Leaders 

Academy 

Jeff Peterson 

GM of Industry, North America 

Microsoft


CATALYZE. 



Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Tiffani Bova 

Author, Growth and 

Innovation Evangelist 

Salesforce


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Jeff Terry 

VP Corporate Social 

Responsibility & Sustainability 

GAF


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Anne Gross 

Lead, Data Citizens With Purpose 

KPMG


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Amy Porfiri 

Managing Director 

American Psychiatric Association Foundation


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Dr. Vedrana Hodzic 

Director for Fellowships & Medical 

Education, American Psychiatric 

Association Foundation


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

David Yunger 

CEO 

Vaital


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Craig Cookson 

Senior Director, Plastics 

Sustainability, American 

Chemistry Council


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Ernest Dupont 

Executive Director, Workforce Initiatives 

CVS Health


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Zoe Thompson 

US Social Strategy Lead 

KPMG


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Jordan Mitchell 

Associate Director, DEI & ESG 

KPMG


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Innovation 

Summit 

PLUS 



Academy 

Suzanne McCormick 

President 

YMCA

J E F F P E T E R S O N , G M O F I N D U S T R Y , 

M I C R O S O F T N O R T H A M E R I C A 

P O S I T I O N I N G M I C R O S O F T ' S I N D U S T R Y F O R S U C C E S S 

George Sifakis: George: I'd love it if you 

could share with our global audience your 

vision for the future of Microsoft's 

industry and how you plan to position the 

company for success in the coming years. 

Jeff: Yeah, I love this question, George. And this one really makes you 

think, right? There are so many ways you could answer this, but I'm going 

to start by talking about one of the things I mentioned already. Industry is a 

team sport and not just the Microsoft team, but the global team and all of 

you watching. The 17 Days of sustainability is a great example. To get 

those done, it's a team sport. I truly believe that we are better together, and 

we do great things together. First and foremost, I envision industry at 

Microsoft as being that team sport. Being the team that pulls it all together. 

But there are also a couple of key horizontals that lay across all of the 

industry that are critical, one being customer experience. The customer 

experience space is a huge market, and it's critically important as we move 

forward. Customers are demanding a certain level of personalization, and I 

can't wait to see what AI and the future of work unlock in that personalized 

customer experience. It's going to blow your mind. 

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J E F F P E T E R S O N C O N T I N U E D . . . 

Secondly, the area of sustainability; its a team sport. We can't do it alone. I'm 

really proud that Microsoft is still maintaining a huge focus on sustainability and 

that it sits within the industry team and covers that horizontal view. I think I said 

earlier, George, it's my vision in the short term that my team establishes the 

model for what it's like to do industry, including sustainability, customer 

experience, etc, inside Microsoft. And then share that with all of you. Long term, 

I see the stars aligning. We have the people, we got the team, and we're getting 

some great investment. We've got tools, processes, and tech in place with the 

right executive support. All these things are coming together to help us build 

programs that turn industry problems into outcomes. This helps our customers, 

and ultimately it also helps me. Turn those problems into Microsoft sales. 

So, again, I think this is a huge inflection point. I'm super excited about the focus 

on industry; 100 times more excited about the focus on AI in the future of work 

with Chatgpt etc. But this is a tough question, George because I can envision that 

short term and focus on delivering now and being great at Microsoft and 

industry. At the same time, it's tough for me to envision what the future will look 

like given the inflection point we're at now. We need to be future thinkers, we 

need to be adaptable, and ultimately I believe it'll be a bright future.

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IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING 

RETENTION ISSUES 

TIFFANI BOVA: AUTHOR, GROWTH AND 

INNOVATION EVANGELIST, 

SALESFORCE 

George Sifakis: How can companies innovate and use 

different methodologies to help with retention and to retain 

the best and the brightest employees that are the lifeblood 

of that business? 

Tiffani Bova: I'll tell you, the adviser of me, the ex-analyst of me, wants to answer that question right 

away. I just want to go, here's the answer; here are the three things you need to do, and I learned a 

number of years ago that I was probably doing a disservice to my customers and clients by doing that. 

Now when I'm in front of Salesforce customers, and I get the opportunity to meet with executives, and 

when they ask me these questions, I've tried to be a much better asker of questions. Instead of 

responding with what I think they should do, I will say, I don't know the answer to why you may have 

a retention problem or how to fix your retention problem, but I will ask you this. Based on the last 

employee survey you did, what were the top three things employees were most unhappy about? And 

the answer to that question tells me a lot because if the executive team doesn't know the answer to that 

question, then it validates what we found, which was lots of surveys are going on, and data is getting 

captured, but nobody's doing anything with that data. If they know the answer, I'll say, great, tell me 

what the top three biggest pain points are for your employees, and they'll rattle them off. Then I'll say, 

What are the things you're doing to overcome them, fix them, adjust them, whatever needs to happen 

in order to improve that part of the employee experience, the employee journey, and they'll start to dig 

into it. 


TIFFANI BOVA CONTINUED... 

Then I'll get into the second question, which is when you interviewed the last 50 people who 

left you, especially your high performers, what were the top three reasons why they left? That's 

usually where I'll catch them. They won't know the answer to that. They just let talent walk out 

the door without understanding why they are leaving, and how could we make sure another one 

doesn't because of that reason? It could be something silly like you don't reimburse education, 

or 'I want to further my education.' Not a lot of money, but a little bit of money. What would 

you give me, if anything? And they don't do it. It's a simple fix. Another could be 'I don't see a 

career path,' or 'I wasn't trained on this.' It could be very basic things that you could fix quickly. 

So I tend to ask those two questions versus just prescriptively giving an answer. It may not 

always be the answer the executive wants because they are looking for me to give them the 

answer, but they actually have the answer to their own question. I just don't think they're 

looking in the right way quite yet. 

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INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY IN 

THE ROOFING INDUSTRY 

JEFF TERRY 

VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE SOCIAL 

RESPONSIBILITY & SUSTAINABILITY, 

GAF 

George Sifakis: What role do you see 

innovation playing in advancing 

sustainability in the roofing industry and 

beyond, and how do you support and 

encourage this innovation in your work? 

Jeff Terry: It's a really good question, 

George, and I love your example 

because even with innovation, there are 

guardrails and guideposts that need to be 

considered. We know we need to cover a 

building; we know we need to cover a 

home to make it watertight, but 

innovation at its core can come to life in 

a lot of different ways as it relates to the 

built environment. I'll give you a great 

example; 39% of atmospheric carbon 

comes from the built environment. At its 

core, there are two different ways, 

whether it's manufacturers or 

construction companies, that everybody 

who feeds into the built environment has 

an opportunity and a role to play in 

improving our environmental footprint 

and the impact that the performance of 

buildings can have on the environment 

overall. I think through that lens, there's 

a tremendous opportunity for the role at 

which the intersection of sustainability 

and innovation really comes together. 

Jeff: A number of things that we do and 

have focused on is how do you reimagine 

the material makeup of the products that 

can go on top of a building or on top of a 

home? We created the first asphaltic 

shingle, which you hear asphaltic and you 

think that's a non-renewable resource; well, 

our goal is to create a circular economy 

within the roofing sector, and we've been 

the first company to really imagine, invest 

in, and figure out how to take the shingles 

that come off homes and buildings and turn 

those back into shingles to go on the next 

roof. That's a technology, that's an 

innovation that has taken a tremendous 

amount of resources and time to figure out 

how to do it because of the chemistry and 

the approach to how you take this material 

back, how you process this material, and 

put it back into a shingle product is very 

complicated. But it's also critical, and how 

we think about the material health of the 

products that we make. 


JEFF TERRY CONTINUED... 

Jeff: Another good example would be to look at some critical issues beyond roofing 

material that goes into a landfill, which the circularity focus is intended to help solve. 

We're starting to look at issues beyond specifically where we can play as one 

individual company. We're looking at issues in urban heat and understanding that there 

are a lot of hard surfaces, whether it's on the ground, on roofs, or elsewhere in 

communities, especially in urban centers. What happens in those situations is when you 

have extremely hot days and extreme heat dynamics, those hard surfaces really absorb 

the radiation heat that comes from the sun and keeps the temperature of that 

community at a very high level, both during the day when the sun's out and also at 

night. We have worked to create new innovations and new technologies that can reduce 

the amount of absorption hard surfaces can take on with that radiation heat, whether it's 

asphalt on the ground or dark roofs on buildings, and actually increase what's called the 

albedo or the reflectivity of those surfaces that disallow that storage of radiation heat 

that then stays for longer times during the day and specifically at night, which is when 

the implications on public health tend to be so much greater. 

We have the research, development, and innovators within this company that are 

constantly looking at some of these critical issues. How can we create products that 

help to serve communities better while at the same time really helping to address some 

of these critical issues that have a real public impact and public health implications 

associated with them? 


Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft, 

Grace Clack, outlines the progress made from 

Microsoft's sustainability journey and the 

lessons learned to improve in 2023. 

 

By utilizing data to understand the impacts of 

their initiatives and developing partnerships 

with like-minded organizations, Microsoft's 

sustainability commitments are generating 

impact within communities and creating 

competitive advantages. 

Grace Clack 

Director of Product Marketing 

Microsoft 

To read Grace's full blog post, click the link below! 


ALIGNING KPMG'S DATA 

PRACTICES WITH THIER 

COMMITMENTS TO 

SUSTAINABILITY 

ANNE GROSS 

LEAD, DATA CITIZENS WITH PURPOSE 

KPMG 

George Sifakis: How are you ensuring that the data practices align with the company's 

broader commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility at KPMG? 

Anne Gross: We recognize and operate on the principle that data is core to all things 

ESG, and I consider ESG to be synonymous with sustainability and corporate 

responsibility. With that, data becomes woven into everything we do. We're putting it 

top of mind. I've said it a couple of times; we have a business question, we have an 

issue, what is the data? What does the data tell us? The data gives us a baseline into what 

our greenhouse gas emissions are, how diverse our workforce is, and how our supply 

chain operates. That data really then becomes core and essential to how you think about 

ESG and your sustainability commitments. 

The second part relates to governance and ESG as that valuable asset. Like all of your 

financial assets, you protect those, and you have governance over them. You have to 

have the same over your data. At KPMG, we have that, and it's certainly something we 

model for our clients. We talk to them on a regular basis about how they are thinking 

about data as it relates to their operations. It is an incredible asset to have, so how are 

you protecting and safeguarding it? 


CHALLENGES IN WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH & 

THE FIRST-STEP PLAN 

FEATURING AMY PORFIRI, MANAGING DIRECTOR & DR. VEDRANA HODZIC 

DIRECTOR FOR FELLOWSHIPS & MEDICAL EDUCATION, AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC 

ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION 

George Sifakis: What are some challenges facing women today 

that are often overlooked? We've talked about a few of them, 

but what solutions do we have to address some of these? 

Dr. Hodzic: So clinically, going back to that caretaker model, 

what I've often seen is people wait until they need a much 

higher level of care. There are women who come in where it's 

gotten to the point that they may need more intensive 

outpatient services or even full inpatient care, but then who's 

going to be taking care of their children or other family 

members? They're not able to actually access those services if 

they really need them? 

Amy Porfiri 

Dr. Hodzic: Now, I think our first-step campaign is going to 

help address that. Again, working on that prevention 

model. So start early; get connected to someone in a 

traditional outpatient setting while it is still manageable. 

George: Wow, incredible. Amy? 

Dr. Vedrana Hodzic 

Amy Porfiri: Agreed, and I think knowing when self-care is 

not enough. There's so much online about how to do selfcare, 

including yoga, meditation, and such, but really, when 

do you need professional help? Taking that step, 

recognizing that it's okay, you're not failing at self-care if 

you seek professional care. So really giving people the tools 

and awareness to know when to take that step is crucial. 


CHALLENGES IN WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH & 

THE FIRST-STEP PLAN CONTINUED... 

George: It's all about the first step, isn't it? When do you take that first step, and why is 

it so important? 

Dr. Hodzic: Well, it's recognizing in yourself signs and symptoms that you need 

additional help, and then how do I get that? The reality is there are multiple places 

where you can get it. Most people don't need to see a psychiatrist like myself. There are 

a number of primary care providers, such as other mental health providers, or a 

physician who has some experience in psychiatry. Talking to them about what you're 

experiencing will lead you down the path of how to get connected to the place that you 

need. 


I D E A G E N ® 

G l o b a l I n n o v a t i o n S u m m i t 

Streaming Now On Ideagen 



PRIORITIZING ETHICAL AND 

RESPONSIBLE AI USAGE 

WITH DAVID YUNGER, CEO OF VAITAL 

George Sifakis: How does vital data 

prioritize the ethical and responsible use 

of AI and data analytics in your solutions? 

David Yunger: Well, that's a great 

question, George. Bias, privacy, and 

ethics concerns make the headlines 

every day, and frankly, AI does not have 

a great track record in testing. 

There's a bad reputation coming out of well-publicized court cases, 

congressional reviews, privacy and bias by high-profile US Senate 

members, pending lawsuits in the EU and elsewhere, and new laws 

that are being created as we speak. We believe that our ethical and 

moral standards as a company have to be even higher than the legal 

standard. Ai, we believe, does not and should not make decisions that 

impact a person's career in a remote proctored environment. We 

believe that it's humans that need to be making those decisions. That's 

what we call human-centric AI and edge computer vision. We've 

proactively trained our AI across a wide range of skin tones, lighting 

conditions, and bandwidth, which empowers humans to make better, 

more accurate decisions at scale. 


DAVID YUNGER CONTINUED... 

David: And finally, George, you know the world is really unpredictable, 

and we need a framework that allows us to make decisions in an 

ethical and moral way. There's a responsible AI framework that 

Microsoft has introduced, which we embrace as a company and put at 

the center of everything we do. It's really about how artificial 

intelligence systems must treat people fairly, they have to perform 

reliably and safely, they need to be secure and respect privacy, and 

they have to be inclusive to empower and engage those who are 

underserved. It needs to be ultimately understandable and 

accountable. So that's how we run our company, and that's how I 

always want to run it. 


G L O B A L 

The Circular Economy 

and Partnerships within 

the American Chemistry 

Council 

Craig Cookson 

Senior Director, Plastics Sustainability 

American Chemistry Council 

George Sifakis: George: What is the circular economy, and how is it related to your work 

directly at the American Chemistry Council? 

Craig Cookson: Yeah, so we think of our economy now, and the opposite of the circular 

economy is a linear economy where we take, we make, and then we waste. We cut down 

trees, drill for oil and natural gas, mine for minerals and metals, and then make something, 

and maybe we're not optimizing our resources and being as efficient as we can along the 

way. After we've used those materials, for lack of better words, we dig a hole in the 

ground, dump this stuff in, cover it with dirt, and it's a landfill. Then we go back and do 

the same thing. So a circular economy is number one, how can we do everything? How 

can we better optimize our resources so we're using less energy, conserving water, and 

reducing our greenhouse gas emissions? After we've used these products, how do we 

recycle and recover them and get them back into our economy instead of wasting them 

and taking a new virgin natural resource? 

George: That is incredible, and thank you for that because it's important to understand 

what that circularity is; what is that circular economy? Taking it a step further, as you're 

collaborating with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, how do you 

approach this? How do you do that effectively within and outside of the plastics industry? 


A C C ' S C I R C U L A R E C O N O M Y A N D 

P A R T N E R S H I P S C O N T I N U E D 

Craig: I think one of the things I learned when I worked for Governor Mitt Romney was 

when I was in his Office of State Relations, a building in Washington, DC, called the 

Hall of the States. The Hall of the States represents essentially all 50 governors with the 

National Governors Association, so you have an opportunity to work with folks from all 

across the country, both Republicans and Democrats, on issues that are important to two 

governors. Additionally, Governor Romney was a Republican in a state where all the 

federal offices, the senators, and folks in Congress were Democrats. We had to learn 

how do we be bipartisan and work on issues that directly impact Massachusetts together, 

and I think that an approach we take at the American Chemistry Council is having 

bipartisan solutions. 

We all want to end plastic waste. We all want to see lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

We all want to see using less energy and conserving water, but sometimes we don't 

always agree with others. There are different material groups; there's paper, aluminum, 

and glass, and oftentimes, these materials compete in the marketplace, but we approach it 

honestly and agree on issues where we can and agree to disagree when we can. I think 

we approach every issue with that degree of how can we find some areas to agree on, and 

I think that's an important part of the success here in Washington. 


Ideagen Global Summit 

Live from the Embassy 

of Ethiopia 

As part of the Global Acceleration Summit 

Streaming World-Wide May 31, 2023 



CREATING STRONG 

WORKFORCE 

INITIATIVES 

With Ernest Dupont, Executive Director, 

Workforce Initiatives, CVS Health 

George: What advice, Ernie, would you provide to 

other companies looking to build a strong, robust, 

successful workforce initiatives element in their 

company? 

Ernest: That's a great question, George, and it's 

one I get quite a bit, and it's really the same answer 

every time. There's one primary thing that's most 

important, and that is thinking through a long-term 

lens and not a short-term series of wins. When we 

started the workforce initiatives work that we do 

today at scale, it began with a persistence around 

creating these partnerships and looking for 

common ground around mission and purpose with 

communities and community organizations. So 

often, and in our experience early on, we hit a brick 

wall and didn't go any further with a multitude of 

different partnerships that we had initiated during 

that timeframe. It took a great level of persistence. 

It took some foresight about not giving up on 

what's important, and that is those individuals that 

are underserved and those individuals that perhaps 

just by the nature of the zip code they grow up in, 

don't have the same resources that we all may have 

had as young people. It's critically important that 

anybody interested in moving forward with a 

program like this that they take a long-term view. 

It took us 3 to 5 years to start to hit some of the 

outcomes we wanted through the course of our 

work, and it is based on the relationships and 

common purpose we build. We started small and 

weren't looking for big numbers early on. If you 

can do that and stay true to the purpose, it's 

critically important. Another thing that I would 

add, George, is that there are oftentimes things 

that become shiny objects along the way that 

can pull your attention away from the true heart 

of the work we're trying to accomplish. I think 

it's critically important to stay focused on what 

the work is, and that's helping to transition 

people through non-traditional pipelines of 

talent to success. 

It goes back to our aspirational goals, which are 

breaking the cycle of poverty and recognizing 

that every individual has potential and the ability 

to realize that potential if they're given the right 

tools. So if a company is interested in doing 

something like this, I'd love to talk with them. 

We think the more companies involved in this 

work, the better because it's helping 

communities robustly across the country. 

. 

. 


THE FUTURE OF DEI & ESG 

F e a t u r i n g J o r d a n M i t c h e l l : 

A s s o c i a t e D i r e c t o r , D E I & 

E S G , K P M G 

& 

Z o e T h o m p s o n : U S S o c i a l 

S t r a t e g y L e a d , K P M G 

J o r d a n M i t c h e l l 

Z o e T h o m p s o n 

George Sifakis: As we look at the future of DEI and ESG, how do you envision KPMG evolving in 

this space? 

Zoe Thompson: I'll say it again; it's about business impact where I see evolving. We had such a 

reckoning in the United States that obviously spilled out into the rest of the world. When we talked 

about where we were with diversity, with inclusion, you had a lot of companies saying, 'I'm not where I 

want to be.' For a long time, people thought of these activities as corporate social responsibility. They 

thought, Monday through Friday, I do my business, and on Saturday, maybe I'll get together with some 

people on my team, and we'll go volunteer. Then, we've done our part to be good corporate citizens. 

What happened is that companies said that's not enough. We need to be more involved. We need to 

show our impact. We need to really integrate this into our business strategy. 

That awareness was fantastic, and I'm really thrilled about that. What you see happening now and 

where I see us going is we've started thinking about our business in terms of DEI, now, how do we 

actually track accountability? How do we make sure that people in charge have the resources they 

need, the authority they need, and the ability to circle back and say, where is the business impact, and 

how are we tracking that? I think KPMG and our clients across the board will look at that and say, how 

do we make sure this is truly treated like a business imperative, not as a nice to have, not as something 

that goes away when budgets get tight, but something that absolutely baked into our business with 

those accountabilities. You've got to be able to track, you've got to have the data, and you've got to be 

able to hold people accountable to say, Is this working, and if not, how do we fix that? We had the 

awareness, we had the desire to do more, and now I think you'll see more accountability, more 

tracking, and ever-evolving improvement. 

. 


KPMG'S FUTURE OF DEI & ESG 

CONTINUED... 

Jordan Mitchell: And to comment on that as well, George, on the talent side of this, when you 

think about the future generations that are entering the workforce now, this is becoming not just a 

nice to have, it's becoming a requirement for that talent. They're looking at organizations saying, 

what are you doing? Because now more than ever, we see female graduates outpace male 

graduates. We see underrepresented talent in every different community graduating at 

significantly higher rates than they were ten years ago or even five years ago. That means that we 

need to have organizations consider and prioritize the experience of the talent as they come into 

the organization. 

But what talent really wants to know is not only what you're going to do for me, but what are you 

going to do for my community? What are you doing for society? Those are things that, as 

organizations, you have to not only show you're doing something but prove it. And that goes 

back to what Zoe mentioned. What I get really excited about working with organizations and 

clients, is now that you want to do something, now that you're talking about doing something, 

let's go do it, and then let's start measuring that. Let's start proving that we're making an impact, 

and we're going to continue to prioritize maximizing that impact with the resources available. 

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Editor's Note 

Dear Friends and Colleagues, We are underway in this new 

year with a fresh start in 2023, and there are numerous positive 

trends and advancements to be optimistic about. From 

breakthroughs in technology to inspiring advancements in 

sustainability, it's an exciting time to be alive. We are seeing 

communities come together in new ways with a renewed focus 

on changing the world. The world continues to evolve, with ai 

and virtual experiences becoming increasingly accessible and 

diverse, including the latest from ChatGPT and OpenAI. 

As we move forward into the year, it's important to celebrate 

these advancements and continue to strive toward a brighter 

future. At Catalyze Magazine by Ideagen Global, we are 

thrilled to be a part of this positive movement and can't wait to 

share all the exciting developments with our readers in 2023! 

GEORGE SIFAKIS 

GEORGE SIFAKIS 

Editor-in-Chief & CEO 

-Ideagen 

CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 21 

ALEXA SIFAKIS 

Senior Editor 

DANIEL KERNS 

Publication Co-Editor 

Pictured Top to Bottom 

George Sifakis & Rawle Andrews Jr. 

Craig Cookson, ACC 

Nasdaq Board Times Square

Ideagen Global - Catalyze Magazine, March 2023

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