Winning with Diversity
Businesses aren’t just buildings or websites. Nor are they made up only of balance sheets or Cloud services. Businesses are, first and above all, human endeavors. They are living entities, filled with people – and truly exceptional businesses know how to build their future on the diverse strengths, insights, and life experiences of an equally diverse team of people. PROS has always prided ourselves on taking a belief in diversity beyond simple words on a corporate charter, elevating that belief in diversity into passion for inclusion. In this session, PROS COO, Les Rechan will talk to award-winning business journalist Ellen McGirt about the power of diversity in business, how it translates into an engine for success, and the role of diversity in building a better future for us all.
About the Speakers
In May 2020, Les Rechan joined PROS as Chief Operating Officer. He leads the go-to-market, customer experience, and engagement functions to further scale and grow these operations globally. Prior to his appointment to COO, Rechan served on the PROS board of directors from 2015 to 2020 as a member of the Compensation and Leadership Development Committee and the Nominating and Governance Committee. Prior to PROS, Rechan served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Solace Systems, a smart data movement solutions company, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. He has also served as President, CEO, and a director of Halogen Software, a cloud-based talent management software provider, which was acquired by SABA. Rechan previously served as General Manager, IBM Business Analytics Division, and has also served as Chief Operating Officer of Cognos. Moreover, he has held global executive leadership roles with Oracle, Siebel Systems, Cadence Design Systems, and Onyx Software. Rechan currently serves on the advisory board of Cognitive Scale, a privately held augmented intelligence cloud platform company, MicroStrategy, a leading provider of enterprise analytics and mobility software and services, and JASCI software, a privately held supply chain acceleration cloud solutions company. Rechan earned his M.A. in Management from Northwestern University, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in organizational behavior from Brown University.
Ellen McGirt is a senior editor at FORTUNE, where she established the race and culture beat in 2016. In addition to long-form magazine features, McGirt writes RaceAhead, a daily column on race and inclusion in corporate life and beyond. The column has received a New York Press Club Award for commentary, a National Headliner Award, and the Steven Heller Prize for Commentary from the AIGA. McGirt is also the co-chair of FORTUNE’s CEO Initiative and FORTUNE’S Most Powerful Women Summit. She is also the co-host of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast. In her past lives, she’s written for Money, Time, and Fast Company, where she wrote or contributed to more than twenty cover stories and created the digital series The 30 Second MBA. Her reporting has taken her inside the C-Suites of Facebook, Nike, Twitter, Intel, Xerox and Cisco; on the campaign trail with Barack Obama and across Africa with Bono to study breakthrough philanthropy. McGirt was the editor for Your First Leadership Job, a book published by Wiley in 2016. She attended Brown University. The New York City native now mostly lives in the Midwest with her family. Ask her about fly-fishing if you get a chance.
Full Transcript
Les Rechan: Welcome to the closing session of Outperform 2020. My name's Les Rechan I'm the chief operating officer of PROS. I like to refer to it as the chief outperform officer. And this is really my first Outperform, on this side of the table. Having spent five years on the board of PROS prior to this. And when I say chief outperform officer, I'm talking about your out performance and that's really what we care about here at one PROS, which is helping you accelerate and Outperform. It's been just an amazing couple of days, simply stunning. We've had sessions, 62 different sessions. I just want to thank our partners, our customers, our sponsors, all of our PROS, the analysts, what a diverse set of learnings that we've shared. And this session here, we're going to be talking about diversity and inclusion, diversity wins, and I'm joined by my good friend, Ellen McGirt, who's just an amazing person. I've known Ellen for now Ellen, what? Four decades. We've known each other....
Ellen McGirt: Since I was 18 years old, my friend.
Les Rechan: It's incredible. And Ellen is going to talk to you about what she's been doing, but she is the senior editor at Fortune. She is the author of Race Ahead, a column which focuses on anti majority cultural issues. It focuses on stakeholder capitalism. It focuses on purpose-driven leadership. These are all such incredible topics these days. In terms of what I wanted to do before I turn it over to Ellen, is really talk about at PROSe, our commitment to diversity and inclusion, and just how this is woven into the fabric of who we are. And we talk about diversity as being, you're invited to the party, and inclusion being you're out on the dance floor. And we just, we are so committed to this as a company in terms of our global business. As you may know, a third of our businesses in the Americas, a third of it's in Europe, a third of it's in Asia Pac.
Les Rechan: So just the geographic diversity that we have, I've been, in my career, I've really had a blessing of working with people from early in my career. My first branch manager, I worked at a high tech company was a black leader. He was amazing. I learned so much from him and just the experiences I've had living and working around the world. Diversity is beauty. And here at PROS, we've got employee resource groups, which include our Empower group from a black community perspective, Pride in terms of LBGTQ, Blaze for women leaders. Una Dos for Latino and Hispanic, and then Yo Pro for young professionals. And these days we're just, we're encouraging, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, having the conversations, and being fearless as it relates to this. We've hosted learning days. So we had a Juneteenth learning day. We'd had a Hispanic Heritage month learning day this past week, and it was just everyone's participating.
Les Rechan: And when I've talked to our PROS about this, they've said, "Les, you know what the difference here is, between what we've experienced in other places and PROS? It's, we're not just talking about it. We're engaging as leaders. We're engaging, everybody's on the same playing field here. And we, whether it's an executive partner for one of our employee resource groups, or just having a dialogue." And so this is something that we really take pride in. And so I'm just so delighted to be able to have this conversation with Ellen and for Ellen to share some of her learnings, some of what she's experiencing. So with that, Ellen, I'd like to turn it over to you and just, it's so nice for you to be here. I'm so proud of everything that you've done in your career. And I think what we're going to learn from you today... And I'm so looking forward to this dialogue, cause you're such a special person, and thank you so much for being here.
Ellen McGirt: Oh, Les, it's so wonderful to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you to the entire PROS village, really who made this event possible and helped me feel so welcome. And I've learned so much about AI and dynamic pricing, and the future of commerce, that I'm so much smarter than I was when I started out. So I'm grateful for that too. So hello everyone. I'm so glad to be here. And as Les mentioned for the last four years, I've written a regular column about race in America. And as fun as that sounds, I'm going to start today with a story about fishing and you can trust me. I can connect those dots. I've been fly fishing for about 10 years now, and it's the thing that really brings me the most joy outside of my family and friends. And it's really changed me.
Ellen McGirt: Here's the thing about fly fishing. It's really all just a trick. Your job is to trick the fish by presenting them with an imitation of a bug that looks real and delicious and precisely what they want to eat at that moment in time, which is harder than it sounds because trout are very good at staying alive. It's not a volume business. It's a nerds game. It's a puzzle. And technique is everything. You learn about air pressure, and knots, and waterflow and snow melt. And you follow the mating habits of bugs like paparazzi chasing Kardashians, and also how climate change is allowing the bark beetles to survive the warming winters and killing off unprecedented acres of Ponderosa pines across the West. Now Ponderosa pine smell like vanilla cake, not just vanilla and not cake, but vanilla cake. I love knowing that. And I love knowing that you have to hug them and really get your face right in the bark to be able to smell it.
Ellen McGirt: But every year, when I'm lucky enough to go back to Montana, I see more of them dying off. And now they just look like fuel. I even have a favorite trout. A huge dude who lives under a bridge on Rock Creek in Montana. And I've chased him for years. And I know that one day I will trick him and then I'll do what I always do. I will let him go because it is just such a privilege to be part of something bigger than myself. Now, Les does know this about me. I am a quasi cynical girl from Harlem, USA. I didn't know anybody who fished like that growing up, nor did I ever expect to do it myself, but for people like me and maybe people like you, it changes you deeply to stand in a river, in an ecosystem already in progress.
Ellen McGirt: Humans don't get to do that often enough. I know I never did. So here's the other thing about fly fishing. In all my years, I've never met a person of color on or associated with the river, not in a fly shop. Occasionally I run into another woman, but it's not like there's a sisterhood of the traveling waders or anything. Not one guide, not a park ranger, nobody who works for a rafting company, nothing. Once, I saw a black man working in a little brew pub in a tiny Montana town, we met eyes and I promise you, we both thought the other one was in witness protection. Now one level, this is normal to me. I'm used to being the only one or close to it. My mom's side of the family is all white. I went to a predominantly white college. In my career, first in the arts then for a bit in venture capital, and now in journalism, where being the only one is, it stings.
Ellen McGirt: But being one of the only is a lonely bit of business, even in a place like a national park, where solitude is part of the draw. But now here's the real thing about fly fishing. People of color or other underrepresented groups are lonely by design. The national park system, which turned 100 in 2016 was in large part the creation of a special guy, a conservationist, a zoologist, and a white supremacist named Madison Grant. Grant wrote a book called The Passing of the Great Race, a breathtakingly racist work that was immensely popular when it was published in 2016, 1916, excuse me. And armed generations of leaders around the world with enough pseudoscience to justify segregation, eugenics, race war, workplace discrimination, and the violent oppression of inferior races. Grant went to Yale and Columbia. He hung out with really important people, including future president Teddy Roosevelt, who liked the book so much that he wrote a letter that turned into a blurb for the book.
Ellen McGirt: And he was really influential. If you like the Bronx zoo in New York, you can thank Madison Grant. If you like Yellowstone Park, you can thank Madison Grant. If you believe that immigrants and refugees are filthy criminals, spreading disease and doing a lot of raping and other bad things, then Madison Grant is also part of the reason why. Grant and his many friends thought of the national parks as a respite for mainly white men who needed to refresh their spirits in the face of this threat to their race. And you have to remember our history now here at the US. Jim Crow was in full swing here, and a great migration had begun of people desperate to escape the caste system of racial segregation. And of course the refreshing of the white spirit also came at the expense of indigenous people whose land had been ripped away, treaties already broken.
Ellen McGirt: Now 100 years later, people of color often feel unwelcome, even in the cultivated outdoors like golf courses, and tennis clubs where business has traditionally been done. So when we fight about affirmative action, or the business case for diversity, or immigration policy, or whether white privilege actually exists, what happens when the US president cancels critical race theory training for the entire federal workforce. Even though we don't know his name it is the ghost of Madison Grant who's haunting us all. And I'll tell you this. If my father was alive today, a man born to a single mother, who knew former slaves, the witness lynching, and served in World War II in the segregated army, came home to South Carolina, was not allowed to vote. Couldn't get a special mortgage benefit for veterans, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin, and who managed to migrate his way up to Harlem anyway to become a social worker.
Ellen McGirt: And who, as a lifelong renter, was unable to pass along any generational wealth to the only child he could afford, that would be me, beyond his Social Security survivor's benefits. If my father was alive today, and just heard me tell you that I spend my free time in the middle of Madison Grant's America standing in a river, trying to trick some damn fish. I don't know what he'd say. Maybe something like, you better hope that sound you hear coming up behind you is actually a grizzly bear. It can be tough out there. Now, I love the National Park Service, and they have spent millions of dollars in trying to make nature more welcoming. Their diversity report is not good. Nobody's is. The vast majority of their employees have always been white as has been their board. Visitors are primarily white, and numerous surveys show that visitors of color feel unwelcome in these naturalist spaces, citing racist treatment from park police and rangers, and other visitors themselves.
Ellen McGirt: They know they have work to do. And until recently they worried about whether or not to really dig into the Grant story. And I'm glad to report that they have, they've opened up a candid, long overdue, and difficult conversation about this past and their plans to make things better. And of course I say, fantastic. I write about race. I need the material, but I also say we need to talk about it because that's the reason why there isn't a legacy of park rangers of color, of conservationists, of fly shop owners, hiking guides, and people of every hue from around the world who are refreshing their spirits on the regular. That's your pipeline problem. And you have to talk about it. So if I've learned one thing in the last few years, establishing the race beat at Fortune is that racism runs so deep and it's so baked into everything we see, think, and do, that it's almost impossible to see the bottom.
Ellen McGirt: But that's the work that needs to be done. And that's the work that we're increasingly asking employers and employees to do. To have these difficult conversations, and to have them early and often, especially at the highest level. I was recently talking with professor Ibram X Kendi, you probably know his work. He's the number one New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Anti-Racist. He offers a uniquely helpful framing in the job that we have to do together. It's not enough to decry racism and discrimination. We must stand and work against it. In the US and around the world, we are surrounded by people who have been steeped in racist ideas. We are those people living, working, learning, and fly fishing in systems framed by racist principles that we've either forgotten, never knew, or never questioned.
Ellen McGirt: To be an anti-racist is to notice who isn't in the room and ask why, or in my case, the forest. To be an anti-racist in the workforce then, is to notice who isn't on your board, the executive suite, your high-potential pool, your store shelves, your professional services supply chain, your customer teams, your customers, your LinkedIn network, and then ask why.
Ellen McGirt: And that's where the magic happens. That's what it means to be woke really, or to put it another way, once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places. If you look at it right. So let's switch gears for a quick second and talk about the first place people start on any diversity journey, which has been the business case. It's how you get the resources you need to hire, to promote, to create new programs. And there's a powerful one to make. The benefits are clear, diverse teams make better decisions and fewer mistakes. That includes juries by the way, companies with diverse leadership across race and gender generate more revenue, and innovation as defined by new products in the marketplace. Companies with diverse boards make more money. And now that we're in really rocky times, they weather economic downturns better too.
Ellen McGirt: Let me give you a great example between 2007 and 2009, the S&P 500 declined, 35%. However, businesses where women and people of color reported very positive experiences, which includes seeing a pathway forward for themselves, saw their stocks rise an average of 14.4%. That's outperforming. Now all of that sounds really great. I know, but we need to look at reality now. There have only been 16 black CEOs in the history of the Fortune 500. Now there are only four, and they're all men. In 2017, I had to write a whole story for the magazine to explain why there was only one black woman CEO in one of our most beloved franchise lists most powerful women. Now there are zero. In 2018, there was one Latina CEO in the Fortune 500. Now she's gone. And the pipeline is no better. White men make 35% of the US population, but nearly 60% of vice-president roles. That's a lot of people not getting promoted. People of color account for a mere 4.7% of executive teams in the global Fortune 100.
Ellen McGirt: And when people are there, they're exhausted. Black and brown professionals routinely report having to be on guard for racial slights, which makes engagement and bringing your best self to work really tough. And then we need to talk about the whole world. It takes 20 years to grow an entry-level employee, and then a couple dozen more to get them to their greatest potential, and a lot goes wrong for people that we need so desperately to be in the mix. I've mentioned the generational wealth gap between communities of color and their white counterparts around the world. We need to talk about inadequate schools, disproportionate punishment and neglect of youth, of color.
Ellen McGirt: Low income communities with food deserts, experiencing environmental degradation, leading to bad health outcomes. Black and brown people with the same credentials, don't get loans, jobs, or promotions at the same rate as white ones, but have no trouble getting arrested or shot by the police. Here in the US I know you know this story, the fact that black women here in the US are more likely to die during or after childbirth, and that indigenous women around the world are disproportionately victims of random, intimate partner, and police violence.
Ellen McGirt: So now we're all good anti-racists. And so now we look at these bad outcomes and loss potential, and the money on the table, and we ask ourselves, why? What's the mismatch, what's happening here? So this leads me to the second problem that we're having, by focusing only on the business case, besides being a little insulting to human beings who don't want to be seen as an asset or an optimization strategy, we're failing to do the work to dismantle the barriers that keep our diversity numbers bad, and our communities in trouble. And that's really a conversation about power, but yet this is the work we're being asked to do. And to notice who's in the room, ask why, and get busy from there. Some fixes may be small and personal only to you, like widening your personal network. And some may require you to think more about the way you move collectively in the world, but there is good news here.
Ellen McGirt: We are now, I am convinced, in a massive conversation about stakeholder capitalism. The idea that business has a vital role to play in the betterment of society, or at the very least to repair what they may have broken. We're also in a global pandemic where the people who've been most effected by the pandemic, black and brown underemployed, underbanked, undereducated, living in communities, which may never economically recover, have taken to the streets to demand racial equity. And this time they haven't been alone. None of these things are going away. So this is the big why for inclusion now. It's fixing what is preventing societies from staying or becoming healthy and prosperous. Of course, businesses can't function in a society that's failing, but addressing the issues that we now face together, like climate change, like systemic discrimination, and finding the new words and metrics that can help leaders make better choices going forward, and ways for employees, customers, communities, and other stakeholders to hold them accountable is the work.
Ellen McGirt: And in large part, because it's also the right thing to do. If Fortune 500 were a country, they'd be the 14th largest in Europe, the 15th largest in Africa. That's a lot of people to be working on this at the same time. And over the last four years, I've seen real progress from them on how to make the workplace more welcoming and sharing what they know, which is really important and making numbers transparent, which is really important, massively amplified by the fierce urgency of now. So you can call me cautiously, cautiously, cautiously optimistic. So I want to end with some things to think about. I want to build on less is beautiful phrase, diversity inclusion, invited to the dance party and being asked to dance. What I know that PROS is doing and what I know that so many people are doing is making that dance real.
Ellen McGirt: It is having a vote in the selection of the venue. It's a budget to choose the refreshments. It's having a say in the playlist, inclusion as a chance to lead the team that designs the flow and chooses the guest list. You see where I'm going with this? You see where PROS is going with this. Our job as anti-racist is to yes, notice who's not in the room, ask why, understand the barriers, remove them as best you can, and then help people, all people, shine. So I'll end now with gratitude, great gratitude for your kind attention and a simple wish for all of you, for inspiration to move you brightly on your journey and a happy caution. If there isn't love in the dream, it will never come true. Thank you all so very much.
Les Rechan: Thanks so much, Ellen, on there's so much in what you had to say so much learning. I love the data under the data, and this is an ongoing journey on all the dimensions you talked about. In terms of looking at the metrics, doing the work, doing the education. We're so fortunate at PROS to have our leader, Andra Schreiner, who's leading the charge. I learn from him every day, whether it's the education we're providing our teams, the engagement people have PROS talk about what's different about Pros. It's not just talking it, it's walking it, and engaging it. That's such an important piece of this. And it's almost having a beginner's mindset. Because I know I've lived in and worked. I've had the good fortune of living and working all over the world. As you know, we've lived in Europe, we lived in Asia Pac.
Les Rechan: Our kids were born in Singapore. We've seen all these different environments. And this was something that I took for granted. When I came out of college, we went to a school that did promote diversity. My first manager was a black executive. I learned so much from him. I've had the blessing of working with so many leaders that are diverse. And, but this is something that, as you say, I mean, these numbers speak for themselves, and we need to give people the opportunity to grow. We need to help them grow, give them the opportunities. Think through who's not in the room, all the great advice you've given us. So one of the things as we look at this, the situation right here right now is, we seem to be in a moment of national, if not global reckoning on race. And I can feel that I can feel that from my kids. I can feel that from everybody I work with. And the question is, do you think this is real?
Ellen McGirt: Yeah. That is really a great question. I want to acknowledge you sharing your journey too. You have always been a philosopher king, and you've always been incredibly open and generous. And I see that. I've seen that in your career path. And I see that in the work that you're doing now, and I'm so proud to know you, and I appreciate you very much. And I'm here to tell you it's real. And I wasn't sure. I'm looking two or three weeks after the George Floyd protests really began in earnest and started to spread around the world. And while I'm doing my job, I'm, I'm part of an initiative, an organization in Fortune called The CEO Initiative. And it was CEOs coming to get, like Andre is, globally focused, sophisticated, courageous, open, sharing best practices, talking about where their numbers weren't where they wanted to be, what recommendations they want to make to the broader world.
Ellen McGirt: And moving beyond the business case for diversity, and really thinking about what this meant for the world to have prosperous societies, what it really meant to the world to have a potential workforce that was working on things that we all needed to be thinking about together.
Ellen McGirt: And it is real. So I've seen resources being deployed, not just to external organizations that can help social causes, but internally to the kinds of initiatives that will make a difference. Listening, data gathering, task forces, CEOs sitting on these taskforces, and finding the people I always like to call them the people that have a little piece of the puzzle that help make the big picture come to life. That have already been doing this work. And that's often people from marginalized groups, under represented employees, black and brown, who are collecting the data and the anecdotes, understanding where there have been problems in the talent pipeline, specifically to the company, specifically to how they do their work, and funding that work.
Ellen McGirt: That's what I'm seeing happen over and over and over again. And this indicates to me that these are seeds that are being planted large and small, collectively and separately that will begin to grow a series of solutions, ideas, and an orientation that has a shot at permanent change. And I'm excited to have lived long enough to be part of it because you know, these conversations have not been easy to have, and particularly in the media.
Les Rechan: Yeah, and that does... You mentioned the establishing the race beat way back in 2016 in the article that you wrote and a question that I had around that just that's not that long ago, but it seems like a long time ago in terms of just the awareness that's out there. What was it like back in those early days? And how did you shape your coverage?
Ellen McGirt: It does, it seems like a lifetime ago now, and I was not optimistic. I thought it like a fluke or a lark or someone was temporarily interested in this conversation, and it would just sort of fritter away. And I was expecting to mostly say things like how not to be a racist jerk on Halloween, or here's some great tips from this outlier, wonderful chief diversity officer. And here's some diversity numbers that are not that exciting, but here we are. And instead people were taking to the streets, police shootings, Philando Castile, it was just like one after another. I was not prepared to have an opportunity to be free to talk about these things that weigh so heavily on people. You don't shed your identity when you walk into work. You come in, you sit down, you have your meetings, and you're worried about your kid driving to school, being pulled over by police.
Ellen McGirt: Your heart is heavy because you've seen this video out on social media. And I've seen them all too. There was nothing in my career that prepared me for that level of processing trauma, but by doing it, by doing it together, I was able to open up a conversation, that was so unique and so special because it was true. It was about people's true experience. In addition to a police shootings, we're having a terrible conversation about immigration and people, kids in cages at the border. We're talking about a wall. It's changing the experience that our people having in their own country and their own workforce. And I was able to talk about it all, and hopefully give people the tools to talk about it with each other. And I'm overwhelmed by the, we have subscribers at every level, from the C-suite to entry level, to students, to academicians, to people who work from home.
Ellen McGirt: It's just an amazing group of people to have a conversation with. And I love it when I hear from them. And I love it when they tell me what's happening for them. And I love it when I say to them, "I will find the expert you need, I will write about it, share the newsletter with the person you're trying to influence. Tell them Fortune is on it. We think this is important." And try to make work happen that way. And you and I are, we are doing it. We were in the thick of the middle of our big lives, Les. And there isn't always an opportunity to feel like you have a fresh moment and a fresh platform to say and do something new, particularly in journalism. And this has really been it for me. And it feels like such a privilege to be able to join the conversation at this critical time and such an intimate way.
Les Rechan: I feel the same way. I feel like this is the first day we went to college. I mean this is an unbelievable opportunity to make a difference and engage. And that was in closing, I just want to do ask you about, I've seen over the last week or so a new platform for people to connect. And we're always looking to, I view businesses kind of a two-sided coin. On one side, you've got the outcomes and you've talked about it, just whether it's outperforming driving revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction. That's great. That's one side of the coin, but the other side, and more importantly, is the growth of your people, and helping them grow and be successful and really be their best selves. And so I wanted to ask you about Fortune Connect, because it looked like a really cool pivot in terms of what you've done at Fortune and at just creating a community. Can you tell us about that as we wrap up?
Ellen McGirt: Thank you so much for asking about that. I'm really proud of this. We have launched a new executive community called Fortune Connect. It's for mid career professionals, probably a little younger than you and me, Les, but right smack in the middle of their trajectories, figuring out what's next in their leadership path and who are hungry for the information about how the world has changed. Because it has changed since March. If you're not working for a purpose-driven company, you are behind. If you're not working for a company that's thinking more deeply about what it means to have, and serve, and understand stakeholders, you're falling behind. And if you are not working for a company or with people who are having really smart conversations about diversity and inclusion through an anti-racist lens, inside the company and outside in the world, then you are falling behind.
Ellen McGirt: And so we've created the community around this cohort with three foundational principles, and a lot of journalism, a lot of information and resources specifically around what it means to work in a purpose driven world, what it means to understand stakeholders and anti-racist diversity inclusion. But mostly they're going to get to meet each other. I think it's partly an always on conference and party. Partly, it's an always on media lab, and digital library, but it's the connections that I'm most interested in, particularly after the months of the pandemic goes on. As I like to say, I think that the solutions are in the hearts, and minds, and experiences of people who each hold a little bit of a piece of the puzzle that can make your idea better, or the world better, whatever that is.
Ellen McGirt: So we're hoping to bring them together. Yes, there'll be lots of executives, Fortune's good at convening CEOs and executives to tell us how the world works and sometimes to tell us what they're up to, and hold them accountable. But you can expect activists, and artists, and documentary film makers and researchers, and just people who are really working on these big issues and can help us understand. And mostly just have the novelty and the excitement of engaging with people who may be different from you from a variety of reasons, from identity and industry. Because that's where good ideas come from. That's where competence comes from. That's where fluency comes from and that's where inspiration comes from. And I'm hoping we can provide that for people now.
Les Rechan: Yeah. That's network minds. I really am so impressed, the agility that you've shown that Fortune has shown in creating this connection is so awesome. How do we find out more about this? I just want to make sure that all the participants here can take advantage of this opportunity if they so choose.
Ellen McGirt: Well I'm easy to find on social media, but if you head to Fortune.com/connect, it will take you to a very cool landing page with all this information. And I'm just, fair warning, you will see a video of me sort of shot socially distant in my garage on a hundred degree day. So I'm a little sweaty, but my heart's in the right place. And we can break it all down for you there.
Les Rechan: That's great. It's all about the journey and thank you so much for everything you've shared today, Ellen, it's so great to see. I'm so proud of everything you've done over the past several years, and I'm also proud of everyone who's been part of this Outperform conference the last few days. And as I close here, I just wanted to take a moment as we close Outperform 2020 to thank all of you for your participation. We have thousands of customers and partners and prospects and all 1,300 PROS that have participated. Thank you so much for everything you have done the past couple of days. What a diversity of sessions. We had close to 5 trillion dollars of revenue represented with all the customers. 90 different countries, 62 different sessions whether it was demos, roadmaps, vision from analysts, best practice sharing, it’s just been awesome. And I would just encourage you all to take advantage of that diversity of content as we go forward. And I just, on behalf of the entire PROS team, I did want to ask one special thing as we close, when we think about your journey of diversity and where you’re taking this. When we think about your digital first journey we talk about it in terms of digital selling maturity and we know that you want to accelerate and outperform, we know that you want to listen to your customers, personalize and engage them. And one of the things we have created is this digital selling maturity model and you can see here it's kind of stair stepped or you can quantum leap from traditional mode to guided selling to omnichannel optimized. And the offer that I’m making is that we can either have one on one dialogues with you with our account teams, or we can have executive briefings with you, or bring Outperform to you on a custom basis. So here’s where we just want to work together and make sure that we are doing everything we can to help you accelerate and outperform and deliver omnichannel optimized over time. So this is a model we’ve just created, we’re very excited about it, and we’d love to work with you on your digital first transformation. And then finally as it relates to the diversity topic, I would encourage you to share in chat as I know Elaine did earlier, any thoughts that you have. But we’ve been doing this for a long time, we’ve been in business for three and a half decades, we recognize that diversity and inclusion is really more of a marathon than it is a sprint. There is no quick fix. We want to encourage allyship, we want everyone to engage in the dialogue and learn together and in that spirit one of the things that we’d like to do, or if you’re open to it, or if you’d like to Nikki Brewer, our Chief People Officer, she and her team would love to have a peer and learning discussion with you on this topic of diversity and inclusion. We want to keep it fresh. We want to keep learning together, and keep participating on this journey together because we know for sure that diversity and inclusion wins. And really asking those hard questions of who’s in the room and asking the questions about why is something we all need to do. So, in closing, hope you’ve had a great Outperform 2020. All this content’s available. We’re so excited about your digital selling journeys, we’re so excited about helping you accelerate and outperform. And thank you so much for your participation on this diversity topic which is so important and we want to continue that ongoing dialogue. So with that, I’d like to close and thank you once again. Peace. Take care.