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What can a global, multi-source dataset tell us about where AI is headed, and who’s steering the ship? Russell Wald, Executive Director at Stanford HAI, breaks down key insights from the AI Index, the world’s most comprehensive report on AI’s progress and impact. In this fast-paced session, he highlights surprising shifts in talent, investment, and regulation—and makes the case for keeping AI innovation rooted in human values and societal good.

AI By The Numbers—And For The People

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So our next speaker takes us inside the AI index. This is one of the most comprehensive data sets tracking the field's rapid evolution. The AAI index reports on global trends, technical progress, investments, policies, and impacts. To tell us more about where AI is headed, please welcome Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence executive Director Russell Walt. Russell. Good afternoon and thank you everyone. I'm Russell Wald, the executive director of the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, or what we also call as HAI. We are Stanford University's globally recognized interdisciplinary Research Institute at the forefront of shaping AI development for the public good. HAI was established in 2019 with the goal of advancing AI research, education, policy and practice. And through our role. through our convening role and rigorous study of AI, we have become the trusted partner on AI governance for decision makers in industry, government, and civil society. And today I'm going to talk about what we produce at HAI, which is the AI index, and then which is an annual data-driven analysis of trends in AI and tracks research, development, deployment, and the socioeconomic impact of AI across academia, government, and industry. The index has gained worldwide recognition as the authoritative report on the state of AI. And for the next few minutes, I will highlight a few standout segments of the 2025 report, and I say it's a few segments of the report because it's over 500 pages, and these are just some quick hot takes from it. First up, we see AI performance consistently seems to improve year over year. An example of this is in this slide where we use mid journey, a text image generator with a query of a hyperrealistic image of Harry Potter. And from February of 2022 to July of 2024, we see rapidly increasing quality in these generated images. The progression demonstrates the significant improvement in Midd Journey's ability to generate hyperrealistic images over a two year period. In 2022, the model produced cartoonish, inaccurate renderings of Harry Potter, but by 2024, it could create starting, startlingly realistic depictions. And you'll note we have essentially gone from what mirrors a Picasso painting to an uncanny rendering of Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who played Harry Potter in the movies. And because of this consistent performance growth, we are increasingly challenged when it comes to benchmarking these models. As of 2024, there are very few task categories where human ability surpasses AI. And even in these areas, the performance gap between AI and humans is shrinking rapidly. Essentially, from image recognition to competition level mathematics to PhD level science questions, AI is exceeding human capabilities and it's becoming increasingly harder for us to benchmark that. AI is also coming into our everyday lives, and from healthcare to transportation, AI is rapidly moving from the lab into our daily life. In 2023, the US FDA approved 223 AI-enabled medical devices, and that's up from just 6 in 2015. On the roads, self-driving cars are no longer experimental. For example, Waymo, which I regularly take, living in San Francisco, is one of the largest US operators and provides over 150,000 autonomous rides each week. While Baidu's affordable Apollo Go Robo Taxi has a fleet now that serves numerous cities across China. Business use of AI increased significantly after stagnating from 2017 to 2023. The latest McKinsey report reveals that 78% of surveyed respondents say their organizations have begun to use AI in at least one business function, marking a significant increase from 55% in 2023. Driven by increasingly capable small models, the inference cost for systems for a system performing at the level of excuse me, the inference cost for a system performing at the level of GT 3.5 dropped over 280-fold between November of 2022 to October of 2024. Hardware costs have declined 30% annually, while energy efficiency has improved by 40% each year. I want to note, this is in reference to inference costs, not training costs, which I'll refer to in just a moment. And I'll also note here too from this, what we see is open weight models are also closing the gap with closed models, reducing the performance from 8% to just 1.7% on some benchmarks in a single year. Together, these trends. are rapidly lowering the barriers, uh, lowering the barriers to advanced AI. However, Even with infra and hardware costs going down, training costs remain out of reach for academia and most small players. Nearly 90% of notable AI models in 2024 came uh came from industry, which is up from 60% in 2023. And while academia remains a top source of highly cited research, it does struggle now at this point to stay as advanced in the game at the frontier level. Model scale continues to grow rapidly. Training compute doubles every 5 months, data sets every 8, and power use annually. Yet performance gaps are shrinking. The score difference between the top and 10th ranked models fell from 11.9% to 5.4% in a year, and the two top, the top two models are now separated by just 0.7%. Pardon me, that was the slide that was in reference to that. So give you all just a moment to see that I I didn't advance it. But the main point that I'm trying to make here is that the frontier is increasingly competitive and increasingly crowded. And In recent years, AI model performance at the frontier has converged with multiple providers now offering highly capable models. This marks a shift from late 2022 when Chat GBT's launch, widely seen as AI's breakthrough into the public consciousness, coincided with the landscape dominated by just two players, and that was OpenAI and Google. While the prior slide noted performance by model, this slide focuses on training cost by model. And what I want you to take away from this slide is one of the most important things is to note that the Transformer model costs $930 for Google to train in 2017, and that is the T and GPT, the baseline level of architecture, and now today we're at $200 million to train Gemini Ultra. Last year's AI index was among the first publications to highlight the lack of standard benchmarks for AI safety and responsibility evaluations, and while companies measure math, coding and language skills, there's no standardized benchmark for any of this. The index has also been analyzing global public opinion, and one point to note here is if you are from a non-Western industrialized nation, you are more likely to view AI positively than not. China has an 83% positive view. Indonesia 80%, and Thailand 77%, whereas Canada is at 40%, the US 39%, and the Netherlands 36%. And I'll close with the geopolitical situation in AI. The US still maintains a lead in AI followed closely by China. However, this gap is tightening. My intention with this slide is not to exacerbate the idea of an AI arms race between China and the US, but instead to highlight the different approaches between the most advanced frontier AI model developers. Over the last several years, the US has. On a few proprietary model providers. Meanwhile, China has deeply invested in its talent base and more importantly in open source environment which has allowed for a thriving base. If I were to as this trend continued and I appeared here next year, at this rate, China would surpass the US in terms of model performance. You can access this year's AI index by following the uh the QR code here. Thank you.

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia Fortune

Brainstorm Design 2024: Designing Memories

Bob Dennis, Senior Director of Creative Studio & Resort Development, Universal Beijing Resort, In conversation with Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia FORTUNE  

So I thought there would be a fireplace. Uh Fortune invited me to a fireside chat. So I thought there would be a fireplace. But we brought is, is how is is wordplay part of your tool kit for memorable experiences. Yeah, it's immersion. Don't you feel cozy? So we're, we're going to get into your thoughts on park design, how to build immersive experiences, how to leverage emotions. But I have to ask, I'm a fervent player of video games. What was it like for Universal to work with Nintendo? Oh Amazing. First of all, Miyamoto. So is a genius and uh it's a learning curve for both of us. Uh because in the world of video games, it's digital and our world is physical with steel and concrete. Um So it's a learning curve on both sides but an amazing partnership. So, so as mentioned, you know, you've worked in this space for over 30 years. I believe your first gig was working for a San Rio theme park back in 1988. How has theme park design changed over the decades? Well, I'm old. So um when we were designing theme parks back in the eighties we didn't have any computers, we didn't have computer assisted design. It was all done with a pencil and then ink and then of course you pulled your prints. Um But everything was exhibition then and the industry has changed so much that now it's immersion. Um And we're getting better and better at that, but we've been doing immersion since before the term was even coined. So, I mean, let's split at that. I mean, given your long experience kind of working with immersive experiences, you know, before, was a buzzword that people used. You know, how do you actually create such an immersive memorable experience? What's your toolkit? And I believe we have some slides, maybe even some audience engagement a little bit as we go through this. So I think the table stakes because of where we are, it's a good reference. The table stakes are excellent storytelling and of course, um you'll hear this often today. Um visual stimulation, sensory input. So you need a, you need a beautiful picture, but you also need a logical story that the guests can connect to and find their place in what it is that you're trying to present. So that's cable stakes and where you have to go further is you have to, you want people to connect to the story you have and most people forget about emotion. So every memorable experience can be done by senses here in Macau, you get a sense of awe, a sense of grandeur. But what's missing to make it an episodal autobiographical memory is emotion. So the best connection is always made through emotions and often people confuse feelings with emotions. So there's a million colors and everything that we do happens here, it happens inside the brain, regardless of how good your design is or how grand your experience is, all of it has to be encoded so that we have an experience without the memory. What's the point? Right? So most people don't realize that with three colors, you can make a million, a million different colors with eight basic emotions. You can also make a million different feelings. And it's very important to understand the difference between emotions and feelings. OK? Can you guys guess what this emotion is? We don't need mics, you can just yell it out just fine play along, right? So this is obviously joy. I created these images um to trick you in a minute. Um But yeah, these are facial expressions uh that evoke that particular chemistry happening in your limbic system. So you understand joy, the opposite of joy. Of course, the next one, sadness, right? And after sadness, I'll, I'll see if you can guess this one. This is the trick. Most of you are thinking love, however, love is not an emotion. Love is a feeling that is a combination of several emotions. It could be joy, sadness, disgust, right? And um these all come together in a symphony inside our brain that we equate with the feeling of love. So it's trust, trust is the emotion. This one is a good one discussed, right? This is baked into our limbic system for your survival. Um And so memories that are formed along with this emotion are deeply encoded anger when we have a perceived wrong. Um These also are strongly recorded, not as moments but as experiences. So they're, they're like little videos instead of a snapshot. If somebody makes you afraid, you will retell this experience over and over again in great detail. OK? Anybody anger, right? Same process. So every oh they made me so mad and then they'll tell you every little detail because it's been recorded as an autobiographical memory. It was, it was an experience. OK? This one, this one, Alfred Hitchcock was a master at this. We use it often too um anticipation. And then finally, uh this is where you take your redirect. So if you use the emotion of anticipation, the brain starts creating all kinds of scenarios on its own and it engages deeply in the frontal cortex. And what this does is creates more engagement and people are doing their own self reflection. And then of course, you do the redirect, you take them into a way that they did not expect the outcome to be and we get surprised. So we have these eight emotions then how are you kind of putting them all together? And leverage them into a memorable experience. I mean, some of these emotions make sense for a theme park setting, joy, surprise anticipation, even fear, some feel a little bit, you know, maybe not quite as easy to put into an entertainment setting like discussed. So how are you leveraging all of these emotions together to kind of tell a story in the real world? It's a good point. So you don't want to manipulate people and you don't want to use uh emotions as trickery. So it has to be authentic. And so I think most designers forget about engineering those emotions in putting together a recipe or a symphony that causes crescendos and date crescendos. And that, that working together engages the person into a story and they, they're all useful, but some, we use more than others, obviously joy. Um There's a great one, anticipation. We try to stay away from fear and disgust, but they're used, we, we do use them. Um I want you to dive a bit deeper about kind of adapting these ideas, you know, a lot of universal zone properties, the properties of your partners like Warner for Harry Potter or Nintendo. These are things that exist on the page or on the screen. They don't exist in the real world. You know, as much as some of us would love magic to exist in the real world. It, it it doesn't. But how do you take these things that only exist? You know, in fiction basically and make them work as a real world experience. So this is why I'm losing my hair. Um So our, our creatives um Miyamoto Song JK Rowling, um They're amazing at creating worlds in print or production designers like Stuart Craig for film and they can pretty much create anything that they can imagine. So our job is to take that world and those stories and connect our guests to those characters. But we have to do it with steel and concrete building codes, safety requirements, throughput, operability. Um Basically, we shouldn't do anything because it's almost impossible. And yet we have many parts around the world that do just that. So um it, it's very difficult to, to translate, but we're very fortunate because we work with our IP partners and the films are there, we only get three or four minutes to, to kind of get people through that experience. Um And so we do a lot of callbacks, a lot of bringing up things that they saw or remembered in the film. And we have to do that in a way they can touch it. So a gag has to work every time, every day for years, not just to catch it, capture it on film. So I would say we use all the sciences um and all the arts and that our attractions are some of the most sophisticated machines there are. And I think that when you go to a theme Park. We don't want you to know that we try to keep that secret, but it's a fact. Um I want to stick on this film point for a second and how it connects particularly to one memory I have of going to Universal Studios, Japan when I was a very small child. I still remember seeing the Water World Exhibit for those who don't know. Water World is a 1995 film starring Kevin Costner. Um I'll say reactions to the film were mixed and being charitable. Um But I dare say the attraction is more, is, is, is more famous than the film at this point. Um It's in, it's in many of um universal parks. Um And so kind of why do you think this attraction in particular is so popular? And how does it fit in your philosophy for immersion and experience? We actually have some video that you can have talked for a bit first. It's a very good example. So the film mixed reviews on the film II, I don't think it was a blockbuster. Um But we were able to take uh from that film and use the emotions that are created by it and do a stunt spectacular. So not only was it visual, which is great and great sound and great lighting and great special effects, but everything is real. We don't use projections, there's real flames, we set the entire lagoon on fire and you will feel the heat from that and you will get wet. Um But in the story itself, we also engage many of the emotions, you may be angry at the villain. Um You feel some joy. So I think that the theme park experience in this example um has outlived the film and we're gonna show a little bit of it what actually happens on screen. Um So I want to talk about kind of another stakeholder in this discussion. We've talked about designers universal, we've talked about it partners, but there's also the fans um these are worlds with uh I'm going to call them very devoted fan bases, very passionate fan bases. That's true of Harry Potter. It's true of Nintendo, it's true of your um your peers at Disney, you have to work in Star Wars. Fans are passionate, they are also a little nuts. Um And so how do you kind of design these experiences in a way to kind of give fans what they want to make it memorable for them, but also managing expectations and managing it for those who maybe haven't read every single book a dozen times. So I think as designers, we often get caught up in our own story and um we, we wanna engage our visitors to remember what they want to experience. So at Universal, we really believe our guests are co creators. We engage often and constantly with those, not just the deep fans, but with uh the people that may not be deep fans, it's very important to get that feedback so that you're telling the story that they can get, that you're telling the story that they want to experience and that you don't get too stuck in what you want. Um So it has to be more objective, a little less subjective and constantly engaging with the feedback from the fans and we love hearing from them. Um And you're right, some of them are a little crazy, but we love that kind of crazy. Um You know, just kind of, it's gonna bring a kind of more examples of rides we've worked on. I mean, what's maybe another one of these exciting rides that you've worked on that really kind of shows your philosophy on, on designing immersive and memorable experiences. So the the awards are, are Industry's Oscars and we received it last year for Jurassic World Adventure. You all have to come to Beijing. That's the only place that attraction exists right now and that I believe really checks all the boxes on visual stimulation, um experiential design, but more importantly, emotion. So I remember when we opened, uh there was a 12 year old boy that was a guest of a friend of mine. And after going on that attraction, he asked me quite seriously, uh what do we feed our dinosaurs, right? So, so that type of sense, the suspension of disbelief um can only be found in, in, in the major players in this and that was why that is my favorite. I'm going to have to find an excuse to go find a story to write about it and then get work to expense it. Um But thank you Bob for, for walking us through the toolkit on how you build immersive experiences at universal. We're going to take a short break right now. Please help yourself to coffee, which will be served right outside the ballroom. Don't forget to pick up a copy of Gensler's design forecast 2025 report available at the desk on a first come first serve basis. So grab your copy. Now we'll meet back here for our next conversation promptly at 1045. When we come back, we'll hear from two of Silicon Valley's leading industrial designers and a panel of accomplished design leaders on customer experience. We'll see you back here soon.

Leslie Motter, Chief Executive Officer, Make-A-Wish America
Jessica Orkin, Chief Executive Officer, SYPartners
Moderator: Lila MacLellan, Senior Writer, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune COO Summit

COO Summit 2024: Closing The Say-Do Gap - Executing On Purpose

Um I have to say as a journalist, I have mixed feelings about this topic because this is our bread and butter finding the places where companies are not doing the thing that they say they're all about, right? They have a lofty purpose, but that's not what they're executing on. But I know this is a problem. We need to learn how to close it. So I just wonder if you can talk to me, Jessica a little bit about the, the say do gaps that you've seen out there in the wild when you with your clients and how they come about? Sure. Um So at the highest level, every single company in here, all of your leaders, all of you, you have a purpose, probably a purpose statement. Um You probably have cascaded that then into what is your strategy? What are your key priorities, etcetera. Um This is the work that Xy partners does uh with our clients all around the world. The heartbreak and the um disappearance of trust happens when that does not translate into the lived experience of all of your employees, of your customers. And so it's one thing to go out and say in big beautiful language. Um the change that you're seeking to create in the world, the impact that you're seeking to deliver. Um But if the day to day realities don't express that um you lose credibility and this is an economy that is run on trust and the weakening and erosion of trust is affecting all of our businesses for profit and not for profit. Uh And we work with both the how of connecting those two things is something that we can get into through this conversation. Great. Thank you. Um And Leslie, I know that you are in the nonprofit world right now, but you had for profit experience, especially at American Express. What in this room full of coo s what advice do you have from a company that's all about executing on purpose? What can they take away from the nonprofit world? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the purpose at where I am now make a wish is very clear. We are creating a life changing wishes for Children with critical illness that is very clear purpose and one that so many rally around whether it's our own employees, our partners, et cetera. And it is so critical. I think that the beauty is though we have the same capability, whether we're with a for profit or a nonprofit. As you mentioned, I spent 11 years with American Express previous to this role with make a wish and we absolutely had just as strong of a purpose about being the world's most respected service provider or service brand. And as part of that, we've tried to make sure that resonated with our employees. And that's really the key, whether it's for profit or nonprofit is having that employee engagement aspect of the brand. So I ran the largest service center at American Express at the time, we had about 3500 employees and it was making sure that every single employee felt that every day they came to work. It was about providing exceptional customer service, not just answering the phone. Great. Thank you. Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about like how the gap actually erupts if you've ever if you have a way of pinpointing that and if you have any examples from your own companies about gaps that you discovered and how you managed it sometimes strategy gets well ahead of the operational realities. So I think we've been talking about actually in some previous sessions about you're really working on two time scales, you're working in the far future in the transformation that you're trying to drive through your company. But then you're working the absolute day to day and the day to day is built on legacy systems. And so no matter how fast and how agile our companies can be, there is going to be a gap between those two. Um A lot of times, front line workers, baristas we've worked with Starbucks, um starting with Howard in 2008. Um, through to the present, you can have a disconnect between what the company both stands for its values, the strategy of where it's going. It's very bold vision and then actually being able to innovate and update the operational systems, the processes, the ways of working that cascade through the whole organization and touch both your front line employees and then your customers. Right? Ok. Yeah, it's interesting, you mentioned Starbucks because recently they hired a CEO who's going to commute by jet, not every day, but people are pretty upset about that because Starbucks is also talking about part of its purpose being green, right? Um In the audience, please, um be thinking about any questions you might have for our panelists. I'll come back to you in just a few minutes. Um Have you found any examples that make a witch where you had, you discovered a gap in your purpose and what, how you were executing and what have you done to really drive home purpose for your employees? I think, um we also have a very bold vision to reach every eligible child, which we're not doing currently. So in order to do that, I think one of the things that we've been really focused on the last few years is making sure we have engaged employees because it's so important to where we're going. And one of the I guess gaps, um I would say is that our internal culture did not match the power of our brand externally. I mean, you talk to anyone about make a wish and you get the, oh my gosh. And you get the, it's, it's about community and support and lifting each other up, etcetera. And so we've been very intentional the last couple of years about making sure our internal culture is raised to really match the power of our brand externally. And if we get there, we're gonna be unstoppable, having every employee feel that way about coming to work every day. And it's important, I mean, I hire technology folks, finance folks operations. So it's not necessarily, I mean, it's, it's a competitive skill set, whether they could go somewhere else and make more money. So making sure that they have that power of being connected to the ultimate mission of the organization. And then they feel that every day is so important. Do they have an opportunity to meet some of the, the people, the Children or the parents who are? That's a great question and that, and that's one of the things that we found. So, you know, as we have people working in it behind the scenes, they could feel very disconnected from the mission. And that is um one of the things I talk about about bringing the power of the brand externally internally is exactly that. So we now have things like mission moments where we start meetings with an actual make a wish that has occurred. So regardless of where you are in the organization, wherever you're sitting, because we're also remote as well. You feel connected to ultimately what your position is and how it's so impactful in the world. Great. Um Those, yeah, that sounds lovely. Actually, I wish we could have mission moments right here. Um Is there anybody in the audience who would like to ask a question? You can raise your hand and yes in the back, sir. Good morning. My name is Martin Vanneman. I'm joining you from New York City. Question to three of you and everybody. How are you on tiktok? Sorry, on Tik Tok. How are your thoughts on Tik Tok? Uh Interesting. Now, do you use Tik Tok as part of your strategy, either with your employees or with your customers? Not with our employees? And really for us, uh the Tik Tok is much more organic as Children are having wishes or waiting for wishes, etcetera where uh we really utilize both Insta and um and other channels much more from that perspective. But we're out there, we're pretty much everywhere with the reach that we have and especially with our demo demographic. We serve Children ages 2.5 to 18 and they are all over it. And then you think about the 20,000 volunteers we have across the US and all of the employees, et cetera. It's happening organically, but Insta is really where we're targeting more with our corporate partners like a Disney fanatics, et cetera. We don't, we're a very quiet brand, uh very quiet company. We work with many people and companies in this room, but you might not know it. Um because what we do is so kind of precious and needs to be quiet in terms of the transformation that we're doing. If what you're talking about is sometimes what's under that question is sometimes a disconnect um between what a company stands for and how it's showing up in the world. Um There also needs to be some communication with your employees about where and why there might be disconnect. So it's actually something to lean into versus to pretend it's not going on. Um Rena Moskowitz, who is the coo and CMO of Etsy and she speaks a lot about this. Um She was telling me that the combination of those two things, both being the chief operating officer, but then really being responsible for the communications. Um And the marketing of the organization is a shift she's seeing uh generally with the CEO role you're becoming in many ways, one of the primary ambassadors champions and communicators, um which is maybe a shift from the deep, deep technical expertise uh that was driving the coo role in the past. So, so interesting because I know there was a study out of Paris that found executives are, you know, have no problem sort of describing what a company's purpose is, but as you went lower and, you know, down into the ranks of the company, it was much harder, like 60% of employees can't explain what a company's purpose is, which is way too low. So, um I imagine also that during a time of crisis, it would be very easy for a coo to drop purpose or to not keep their eye on that aspect of a job of the job. How do you maintain it? Um when there's a lot of financial pressure. So I actually was the coo of make a wish prior to moving into the CEO position. And I held that role during quite a few um the pandemic being one of them, uh quite a few of, of um those crisis if you will. And I think it's actually more important than, than ever to make sure that you're making that link for all of your employees. Um We had to actually have some pretty major transformation during that time. Uh Previously, we had a couple of volunteers that went into the home of each child and helped discover their wish, et cetera. We really had to transform overnight because we were not able to do that anymore. And we still wanted to find creative ways to deliver these life changing wishes to Children when they it most. And so that really took the engagement of all of our stakeholders to think creatively about what we could do. So if we weren't really tying into the overall purpose, it would have been, it would have been a completely different, I think, experience. But we were able to transform both the way that we delivered wishes, virtually, wish discovery et cetera as well as the way. Um you know, many of our stars interacted with Children since they weren't having concerts, they could do video wishes, et cetera. So that transformation during that time and of crisis only beca came because we were tying back to the purpose and how do we still maintain what we're doing and what's so important to do during this time? That's great. One of those silver lining stories in the pandemic. Um And how do you track whether or not a gap is opening or whether or not you've maintained that closure between the say do gap. Um Jessica. Sure. So one of the things we do a lot of is um actually looking at the incentive systems of your organizations. Um So again, how do you tie the big picture purpose into strategy? Bold moves focus areas and then Kpis or metrics that ladder out from that. But there's a step deeper which is looking at how are your people actually incentivized? Are you valuing through actual performance reviews, career progression, mentorship compensation. Are you valuing in actuality, the things that you say you value up top? Um And again, legacy systems, sometimes you crash into legacy performance systems, operational models, et cetera? That were wired for a different time. And so you have to do the work of actually bringing those into alignment. And then to your point about communicating your purpose, understanding your purpose, identifying some of those really operational changes as an expression of purpose and then how it ties back up. So that might include compensation. Yeah, the company. Yeah. Yeah, we've done our own work on this at Syp. So um our purpose is to unlock collective potential to build more vital futures. The collective potential is really important. Um in your organizations, there's so much potential uh held by teams and larger groups, but it's stuck because of many, many issues, many reasons. We all know it and we crash into them. Um within SYP, we do all of our work by bringing different people together with different disciplines. So we have strategists and analysts and tech people, but we have designers, we have filmmakers, we have people from real anthropologists, right? And so what we were realizing was because the market values different skills and different roles differently. So somebody with an MB A, somebody who has a deep strategy background often gets paid more than, let's say a designer, we had that gap in our organization as well because we were looking out at what the market was telling us that did not align with our own values. And so we did a full compensation philosophy overhaul. We changed how we pay people and how we um communicate our values uh to everybody in the organization, how did people react just quickly? You know, it took a lot of communication because on the one hand, um some people really felt seen for the first time. Um and it was a very practical example um of putting your purpose into action. Um But for other people, because they're so used to how the market rewards you, right? It took a little bit of time to get their head around it. And so again, consistent communications, the drumbeat of why we do what we do is so critical. Thank you so much. This is some great practical tips. It's really lovely to have you both. Thank you and thank you for the question.

Dr. Helen Egger, Co-founder and Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Little Otter  Kristina Saffran, Co-founder and CEO, Equip  Zoe Tait, Vice President, National Student Advisory Committee, Active Minds Solome Tibebu, Founder and CEO, Behavioral Health Tech Moderator: Alexa Mikhail, Fortune

Brainstorm Health 2024: Youth and Mental Health

Dr. Helen Egger,  Little Otter, Kristina Saffran, Equip, Zoe Tait, National Student Advisory Committee, Active Minds Solome Tibebu, Behavioral Health Tech, Alexa Mikhail, Fortune

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