A Conscious CEO Among a Growing Group of Women Business Leaders

Vermont is dear to Screwnomics’ heart because of its “good neighbors with good fences” policies, and also because we call this beautiful Green Mountain State home. Women entrepreneurs, women legislators, and women “thought leaders” thrive here—and nowhere else do so many business people care about a larger picture than their dollar-profit “bottom line.” The biggest chapter of Businesses for Social Responsibility in the country, Vermont BSR, is here: https://vbsr.org/

This month, the CEO of Green Mountain Power, Mary Powell, a rare entity in herself in the energy industry, made #12 of a list of Thirty World Changing Women in Conscious Business, 2018. As background, a Catalyst study, in Nov. 2016, found that there are fewer women in the energy field than there are women in tech. http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-energy

If you look at Mary Powell’s direction, predating the time of Trump, you may see why her touchy-feely management has brought her success. Says Rachel Zurer, the editor of Conscious Company Media:

““Is it just a coincidence that the first electric utility to become a B Corp is also one of the few led by a woman? We don’t know, but since she took the helm at Green Mountain Power (GMP) in 2008, Powell has continued to break barriers and shake up assumptions about what a utility can be — going as far as to call the business an “un-utility.

In one example of her obsessive focus on knowing customers, she moved the company HQ from a steel-and-glass fortress into a building shared with line-workers — in other words, the ones who meet customers every day. Under her leadership, GMP also became the first utility to partner with Tesla on Powerwall home energy solutions, and the first to offer a battery/solar off-grid package to its customers. Her focus on “leading with love” seems to be working: in a survey required by Vermont regulators in 2016, GMP received a 94 percent customer service satisfaction score and a 96 percent on providing reliable electric service.””

Powell advises other corporate leaders to “Be bold. Don’t think of yourself — think about the impact you can have. Make the mission larger than yourself.” How does she do that? What gives her hope? She said, “Love. I have long believed in the power of love: the power it holds to transform lives, the power it holds to transform companies, the power it holds to solve problems and to innovate a future that is better than our present or past.”

It’s EroNomics, the invisible passion, the renewable fuel for an economy we talk about in Screwnomics!

If you’re looking for more hope, you can access the whole list of 30 transformative business leaders, investors, and “conscious capitalists” here. This looks like a great media site. https://consciouscompanymedia.com/sustainable-business/30-world-changing-women-conscious-business-2018/

You’ll find among these another woman hero many Vermonters have shaken hands with:  the amazing Judy Wicks, who founded the White Dog Café with its local-sourced excellent food, who also founded a woman-friendly Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). https://bealocalist.org/

Big Gifts and Little Tokens

The day BEFORE the tax bill was completed by a Republican Congress, Wells Fargo’s CEO Tim Sloan told CNN Money their expected tax windfall would go to increased dividends for  shareholders and stock buybacks http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/18/news/economy/wells-fargo-taxes/index.html. But by the next day, while Republicans’ delivered fawning kudoes to the “exquisite” leadership of you-know-who, Wells Fargo (and other huge companies like AT&T, Comcast and Boeing) were promising bonuses and raises for workers, thanks to the wondrous tax reform. http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/20/news/companies/wells-fargo-bonuses-tax-cuts/index.html

We’d love to believe Wells Fargo’s CEO had misspoken, 'cause it sure did look greedy just before Christmas. Perhaps when the board saw CNN’s story and what their CEO said, they shouted NO! Be generous! Give our people bread! But more likely, given scandals and falling stock prices, raising their minimum wage to $15 is a public relations strategy. About 25,000 employees will be affected, getting a raise of $1.50 an hour, or $3,120 a year, assuming 40 hours/week. That's better than a sharp stick in the eye.

But consider that back in 2014, Tyrel Oats, a Wells Fargo customer service employee who earned $15/hour wrote to their then-CEO, John Stumpf. His letter pointed out the bank’s net income in its second quarter alone had been $5.7 billion. Oats suggested the bank improve its image by giving a $10,000 per year raise to ALL its employees, or an hourly raise of $4.71 per hour. He copied his letter  to 200,000 workers because unions aren’t allowed at the bank. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/09/wells-fargo-email_n_5960072.html

That same year WF’s then-CEO John Stumpf had pulled in $19 million for his one-man job, 473 times more than their median employee, nevermind the low life minimum. That same year Citizens for Tax Justice reported that Wells-Fargo had received federal tax subsidies from us taxpayers worth $21.6 billion over the previous 5 years. And Stumpf's piss-poor job performance ultimately cost the bank in legal fines, plus earned him a public shellacking by US Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congressional threats of shutting the bank down in 2016.

Sloan replaced Stumpf, but Wells Fargo's legal problems from cheating people—ranging from overcharging for insurance, overdraft fees, appraisals, and their actively targeting African Americans and Latinos for overpriced mortgages—has added up. In 2012 they paid out $6.5 million in fines for SEC charges of failing to disclose risks of securities they sold; in 2013 they paid $203 million to settle a suit with 24,000 Florida homeowners, and faced new alleged violations of an earlier agreement with 49 states attorneys. In 2015, they paid out $4 million for credit card violations, and in 2016, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a combined total of $185 million in fines for their 1.5 million notorious fake accounts and 500,000 unauthorized credit cards. Forbes Magazine reported that in 2017 alone, Wells Fargo’s legal troubles had cost them $1 billion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/10/13/legal-troubles-hit-wells-fargo-third-quarter-earnings/#107268a9358e

Wells-Fargo’s promise of raises for its lowest-paid, if kept, might cost them as much as $78 million, still a far cry from Oats’ suggested $3 billion in raises, and a tiny trickle from the gushing billions in that bank’s  polluted revenue stream—reported in 2016 at $88.3 billion. As CEO Tim Sloan (paid $12.8 million last year) told CNN Money on Dec. 20: Yes, the bank has “excess capital.” With this "Christmas gift" tax reform, they’ll soon have billions more.