Masters of Leadership: Kay Coles James

Webinar Transcript

Announcer:

All right. Good morning. Thank you for joining the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Consumer Technology Association for our virtual Masters of Leadership series event. Please welcome Greg Baroni, the chairman of NVTC and the CEO of Attain.

Greg Baroni:

Morning. I am delighted to welcome you to our virtual event today. We have an exciting program with Heritage Foundation President, Kay Coles James and Consumer Technology Association President and Chief Executive Officer, Gary Shapiro. As we get underway with our program this morning, I just have a few housekeeping matters to cover. First, everybody has been muted. During the question and answer portion of this session, please use the Q&A button to write down any questions that you have for the speakers. You can find the Q&A button in the middle of the bottom bar of your screen.

Greg Baroni:

The Masters of Leadership series is made possible by our co-producer Consumer Technology Association, and because of the generous financial support we've received from the following sponsors: Our premiere sponsors, CoreSite and SAP. Our support sponsors, American Systems, Amazon Web Services, CGI Federal, CNSI, Cresa, Iridium, Micron Technology, Morgan Stanley, NTT Data, Raymond James & Associates, Transformation Systems, Inc, and Verite Group, Inc. Thank you all for your support. If you'd like to join them as a sponsor, please connect with Yolanda Lee at NVTC today.

Greg Baroni:

We have two more very exciting Masters of Leadership series events planned for this summer. A conversation with Best Buy CEO, Corie Barry on Wednesday, July 29th and then again on Tuesday, August 11th WW International, formerly Weight Watchers, CEO Mindy Grossman will be joining us. To register please visit the website. Now, before we get started, NVTC CEO Emeritus and Strategic Advisor, Bobbie Kilberg would like to say just a few words. Bobbie.

Bobbie Kilberg:

Thank you. Kay, welcome. We have been friends, it's hard to believe for more than 25 years, and I am delighted that you could join us this morning to share your perspective on this exceptionally fluid and upside down world that we all lived in together. Thank you for being with us. We're glad you're here. Okay Gary.

Greg Baroni:

All right. Well, back to- just briefly. Thank you, Bobbie, and now it's my honor to introduce today's moderator, Gary Shapiro. Gary is an NVTC board member and president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Technology Association, the U.S. trade association representing more than 2200 consumer technology companies and which owns and produces CES, Global Stage for Innovation. It is through his New York Times bestselling books, television appearances, and as a columnist whose more than 1000 opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Washington Post.

Greg Baroni:

Gary has helped direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy. A thought leader, Gary, is an influencer on LinkedIn and has more than 300,000 followers. Please join me in welcoming Gary Shapiro.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you. It's my honor to be interviewing today Kay Coles James, the president of The Heritage Foundation, America's premier conservative think tank. Kay has worked at local state and federal levels of government under several administrations, including both Bush administrations and that of Virginia Governor, George Allen. Under President George H. W. Bush, she served as Associate Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and she also served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Gary Shapiro:

She was appointed, then joined the Allen administration as Secretary of Health and Human Resources under that former Virginia governor. In 2001, she moved back into the federal life in Washington and she was appointed as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management by President George W. Bush. There you go, the head of The Heritage Foundation being responsible for the largest employment group in the United States in government. Kay also has substantial experience in the field of education. She was dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach 1996 to '99 and she founded a very important institute, the Gloucester Institute. It's an organization that trains and nurtures college-aged leaders in the African American community.

Gary Shapiro:

She has served and continues to serve on many boards, both profit and not-for-profit and she's received so many numerous honorary degrees and awards that I do not have time to list them all. Let's say there are a lot of very significant ones. She's been a commentator and lecturer. She's appeared on network morning shows and several national news and talk programs. She's also the author of three books, which is fabulous. Firstly award-winning autobiography, Never Forget. It's an amazing book about her life and it's really... it tells a story I want to get into a little bit of it. Also Transforming America: From the Inside Out in 1995. A way of getting things done and a vision for the future, and the book I really should have read, but I have not because I'm scared of what I'll find, what I wish I'd known before I got married. It's a book in 2001 and I'm sure it's exceptional. It's on my reading list. Let's start out. Kay, welcome.

Kay Coles James:

Well, thank you and good morning. Would you allow me a point of personal privilege?

Gary Shapiro:

Sure.

Kay Coles James:

I just wanted to highlight what Bobbie Kilberg said. We have been friends over 25 years and it just occurred to me as she was speaking that with all of what's going on in our country today, those kinds of friendships matter. Bobbie and I may not have agreed on everything, but we agreed on most things and we learned how to work together and it occurred to me that we work together across ideological lines, racial lines and everything else.

Kay Coles James:

I just wanted to take a minute to celebrate our friendship and to say that as those kinds of relationships develop and flourish in our country, we're going to see a lot of the problems that we're facing today solve. I just wanted to give tribute to our friendship and our having worked together for all those many years.

Bobbie Kilberg:

Thank you, Kay.

Gary Shapiro:

That's very kind of you Kay and certainly we're also attributing Bobbie every time because this is her first appearance in semi-retirement, although she's still doing what she's doing a couple of days a week at the NVTC, but she's helped build this organization in a phenomenal way. I know I speak on behalf of all the NVTC members when I thank her, and I thank her also for her friendship. Okay. I have a question for you to start things off. Tiffany Moore and I and Michael Petricone were in your office. It was our last official meeting that we had in Washington, D.C. before the lockdown.

Gary Shapiro:

I want to get a take from you on how things have changed in your thinking since then. Given the recent events of the past few weeks, what would your 20-year-old self be most surprised about today?

Kay Coles James:

Well, I think my 70-year-old self is surprised by what I see today. Things have changed so dramatically in the last year that you don't have to go back that far to be surprised. I don't think any of us could have predicted the seismic changes that have occurred in our culture, that have occurred in our workplaces. I think that one of the reasons the tech community is so important right now is because you all are innovators. You all know how to be flexible and nimble. You know how to adapt quickly to a changing environment and the rest of us are learning how to do that and catching up, but we could not have predicted what would happen to the health and the livelihoods of American citizens.

Kay Coles James:

There are businesses that are not going to reopen, and those that do will be operating in ways that they never could have predicted. I think that some of the things that we're doing to protect health are going to be with us for a long time and we couldn't have predicted that even six months ago. We're going to be wearing masks, social distancing, and washing our hands over and over again for a very long time to come. That's on one side, but we had the not only the COVID-19 thing, but what's going on in our country right now with matters of race. Who knew that the tipping point would be George Floyd and what happened to him and the conversations that are going on in our country now around race and the changes that are happening at a warp speed, by the way.

Kay Coles James:

I think that there's a lot to process that's changed just in one year and I never could have predicted or seen that coming. I am grateful for many of the conversations that are happening now. I have been trying to encourage those conversations within my own party, within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I have been trying to encourage those conversations around race across cultural lines, racial lines. At one level it's a very exciting time to be alive, to watch and witness and be a part of those changes.

Kay Coles James:

COVID-19 makes it a very frightening time. Particularly, as we see individuals and people and companies that are not taking this seriously enough, and we're beginning to see the spikes. There's a lot going on, but I don't have to go back to my 20 year-old-self. I just have to go back one year.

Gary Shapiro:

It's a great response. You've raised a lot of things I want to dig a little bit deeper into, but I want to start out so people understand what you're doing now and what The Heritage Foundation is. What Heritage is. It's America's premier conservative think tank. It's been so influential in so many administrations and with members of Congress, but this is a session about leadership and we're going to be talking about... I'd like to know what you're proud of at Heritage and how Heritage is responding now and we'll talk a little bit about the COVID response soon, and also how you see the changing role of think tanks and I had an association, how that's just changing a result of COVID.

Kay Coles James:

Well, you're absolutely right. Our leadership skills have been tested in ways far beyond what we ever expected at a time like this. I saw my role in coming in as president of The Heritage Foundation to first do the analysis of where the organization was, what were the unique skills and abilities that I brought to that assignment and looking at what I could actually do to assure the stability, the long-term stability of the organization. I spent a lot of my time not just on policy issues, but bringing some good management and leadership and training the next leaders at Heritage.

Kay Coles James:

We do things like coming in and doing the initial assessment, making sure we had a long-term strategic plan, making sure that our budget matched with what we said that plan could and should be, looking at and assessing the leadership ability of the individuals who were there and how to get them the correct mentoring and coaching that they needed to fulfill their leadership roles, making sure that the organization that's turning 50 years old is prepared for the next 50 years.

Kay Coles James:

Looking into the future, and as I tell our leadership team there as leaders, we have to be able to look down the road and around the corner and when the rest of the team catches up with us, we should already have been there and gone. Leaning forward and doing it not just on policy, but what makes it a world class organization and being for our donors and those individuals who put their trust in us, making sure that we are being good stewards of the resources that we've been given and good stewards of the philosophy and ideology that we've been asked to promote.

Kay Coles James:

I decided that part of good leadership was making sure there was that clear direction, and so we put into effect a plan by which every employee at Heritage had the opportunity to speak into what we saw as our guiding principles for this organization and we came up with a document called True North so that everyone knew what is the direction? Where are we headed? Where are we going? What's important for this institution and it was an opportunity for people to say, "I buy into that. I want to be a part of that team, or that's not where I want to be." We've had some shedding as people said, "I don't necessarily want to go there." And that's okay. That's okay.

Kay Coles James:

It's been a fascinating time at Heritage and I'm delighted that we were able to do many of those things before we hit this really, really rough spot for our country. All of that's in place, the budgeting, the strategic plan, the succession planning and looking at our long-term goals and where we need to be as an organization.

Gary Shapiro:

Has anything changed in terms of your strategic plan because of the last few months?

Kay Coles James:

Absolutely. A strategic plan is a living document in my estimation. Most people will tell you that the shelf life of one is probably around three years. Given the pace of the changing environment, our strategic plan gets massaged and changed probably about every three months. At this point, we had outlined what our objectives were for 2020, and we didn't know or understand when we put that pen to paper that we were going to be dealing with one of the most severe crises that this country has ever seen, COVID-19 and so we had to reorder that, and that's what I think it requires for us as leaders to be flexible, to be nimble.

Kay Coles James:

It occurred to me that some of the brightest minds in this country, in fact in the world, are housed within that building. Why not put those incredibly bright minds to work on solving some of the most incredibly difficult problems that this country has ever faced? We reshifted, retooled, and focused on COVID-19 and formed an actual commission and put all of our time, energy, and effort into coming up with a plan that has over 276 recommendations for the federal state, local government, as well as for civil society, because we believe that some of the best answers are not going to come from government but come from nonprofits, come from our corporations, come from our community organizations and we're seeing that now too, by the way.

Kay Coles James:

We're hoping that that document will be a guide not only through this pandemic but for future pandemics as well. If any of your leadership has not seen it, I would highly recommend it. You can download it, or we can send you a hard copy of it. Bringing together a diverse group of Americans that represented small businesses that represented hourly and wage workers, as well as CEOs of companies, as well as people from the health side of the equation to put all of our collective wisdom together and produce a product that we hope will be helpful to the American people. Starting out this year we had no idea that that would be one of the most important elements and one of the most important things that we produce. Being flexible and nimble is so important.

Gary Shapiro:

I agree with everything you said, and I was impressed with how quickly you assembled that group and came up with actual recommendations, but I also know you've done this before, not with the disease, but you're good at getting different people with very different views together in a room to come up with something they can agree upon. You did that with something that didn't get that much attention, at least to my present knowledge. You did it with gambling. Can you talk about that and what you learned from that?

Kay Coles James:

Well, I have often said somewhere in my youth or childhood, I did something terribly wrong and as a result of that had to chair the National Gambling Commission. I literally had on one hand casino owners, union leaders, screaming in one ear and on the other side, I have people from our faith community who were totally against gambling. At the beginning of that process, I can tell you that there were lots of people who predicted absolute failure, who predicted that we would never reach consensus. That has been my life. I employed every skill that I had to bring that particular group together up to, and including bringing the commission together at my home for dinner that I prepared and saying, we're going to have a meal together. No business will be discussed, but I want you to get to know each other as human beings, because we've got some heavy lifting to do. We've got work to do and the American people are calling on us and asking for answers. What is the social and economic impact of gambling?

Kay Coles James:

Before we sit down together, and I've sort of used that model in every commission that I've been a part of, and whenever trying to solve problems. I assume at the beginning that people are of goodwill and want to solve problems. If we can start from that perspective and bring diverse people together, I think we can accomplish great things. One of the things that just concerns me so much about where we are as a country today is the vitriol, the tenor of the rhetoric that's going on. I have adopted new language by the way, to deal with some of these things.

Kay Coles James:

When I bring our students together at the Gloucester Institute, I tell them I really don't care what your politics are. I don't care if you are left or right. Republican or Democrat. What I want to know is, do you want to solve problems? Are you a solutionist? Because if you want to solve problems, if you want to be a solutionist, we can get there, but I will not allow you to scream talking points at each other. I will not allow you to be lazy and not do your homework. If you have a position, know your facts and be able to articulate it.

Kay Coles James:

I use that same thing when I'm introduced to the interns at Heritage. Very often I will ask the young intern class, how many of you came to the Heritage Foundation to hone your skills and gain the knowledge so that you can go out and annihilate the opposition, and a few of them raise their hands and say, yes, that's why I'm here, and that's when I inform them they are in the wrong program, because they are not there to do that. They are there to learn how and win some ways to build bridges, win people over. I'm not interested in blowing up bridges. I'm interested in building them, finding consensus, building solutions, real solutions to solve problems.

Gary Shapiro:

That's great, and I admire that about you and you've been effective at it. In today's environment you've talked about how you've done it with COVID, but it seems that we're more provided than ever. It seems like one even has their own set of facts now. How do we move forward as a country and get through that?

Kay Coles James:

Well, a couple of things. One, I think that we're going to do it as we are intentional about it and as we nurture relationships like exists between Bobbie and me. I have such admiration and respect for her, and we do not agree on some very key issues, but I admire her. I respect her. What happened to that in public discourse?

Kay Coles James:

What I find now is that if you disagree with someone, then they are evil and your job is to destroy them, and the politics of personal destruction has no real place and I see it from the left and I see it from the right and it is so disruptive. It is so toxic. I think those of us who are solutionists, who really want to solve problems, have to step forward into the moment and get out there and you do it even at personal risk. It probably was not the wisest of all things to try to engage on issues of race in a public forum because it is so complex, it requires conversation. It requires trust. It requires the ability to be able to think through and empathize with someone that may be different from you, but in our world of a 30 second sound bites, in our world of public discourse taking place in a limited number of characters on Twitter and on Facebook, you really can't have those kinds of conversations.

Kay Coles James:

I'd gone back on Facebook, I only do food, pictures, and cats. You cannot have a substantive conversation there, but those conversations must happen. I don't even like to do most cable news shows because they're designed for ratings. They're not designed for real conversation. We've got to find the forums where that can happen, where we can have that, where people are willing to listen to someone that they disagree with. Try to understand and try to move forward, try to find common ground. That used to be a part of who we were as Americans, and I see that with increasing a hostility from both the left and the right, but what that means is that those of us who genuinely love this country, who respect and admire people who have opposing points of view, who really want to understand and move towards consensus, must lean into this moment and sometimes it's at great personal sacrifice to do that, but we must.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, I think that's a great point and you've definitely taken some arrows. What do you see as the role of the business community through all of this? I mean, they've definitely... and I mean, all this meaning going back even a few years. The business community from an observer's point of view, though I'm a participant, we've stepped up in different ways. We've taken positions on issues we don't normally type positions on. When government was shut down, I helped lead an effort to try to get it opened up and just get the decides to agree that having hundreds of thousands or millions of federal workers just getting money for doing nothing is not moving the country forward and now we're starting to see companies increasingly aggressively step up on all sorts of issues. What do you view as appropriate and what do you view as inappropriate?

Kay Coles James:

Well, you may be a little surprised at my answer here, but I think the most important role for any business is to do business. I mean, you got into this to make money and to grow a business and why is that important? Why is that significant? Because government doesn't produce wealth. Businesses do. All of those wonderful things that we love in our civil society are funded by the private sector, our universities, our museums, our symphonies, our nonprofit organizations. The main thing I want you to do is be profitable and to use those profits for the greater good, for human flourishing.

Kay Coles James:

When I sat on the directorships of several for-profit companies, I was not at all confused about what my job was. My job was to protect shareholder value and grow the business and that's important and it's important for human flourishing. I don't want you to lose sight of that because so many corporations are deciding that they want to get into social justice and issues and yes, we must be socially conscious but at the same time I need you to make money, grow your businesses and pump that money back into our civil society. That's number one.

Kay Coles James:

Number two is while putting, growing your business at front and center, it's important to not become a tool of and used by either the far left or the far right. I've seen too many corporations capitulate to those various extremes. Threading that needle can sometimes be difficult, but I think it's important to do. You take tech companies as an example. When I was wanting to bring my expertise to Google and as we dealt with some of the very difficult AI issues to capitulate to not shareholders, but a few, a few of their employees it wasn't the overwhelming majority and many of them wrote me and were apologetic for how the company was bullied by several of their employees.

Kay Coles James:

Courage is going to be required out of all of us during times like this, learning how to stay true to mission, whatever that is and for companies, I think it's producing wealth and returning shareholder value and then using that wealth to pour back into communities, but I think navigating in such a way that we don't become held captive to any of the extremes in our country. We just had an experience at Heritage just recently where we had a video on YouTube which was medically accurate. There were no... nothing controversial there, but some felt that it was incendiary and did not fit with some of their values and so they took that particular video down, totally inappropriate. It really puts us in an awkward position.

Kay Coles James:

We at Heritage don't believe that we should over-regulate these industries, and we're getting pushed from people on our right, who says, we've got to come in and slam the hammer down on these tech companies because of what they're doing. We're pushing that back. At the same time, we're saying, but you all got to help us by not using the power that you have to sort of censure speech that you might find offensive and millions of Americans do not. It's a difficult position, but I think with common sense and with conversation not too difficult to solve.

Gary Shapiro:

Are there any good examples? You've given a couple of bad examples, but Satya Nadella of Microsoft, when his employees, a few of them, a minority objected to the fact they were selling HoloLens and introducing... selling to the Department of Defense, they objected very vocally in the day it was announced and Satya Nadella immediately stood up and said, look-

Kay Coles James:

That's right.

Gary Shapiro:

... we're an American company and we're going to support our government, and that was the end of it and that was a pretty strong statement. Do you think that is-

Kay Coles James:

That was a strong statement and we need more of that. You're right, we should highlight the good as well as the difficult ones but I use that to say the position that we're in as an example at Heritage, because we are so supportive of our tech friends and our people in the tech industry and all that you do that we come under attack as a result of that. It is a difficult needle to thread, but we're committed to doing it.

Gary Shapiro:

What does it mean though that some of the platform companies like Facebook and Google and Twitter are attacked by both the left and the right? It seems-[inaudible].

Kay Coles James:

It means they must be doing something right. I use the example sometimes of being a bridge person, which means I get walked on by the left and the right. Sometimes we may go a little far this way or a little far that way, but that's okay. There are those of us who are trying to get it right and I think many of those companies are. We have many friends within those companies and we... At Heritage, we call balls and strikes. When you do it well, we want to say it. When you are wrong, we call that out as well. I think one of the things that many of the tech companies came to understand in the last few years is that on many of the issues that matter, they were surprised, but we at The Heritage Foundation were actually right in line and big supporters of deregulation, of working with our tech friends on getting rid of some of the barriers that exist for expansion and growth, protecting intellectual property.

Kay Coles James:

There are many issues that we agree on and we should work together on. Yes, you will find your friends in many different places and we should work together on those issues, and when we disagree, we disagree agreeably.

Gary Shapiro:

Should the platform companies be examining every political ad for whether or not it's true?

Kay Coles James:

I'm not sure that I would agree that we want to leave that up to companies to do. We believe in free speech and sometimes that speech is offensive to people and the market will sort it all out.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, it's definitely a difficult area and definitely we appreciate your stance towards tech companies, of being willing to at least recognize that these aren't Republican or Democrat. Some of these are basic constitutional privileges and rights and innovation in tech companies help fuel the economy in a very, very big way. At the same time, the companies who are reliant upon the talent pool, they're looking at younger people with strong views. They're looking at getting the best and brightest people from around the world. What does the Heritage - people at Heritage - what do you say about a highly skilled immigration?

Kay Coles James:

Well, it's true that we're looking at a younger and younger workforce and that that workforce has potentially different values, different ideas as they come into the workforce. Part of the work that we're doing as we work in our young leaders program, and as we work through programs like we do at the Gloucester Institute is help those young people know and understand what it means to come into a corporate environment. There are some training that needs to happen there as well.

Kay Coles James:

Corporations are working with how to adapt to a younger more engaged workforce, but we also have to work with these young people to help them understand what it means to be engaged in the companies. Some of them have some pretty unrealistic ideas about what that looks like and what that means, so there's some work that can be done on both sides. I just want to go back to one other thing that you said about how our tech companies have been just so enormously helpful, and I want to make sure that we talk about that during this time of COVID. Not only did I chair the Heritage task force, but I also served on the president's and I can tell you that looking at how the private sector stepped up and engaged, retooling to produce medical devices and retooling to produce products that we needed at a time like this, was overwhelming. I don't know any other country that could have responded the way we did.

Kay Coles James:

Looking at our own institution, The Heritage Foundation, who is well known for having great meeting space and property, where we gathered and convened to have to go from that environment to a totally digital world in nanoseconds was unbelievable. We owe a great debt to all of our friends in the tech community who produced and enhanced all of the tools that were available. We've been using Zoom and teams and every other platform that you can think of and holding webinars. I think as we come out of this, we're going to find out that we're going to be doing business in different ways.

Kay Coles James:

As a matter of fact, I said to our facilities team, Heritage is known for having some of the best meeting space in Washington. We can host small meetings, medium meetings, large meetings, beautiful facilities, and then all of a sudden we realized we had to shut it all down and do everything digitally. Do we need to reassess how much real estate and property we need? Do we need to make sure that just as we were known for having the best bricks and mortar, I want us to be known for having the best technology to bring people together.

Kay Coles James:

We've been reviewing and assessing all of that as well and we owe a great debt to those of you in the tech community who are helping us as we think through that and as you're helping the entire country reassess and redirect. We're not going to come out of this as the same America. There is no such thing as when will we get back to normal. It's going to be the new normal.

Gary Shapiro:

That's a great point. We own our own building and we're looking at the same issues, except we're also looking that we need greater distancing between employees. I think the real estate industry in the world is going to face us two conflicts of do you need to have everyone physically there? Do you need physical meetings versus can you do everything remotely versus, well, don't we still have to get together as humans. Someday I'm confident we will be getting together again. That's very important.

Gary Shapiro:

I want to shift to another issue because you mentioned the tech industry, and I think it's been magnificent in getting us along. I'm also looking at China and China is a country that's grown so quickly. Done so much in a way that's harmful to U.S. and has such a totally different set of values than we have as Americans, whether it's the freedom of religion, of choice in voting, of freedom to speak your peace, access, internet, all these freedoms we just assume are natural for human beings to have, but yet they've gone through this Coronavirus in a way using technology, using social control, using social measuring, and using all the tools available in a way which is, let's be honest, they've controlled the Coronavirus since the initial outbreak much better than we have.

Gary Shapiro:

I'm wondering this experiment we call democracy, this 200 years or so that we've had our country with such a individual rights oriented approach, are we being tested now in a way? I mean, is the battle that we're facing in future one with the China version and their battle for influence around the world versus the American, Western European, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan democracy inversion and the focus on the individual rights. Is that where we are heading as a nation?

Kay Coles James:

I think we have been tested. I think that all of the events not only COVID, but what we're seeing with the racial tension in our country right now is the stress test for American values and I think we're coming out quite well. I have said that in both instances, both the COVID and what's going on with race in America, our founders gave us an incredible gift in terms of the form of government with its checks and balances, in terms of the principles and values that this country is based on and in both cases, I believe that we are surviving this stress test quite well.

Kay Coles James:

It is difficult to make conclusions about what's going on with China right now because of the lack of transparency, because of our inability to get accurate data from them and from the World Health Organization, because of the form of government that they have and the lack of freedom that businesses have operating in that environment. I think that ultimately we will see that our values and our system of government provides the best, the absolute best opportunity for us to survive and actually grow and flourish and I think we're going to come out of this even stronger.

Kay Coles James:

When you look at how we responded to COVID-19 and how the civil society stepped up immediately, corporations, religious institutions, nonprofits. There were things that those institutions were able to do more quickly than any government entity. I think that speaks to our form of government and the freedom that our corporations had to do that. When you look at the race issue that we're dealing with right now, I remind my friends who are in the streets saying no justice, no peace. That the unique thing about what's happening in our country is the justice system sprung into work into action immediately and you see that system is, and will I believe, continue to work.

Kay Coles James:

The problem that we have with race issues in our country right now, in my opinion is not necessarily a systemic one, but it is a hard one. The individuals in our country who are still harboring these views and quite frankly I'm not sure there's a law that you can pass that will change that. That's going to happen in civil society. That's going to happen relationship to relationship. That's going to happen as corporations step up and say, we will not tolerate it. That will happen when pastors and churches decide to speak on these issues.

Kay Coles James:

I believe that our form of government has the best values and the best form to respond to all of this, and I think that you will see that in comparison, China simply does not.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, China and many other countries have a homogeneous population. They have thousands of years of history and they've resolved some of the issues which divide us and they're focused strategically, but you raised the issue raised can you... I meant to start out with this, but you have such a fascinating connection with all this. You were the one who helped one of the students that helped integrate a white school. Can you tell us about that?

Kay Coles James:

Well, yes. I was born in the capital of the Confederacy and went to segregated schools and when the decision was made within the African American community that we were going to push to desegregate the schools, the NAACP working within our community talked to parents about, would they be willing to have their children go into these difficult situations? For me, it was the seventh grade and we were the second class but the largest to go in. There were about 23, 24 of us. A seventh grader girl is supposed to be worried about her outfit for the first day of school and how she's going to hide or blue eye shadow from her mom. Instead, I remember walking past barricades, screaming parents, dogs barking and mortified as we went in, but recognized how important what I was doing was.

Kay Coles James:

I had been a straight A student but one of the tools that they used to try to deter us was the teachers gave us failing grades hoping we would get discouraged and go back to our schools and I came home and complained about that. I was raised by my aunt and uncle and I knew I had done well and I was crying and said, "She didn't give me an A." And my aunt looked at me and said, "Then go in there and take one. You have to be so perfect that there's nothing she can do but give you the grade that you deserve." And so I had to suck it up and decide that I was going to be so good as a student, that they could not deny me the grades that I knew I deserved.

Kay Coles James:

It was so bad. The teachers were against us. I had a homeroom teacher that read the menu every morning and she said, the menu today is grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and for dessert, we will have brownies and she pulled her glasses down and looked over them and looked right at me and said, "And I don't know why they're serving those. We have enough of them here already." That's what I experienced as a seventh grader. I had an uncle who was a civil rights leader in the country, Oliver Hill. His family had crosses burned in their yards, but this stuff isn't old. That's why I get so frustrated when some of my friends want to deny that race is still an issue in America today. My 14-year-old grandson in Fairfax County was called the N word this year in school. Not 20 years ago, this year.

Kay Coles James:

If you don't believe that racism is still a problem then after I was assailed on national television, the next day the switchboard at The Heritage Foundation lit up. If you don't believe racism exists, you should have heard some of the comments that my African American receptionist had to listen to. I said... having to tell that story, I should quickly add that this is one of the things that makes me love my Heritage family so much. Several of our white employees said she should not have to listen to that and so they said, we will answer the phones until this passes, but you can't hear phone calls like that and then say race is no longer a problem in this country.

Kay Coles James:

Do not misunderstand me and this is where some people get this terribly, terribly wrong. Just by acknowledging that it is still an issue and still a problem does not equate to, I believe America is a racist nation. I do not. I do not believe this is a racist nation. As a matter of fact, as I said earlier, I believe that we have some of the best systems in place. We are an exceptional nation, but are there people in this country who still have a problem with race? You better believe it, and if you don't come answer the phones at Heritage or go look at some of the things they're saying as I try to speak out and bring a voice of reason to these issues. I think all of us, all of us who are good people, who love this country want to get it right, and we want to lean into this moment and that doesn't mean that we hate our country because we don't.

Kay Coles James:

This is the best country in the world and I adore it. I love it. I'd bleed red, white, and blue but I will not, I will not deny my truth.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, thank you for sharing that. That's very important, I think, and those of us in the business community, I think you said it earlier. We want to do the right thing. We want to have the discussion. We want to right a situation which should be righted but we need help, and I know... I heard you say earlier where, don't worry, your job is to focus on profits but that's where I think we are today as a country. I think that there's a large majority that says we want to do the right thing here. We want to make a difference and make the world better for all our citizens. What is it that the-?

Kay Coles James:

No. Please don't misunderstand. I want you to focus on profits so that you can do good and do well.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, I've maintained for at least 15 years now that our strength as a country is our diversity, our ability to bring different viewpoints, different cultures, different backgrounds to the table and come up with innovation and creative solutions. It's our brains that make us better. It's not our brawn. How do we take advantage of that while we recognize diversity and we reach for it. Is that a fair description of what the business community should be doing or is there more?

Kay Coles James:

Well, yes, but I think as we define diversity, it isn't just diversity in terms of gender, race, but it's diversity of ideas as well. It is important to have people who disagree with you on some issues because they bring a different perspective and can help process things in different ways. That's one of the things we were so proud of with the Coronavirus commission that we put together at Heritage. It was the most diverse group of individuals, politically, ideologically, racially, gender wise, and as a result of that we produced a great document, but yes, I think that kind of diversity is important and it really does matter.

Kay Coles James:

By the same token, I would ask the business community not to be blinded into wanting to do something so quickly that... I am one of the first to say black lives matter and I have to break that down and explain it to a lot of people who quickly want to go to all lives matter and explain why it's okay to say that, but to see a corporation give millions and millions of dollars to the BLM organization, the Black Lives Matter organization, which was started by Marxist, which hates corporate America. You are funding the beast rather than doing it in a way that alleviate some sort of guilt, but at the same time it's contributing to the problem. You've got to be more thoughtful about that.

Kay Coles James:

Of course, black lives matter, but does that mean you take an organization that tells us things like we need to divest ourselves of the paternalistic notion of family and get rid of family, that we should not be in support of Israel. They say, I do not say, they say they're Marxist. Why in the world would a corporation give money to an organization like that? It's counterintuitive. I recognize that corporations want to be socially relevant, but they've also got to be smart. Fund the good guys, defund the bad guys.

Gary Shapiro:

Good point. How did you become a conservative?

Kay Coles James:

I didn't. Let me explain. I didn't become a conservative. My definition by the way of a black conservative, particularly, but probably any conservative is someone who has the audacity to believe what their grandmother taught them. It's not weird. It's not complicated. It's not deep. I simply believe and maintain the values that I was raised with. I didn't even know I was a conservative until a reporter told me I was. I said, I'm not one of those. I mean, in my mind conservative were old white racist mean guys who wanted to conserve their way of life. That's what conservative was. When I learned that conservative actually meant believing in and loving this country, believing... and liberals do too. I know many liberals who love this country so I don't mean to imply that.

Kay Coles James:

The basic principles of free markets, of individual liberty and freedom, religious freedom, strong national defense, believe and protecting the value and the dignity and the sanctity of human life. I didn't know those were conservative values until a reporter told me, so I didn't become one. I simply held true to the things that I was raised with.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you. I realize we're getting close to this one so quickly and I apologize. Barbara Comstock, former Congresswoman has made a number of very wonderful points in the chat section that I urge all of the viewers here to check out, because it's about the tax you've undertaken and some of the challenges that presented. Just a couple of quick final questions. You are a solutionist, you are a conservative, how is it that there are not more Republicans. I know Republicans and conservatives are not the same thing necessarily.

Kay Coles James:

Thank you for that because that's absolutely true. People get it confused all the time.

Gary Shapiro:

How come the Republican Party has not attracted more African Americans?

Kay Coles James:

That question requires another hour for us to talk about. The high level answer to that is simply, the fact that we were the party of Lincoln. We were the party who... if you look at the first black public anything, they were Republican, whether it was governor, mayor, congressman you name it and that was our history. That's who we were, and then there was a turn that happened in our party and it started with and it's... I've done a lot of research and I'm getting ready to do a book on this. Some of you may be familiar with the Lily-White Movement that happened. There was a concerted effort within the Republican Party to expel black people. We don't like to talk about that part. We like to claim the mantle of Lincoln, but we don't like the history of what happened in the post Civil War era and in the '20s and '30s when to gain votes in the South, Republicans felt like they had to say, wait a minute, wait a minute. We hate black people as much as you do in order to regain control of a party.

Kay Coles James:

Doing my research in Virginia I actually found out that one of my relatives was a leader in the Republican Party in Virginia, who was kicked out of the party, who was not allowed to be seated at a convention. I know that it must have been an awkward moment when I was asked to chair the Republican Party in Virginia, and I stood at the podium for about 30 seconds, dead silent and teary-eyed recognizing that we were back. That I was now chairing this when my relative, who was from Charlottesville, Virginia and I've got all the documentation, who wanted to lead a delegation to the Republican Party in Virginia and he was not allowed to be seated. To have the opportunity to chair the convention where my relatives had been barred several generations before was astounding.

Kay Coles James:

I want to reclaim that mantle and I want to face the history. It's important for us to own what we did wrong, acknowledge it and move beyond. One of the reasons I want to do that is because I care about poverty and I think that we within the Republican Party and the conservative movement have the answers how to do that. I want to get rid of educational disparities and we, within the conservative movement know how to do that. I want to provide more and better access to health care, and we know how to do that and so to be shut out from the conversation is difficult and I recognize that we need to be at the table with those diversity of ideas in order for us to move beyond where we are today. Yes, conservative ideas need to be in the marketplace of ideas right now and we can't shut them out.

Gary Shapiro:

Well, thank you, Kay. You are a great American. You have shared so much with us. I could definitely go on for another two hours, and thank you for your comments about the tech industry and Heritage is focused on some good policies that really matter to innovation in our country and moving us forward in a fashion that keeps us as a leader, whether it's a focus on the constitution or it's a focus on free market principles and the fact that tariffs are taxes, and the fact that Section 230 is important to preserving the free flow of ideas.

Gary Shapiro:

Thank you for what you've done and thank you for sharing today and now I'm going to turn it back over to Taran.

Announcer:

Thank you all very much for that fascinating discussion. The upcoming events in the series are Corie Barry on Wednesday, July 29th and Mindy Grossman on Tuesday, August 11th. We hope to see you there. In the meantime, please stay safe and healthy and have a great rest of your day.