JUST IN: Hillary Clinton Hosts Fireside Chat With World Bank Group President And CEO Of Chobani

Please welcome to the stage Hamdi Ulukaya, Ajay Banga, and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. Well, listening to Chelsea's report was so inspiring because of all the work that all of you have done, and I thank you, but you're not off the hook. We're going to keep working together, and we're going to keep trying to find solutions to the problems we face, and I am so lucky to be talking to two people who really understand how to do that. We are longtime friends, both personally and friends of CGI. As you know, Ajay is the president of the World Bank Group, Hamdi is the founder and chief executive officer of Chobani. I have to confess, I think of him every morning when I open my refrigerator. Don't tell anybody. We are so thrilled to bring together two different vantage points to answer the same question. What does it actually take to create economic conditions where people around the world feel hopeful and optimistic about their futures? Because we were just talking backstage, a lot of people get frustrated, they feel pretty ground down, and as Chelsea walked by, she said, you know, the antidote to depression is action. So we want to think about some actions that can lift people's, not only their perceptions, but fulfill their dreams, give them more opportunity. Ajay, what do you think? Well, I think that at the end of the day, young people are why we're all around here. It's their future that we're tasked with managing and giving them a chance to succeed. And the reality is that the emerging markets is where I'm focused on now, and 1.2 billion young people in the emerging markets are going to become 18 years of age in the next 12 to 15 years. 1.2 billion? Billion. Wow. And that's so-called the demographic dividend, and it is if these young people have clean air, clean water, healthcare, skilling, education when they're growing up, and once they're grown up, they get a chance to have a job. By job, I don't mean only working for a company like we both have done, but also to be an entrepreneur or to be a small farmer with a better shot at productivity. And I think that a job is, you know, a friend of mine, actually yours and mine both, John Hope Bryant, once said to me that poverty is both a state of mind and a state of being. And the state of being you can fix even with a handout, but a state of mind requires optimism and the dignity that comes with earning and being a productive member of society. So I believe that all of us need to put our shoulders to the wheel and really worry about 1.2 billion young people and their futures and how much it could be, what a great opportunity it could be for the world if they're productively used and productively given a chance to be what we want them to be. That's the deal. Do you think, Ajay, that that effort would be strengthened by different measurements? And by that I mean, you know, rather than just GDP, what about health conditions and housing conditions and education conditions? Is there a way to factor that in so we get a more realistic view and maybe challenge, you know, nations and regions to do more to lift everybody up? I think actually GDP is going to become more and more challenging to measure as a way of lifting because you could end up with a great deal of capital investment as we're doing today. And it may or may not reflect in jobs, it will reflect in GDP growth. And I saw nothing wrong with that, but you need more, therefore, than only GDP. It's a funny thing. When I joined the bank, I found we had 122 items in our corporate scorecard. And that's like, shoot me, God, right? You just don't need that. If you come out of the private sector, if you ever give me 122 items, I will always find a way to talk to you only about the 25 I'm a rock star on and never get to the others. And so I've come down to 22 items. But in that are exactly the kind of measures you're talking about. Healthcare, resilient infrastructure and housing, the right kind of approach to, you know, education and skilling. So you pick the topics that make a difference to where these people will get a fair shot if they get that in their grounding. That's exactly what I think we need. You know, Hamdi, you've built Shobani around the idea that jobs alone are not enough. The quality of the job and the work environment really matters. So in addition to dignified job opportunities, how else do you see the private sector contributing to create these kind of thriving communities where, you know, literally, as President Kennedy used to say, the tide lifts all boats, doesn't leave, you know, most of the people stranded on the beach while others go off in their yachts? Yeah. So good to be with you, Madam Secretary, and of course, my friend, Anjay. And here, this is how many times I've come here. And every time I leave with an inspiration. So we're so thankful for you for President and for Chelsea. I want to just touch on what you said in the beginning. It's challenging times. It's kind of dark times. It's blurry times. It's kind of, we don't have a visibility where this world is going, where we're going. And there is discomfort, there's pain, there is this now, there is news, AI, the wars, and unfamiliar political conversations, separations, all the things that you guys have given your time to move the society forward, it seems like things are going in a different direction. In that dimension, how we should be feeling. I bring that, I tell this small story. But I think it has essence of the time. I walk into this old factory in South Edmiston, in a tiny little town. And it was closed after 75 years. This is the only factory that the whole town and the surrounding farms depend on. Uncle, grandfather, everybody was depending on it. The tables were filled with food and conversation because of depending on this factory. And then one day comes, this factory closes. And I walk into it, and it's an old place, and there's 55 people are closing this place. And I don't want to go to the details of conversation, I decided I could do something with this. And so I, with a small SBA loan, I purchased it, and I hired four people from the first 55. And then we sit around the table, it's like yesterday, this was 18 years ago, we sit around the table. And I've never done this before, I don't have money, I have a very broken language, I have a car that is not really that fancy. And those four people know that I don't have a lot. So they're kind of making life decision based on what they're going to see what I do. 50 has already gone somewhere, they're leaving or making decisions, only four left. They asked me what we're going to do now. And I said, we're going to go to the hardware store, we're going to buy some paints, and we're going to paint the wall outside. And one of them, Mike, he retired from that factory, and he was the maintenance guy. He said, Hamza, I've retired here, I've been working here for 35 years. I don't remember when was the last time we painted those walls. He says, tell me you have more ideas than that. I had no idea what I was going to do next. I have no money, I have no experience. I don't even know the recipe of the yogurt is going to work in this factory. I don't even know this factory is going to work. I'm doubting myself in different ways. But I know I can paint those walls. Those walls were white at one point, but it's no longer white. And something that I can do right now, which I focus on that one. So I, we bought the paints and four of us paint those walls all summer. And today we say, let's start painting the walls. You know, something in action, something even small in action. And that's the beginning. And year after that, we launched the Chobani, and then three years later, everybody said one of the best thing ever happened was the closing of that factory. Because today is 10 times better, 100 times better than ever before. So I think there is this essence of we don't want bad things to happen. We don't want factories to close. We don't want the world to go different direction. We don't want, you know, all these separations and conversations are happening. But when that happens, there's an enormous amount of opportunity in there to make it better than ever before. Because there's an enormous amount of learnings that we have accumulated. And maybe some of the things that we find ourselves that we didn't do it right, that we could do it better second time. So I think any of us in this room that we care about where the world is going, there's an enormous amount of opportunity. And I think we should start painting the walls. And once we get there, I think on your point, Madam Secretary, when you are in a community, which I try to find a community that we can be part of, you just don't operate the business. You open the walls to be part of the community. Because the businesses and the leadership's impact in that community is enormous. Just give you a tiny bit of, you know, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit of a pat on my back. But there's something sad happened in Twin Falls, Idaho, not too long ago. And a young man walked into a burger shop and, you know, shot a few people. And in that community where we have Chobani presence, it's a heavy thing. You know, some people died and some, it's frightening. People said, I was just there 10 minutes ago with my children or, you know, my family members. And there was a memorial that a few days later, and I flew from here to Idaho. And I felt that I needed to be there with the people so we can be part of this heavy moment but at the same time give each other a shoulder that we can move forward out of this. I built 1.5 million square feet plant there. I've been employing, you know, Chobani's been employing over 1,000 people. The impact of the economy in there is enormous. All that thing, everything that I have done, I didn't realize this small gesture was more powerful than everything else you've done before. Being there with them, just praying and being part of the community and saying, we're going to move through this together. And a lot of people in that community, Mayor and everyone came to me with tears and said, it's just you and your company's being there in that moment has done so much to this community that you cannot even understand the power of it. And I cannot. But I think as a business leaders, we have to understand that it's not just dollars and cents. That being there with all whole being is extremely impactful. That's such an important reminder. I remember as Senator visiting that first plant in upstate New York. And, you know, when you said we're going to paint the walls, it wasn't I'm going to paint them. It wasn't you're going to paint them. It was we're going to paint them. And you have, you know, carried that ethic through. But I don't think that's happening in enough places. And Ajay, you know, just last Thursday, the World Bank released numbers on how much private capital is being mobilized toward development. But it's very clear we need to unlock new sources of capital. We need to get private investors off the sidelines. We need to get them to invest in more than six or seven companies. We got to, you know, expand the opportunity zone as far as possible. So where do you see new capital, new forms of financing coming so that, you know, the young Hamdis who want to start a factory in an abandoned one in some, you know, distressed place can actually get that catalytic capital to start? So, I mean, the reality is there's not enough money in government coffers or in the multilateral development banks or even in philanthropy to cater to the kind of requirements in dollars and cents that need to go through the system for those 1.2 billion people to have the life we talked about. Whichever consulting firms estimates you look at, they've all got trillions attached to it every year. And so this is not going to work. And even the richest countries have now got fiscal issues and the debt exploding where you cannot get to a sense of comfort there. That's why the private capital. But the private capital, you know, numerical, I'll give you a number, factoid. We just finished our fiscal year. 112 billion of private capital is what we mobilized for co-investing with us in the developing world. That is with 120 billion of our balance sheet as well. So that's 230 odd billion. Three years ago when I joined, it was 30 billion of private capital. So we've traveled. While my own balance sheet growth is only 10 billion in that period. That's because of the limitations of what we could do. So I think we have to acknowledge the fact that you can get it done. And there are two or three kinds of capital. There is people like him who would invest as an operator and the owner in creating a Chobani plant in another country. Definitely. Nestle, Siemens, General Motors, Caterpillar, yes. Then there's a much bigger pool, which is pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies. And the way they invest is they don't invest in one yogurt factory in Sudan. They don't know how to underwrite that risk. But if you tell them, I'm going to get you 10 food factories in Africa and wouldn't you like to invest in them as part of your investment profile? And they'll say, that's great. Give me all 10 wrapped in a securities or rating agency wrapper. You know, Standard & Poor's says this is A minus paper. I can buy it for 92 cents on the dollar and they'll do it. That money is still sitting on the sidelines. It doesn't come project by project. It comes in an asset class that you need to create. That is what we're working on as part of what we're up to that. The results of that work are not even counted in the 112 billion I've been telling you about. Then there's a third category, which is the entrepreneur and young Hamdi. So what we're trying to do there, I went to Cairo the other day. There was an entrepreneurial center, lots of young kids there meeting each other. We've helped to set it up. We give them legal help and accounting help free so they don't get cheated. And I went to the government in Egypt and told the president, here's the deal. You put 50 million, I'll put 50. Let's go take the 100 million and give it to a young venture capitalist, an Egyptian who's been working in London or America and wants to come back home. Ask that lady or guy to put another 5 million so they have skin in the game. And then tell them, we the government of Egypt and we the World Bank group will be happy with an 8% return. That's all we need to cover our cost of capital and expenses. You, if you're the right venture capitalist, run this like your business and you can make the rest of the money. But in the process, you've got to give these young kids $200,000 each to open a business. And I want 25% to 50% of that to be a pure grant because they don't have equity. They've got nothing in their name. You were just talking about this in the back. They have nothing in their name. So give them the equity and then make money off the rest. I just think we've got to start applying logic like this. Otherwise, thinking that all we will do is drum up more money for the public sector. This is, you know, you do the same thing and expect a different answer. And that's the definition of insanity. You're 100% right, AJ. And I think you have proven that you can get more money off the sidelines and you can leverage that money for other investors. And we just have to see more of that. And I wish that investors would recognize the urgency of the moment because we are losing a whole generation of young people across the world who do not believe that the economy works for them. And so if we don't show that it can and it will, we're going to have a lot more unrest, a lot more reaction. And Hamdi, you are bucking the trend in a way. You know, many companies are fighting to develop data centers, which frankly provide construction jobs, but not many other jobs, at least the way they're currently configured. But your new factories in Rome, New York and Allentown, Pennsylvania, represent billions of dollars of private investment in communities that a lot of companies have overlooked. How did you choose that area and make your pitch for other investors and business leaders to look where you looked and make the kind of choice you made? I just worked in South Edmiston so beautifully, worked in Twin Falls and the other side of the country. So amazingly, it is the sense to close your eyes, put your finger in the real community and rural community and see if you can be part of it and just go out there and make the magic happens. Commit, though, you've got to go there. It's not just building the buildings. Just be there, be part of it. Understand the culture, understand the tradition, understand the people. Spend time, go to the diner, go to the park, get your family in there, walk the dog, just be part of the life. And that's the tradition of Chobani. I love Rome. I mean, it is your mood discover about Rome. You know, Governor Hochul and I, we went out there and and it's just like used to be a place that used to be the Air Force Base. A lot of a lot of traditions in there, a lot of you can even hear the soldiers marching in there. And then one day it's closed. And what can what can come out of it? We designed one of the most beautiful campus. I'll show it to you. It is just one of the work of art. When I show it to the community, they said, is this is this real? It's like, why does it have to be so this beautiful? So because this community is, you know, because this community. You know, deserves being not only just a factory, but it's a factor that never been done before. Pennsylvania, you know, Governor Shapiro. It's one of my favorite people. I called him. There's this one point five million square feet plant. It was built. It's empty. Pennsylvania is the second largest small farming communities in the last 15 years. Like, you know, upstate New York, you've done so much for the community. We have stopped it. And that that community, we proved that small farmers can can can survive. And number some other conversation we had together. And in this community in Pasadena, small farmers are declining. After Wisconsin, the largest small farmers, like 70 to 110 cows. And he said this is the largest investment in the last 20 years that happened in this agriculture in the daily community in that community. I pick because absence of these farmers is a tragic tragedy, not only for the state of Pennsylvania, but for humanity, for our country. It is like who knows what's going to happen, you know, with AI and robots and all that kind of stuff. But imagine these farms are disappearing one after another. So I'll do it. If you come up with some amazing program, that it will be financially beneficial to these farmers and they can look at the future. And I will commit on our part is that we'll do our part and we will make an ecosystem that will work. And it's ever since that we announced this, that it will be a massive amount of mixed milk purchase. It will be supported over 100 million dollars from the state of Pennsylvania to the farmers. We've changed a couple of rules that, you know, the trucks can can travel over 5000 gallons or, you know, all that small things that never been looked in. And every indication looks like it's going to be a really big success. And then and then it says maybe this decline will turn around and go in the right direction. And there's this family of tradition is going to continue. This is the power of private, public, you know, interactions and coming up and finding solutions. And in the end, people are going to have one of the most delicious milk from the small farmers that they love to do from the land. That is, is like a habit. So doing this is not a work. As long as you feel like you have partners, you have audience and you have enormous amount of care. And in the end, putting all these things together makes a business sense. And I will finish it this way. Another bragging. We are number one dollar and volume growth contributor to the whole country when it comes to food. Last year, our growth number above and beyond every single big CPGs. So doing things is good for the business. Yeah. Well, amen to that. And, you know, I know that you hire refugees and migrants and you've made the case many, many times from this stage and elsewhere that it is a very good investment to take people who need an opportunity and to, you know, provide that. I want to ask each of you something slightly more personal to close. IJ, you have spent three decades as a private sector executive. Now you lead the World Bank. Hamdi, you came to this country with very little, except apparently the ability to paint and that worked out for you. But each of you individually, because I love it. I mean, you're talking about what you're doing and you each have smiles on your face. And we have a lot of people who talk about what they're doing and they're not so joyous about it. But your careers, as well as your lives, suggest a spirit of optimism, but more than that, a commitment to tie optimism to action. So as you both know, CGI is a community of doers and we like to roll up our sleeves and do some work to make the world a better place. So I want each of you to tell us one optimistic action that each of us in our audience and all those watching on streaming and who will follow it later can put into action so that more people have a better shot to live, you know, a life of opportunity and prosperity. IJ, let me start with you. I mean, one person can make a difference. And I think we spend a lot of time admiring a problem and that's lovely, but it's not going to change anything. So if you just get down to one person making a difference, his answer to that was, let's paint the wall. Yeah, that's one person making a difference. You know, all of us have got our own way to do it. Nobody's going to evaluate each other for the way you do it. But one person can make a difference, go back and make a difference. So start, do something. Right. And don't just admire the problem. And nothing is too small. I think a lot of people get somewhat overwhelmed thinking, well, I can only do that. It won't make much of a difference. But consider yourself part of a community of actors. Think about the butterfly, the old theory, the butterfly flapping its wings far away creates the hurricane down here. And think of it as being the first butterfly who started that move. That's exactly right. What about you, Hamdi? I, you know, this gentleman here next to me. I watched him. He's called me a gentleman. I mean, I don't know why my brother, Ajay, boss, mentor. I've been in rooms with him many times as he was running, you know, MasterCard in private places, in some places. You know, the way that he connected us with people, the way that he created an environment for us to be able to us be ourself and also have connection with the others and play in that role that is the is the human power, human dimension and mixed with entrepreneurship and leadership. And now he's leading one of the most important organizations. I think I think the repeating that is using our human possibilities and human power into service, even a small circle or a large circle. Every candle can have an enormous amount of impact in the darkness. I mean, there's a dark, even a tiny candle. We know which direction we need to go. It breaks it. I think we need to use it that that human spirit and potential without looking at size, just light it up. And so we can walk that direction. Well, I am reminded of a saying that I particularly like by Ernest Shackleton, the polar explorer, who said that optimism is a moral choice. And you two have always opted for optimism. Let us thank A.J.