Dov Seidman: So this is a warm, warm welcome to my friend and hindered spirit. Lisa Sherman, Lisa is the president and CEO of the Ad Council, and Lisa has been the President CEO of the out Council since 2014. But what I’ve come to admire you is for the courage and the wisdom with which you choose to tackle issues that you and your organization believe are at the forefront of what society is and ought to grapple with.

Lisa Sherman: Well, it’s always great to be together. Doug, thank you for having me.

Dov Seidman: So let’s start with, how do you decide what issues to engage and what not? What’s your playbook for bringing people together around, you know, foreign issues? How do you put more shared truth in the world so that we can come together and do extraordinary things together?

Lisa Sherman: The Ad Council was really founded on the promise and the potential of the communications industry’s capacity to do good. This is a group of people who are expert communicators, and they work on behalf of clients and brands to to generate ideas that get people to do things and back right when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, FDR, our president at the time, realized that he was going to have to go to war, and he knew the country was not behind him. And he had the insight and the genius, frankly, to recognize that if he could engage the leaders of our industry to help him get the country behind the war effort through all of their skills and talents and resources, it would help him do what he needed to accomplish. The model that was established at that time is the remodel that remains today these companies, through their talent and generosity, provide communications programs pro bono and take on and tackle the most important and pressing issues we face as a country. It was so successful leading into World War Two, you might be familiar with a couple of the taglines that came out of that loose lip sync ships all the war bond advertising came out of this idea that FDR had for how he could get this industry to help him. And we have now been doing that around important issues that impact us as a country ever since. And so our mission, our purpose, frankly, is really to ensure that people can live happier, healthier and safer lives through education. That’s what we do. Our priorities right now are things like mental health, where you know, coming out of covid, the data is just extraordinary that you know, upwards of 50, 60% of people are struggling with anxiety and depression. Young people are either thinking about or attempting to take their own lives at a rate that we’ve never seen before. I

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Lisa Sherman: so that’s the kind of work that we do, and it’s, it’s, these are very difficult choices to make when there’s so many causes worthy of what we can bring to the table, and we try and sort it out based on on what we think where we can make the greatest difference. Bring the industry together and tackle it through very powerful public education.

Dov Seidman:  How do you go about addressing these issues in a way where we can come together around them, where we can be, you know, more clear thinking and elevated in our consciousness around them, so we could see them in a clear way?

Lisa Sherman: Well, it’s very, very difficult and complicated. And as you, as you mentioned, Dov, none of these issues, in and of themselves are political. But it seems like everything today has been politicized. I think one of the things that the Ad Council has been known for for the 80 plus years that we’ve been doing this work is that we are. Non Partisan. We don’t We only care about the people we’re trying to help. One of the big insights we had is that vaccine hesitancy, which was really what we were trying to overcome, when we really dissected what was at the root of vaccine hesitancy, it was Trust. Trust was at the root of vaccine hesitancy. And then if you dug a little deeper and you looked at different communities, if you went to a community of color, their issues around trust were very different and motivated and generated from something very different than if you went to somebody that lived in a rural community, one of the ways that we once we understood what the root of hesitancy was, and we started to really unpack the issue of trust by by community. We then went and asked ourselves another question, who do they trust? And can we engage those that they trust in helping us communicate the messages that need to be communicated. So we know that faith in many communities is a very powerful, trusted organization, and so we engaged. We created a national faith based steering committee, and we worked with leaders of faith to develop messaging that they could bring to sermons on Sunday. They became critical partners and influencers of ours, and it was very clear that the messenger was as or more important than the message. And so that’s a learning for us that we are taking forward into the work we’re doing. You know, in a lot of other areas,

Dov Seidman: how do you bring people together? And what have you learned around these issues, around what we do have in common, how we can be connected and more unified when we’re not just divided, but we are being actively divided by very powerful forces, even the profit motive is behind division. What can you teach us all, because we’re all fighting division at a level that we haven’t experienced before?

Lisa Sherman: You know it comes to mind when I think about it is, it’s finding the things that we share so we have a diversity, equity and inclusion, inclusion focus for one of our big pillars, and the common thread is love. Because I think at the end of the day, we all want love. We all desire and need love, and we hopefully all do love and are loved in some way. And when we can try and break down an issue around diversity, in our differences or belonging, and start to connect people on something that we I think all can agree on, something as fundamental as love. Then I think people start to be more open. And it’s sort of, it’s a little bit of a like a ha when we were looking at focusing on a little bit around discrimination against LGBTQ people, and all of these laws were on the books preventing Gay people from getting married, you know, everybody, I think, could relate to the idea that you couldn’t be with the person you love. It’s another way I think love plays into it. Love was the common denominator. And then when you start to hear about things that are laws that are so inequitable and unfair. How can you tell somebody that they you know, can’t be with the person they love? It changes the conversation.

Dov Seidman:What does it look like to get it right in business, and what CEOs? What is the playbook that you seem to think is effective for a CEO or a business leader navigating a world in which you no longer get to say, Hey, I just run a business

Lisa Sherman: for them to thrive, they have to foster an environment for all of their stakeholders In order to be effective. And I do think that you know finding that intersection as a leader these days, between your company’s purpose and an individual’s purpose, whether it’s your employee or a customer, when we can bring those things together, I think that’s where. How the magic can happen. It’s that idea of really standing for something. People want companies to stand for something other than just making money for their shareholders. It should they just simply do. I think for the longest time, we lived in a world where that wasn’t the expectation. It, you know, that was more of a command and control structure. The World is Flat as we know it today. I think the talent that we work with have much more influence and say than we could have ever imagined. I could have ever imagined 30 some years ago, but you know, they are critical influencers, and without them, and they’re feeling good and connected, I don’t think any company can be as effective as they would want to be.

Dov Seidman: And relatedly, and given that you’re, you’re a expert on advertising, and we’ve talked about how so many companies are literally proclaiming their humanity. Chevron is the human energy company, and Cisco is the human network, and Dow is the human element, and Reebok is, let’s be more human. And TD Bank is, let’s bank more human. And Ally Bank is, let’s speak human. It’s amazing how companies are telling the world, buy from us, invest in us. Work here because of our humanity, but we know that it’s one thing to advertise your humanity, and it’s another thing to translate that proclamation of humanities into a human ethos of how we operate, how we relate to people and society. If you were a CEO of an organization that told the world that you’re human, what steps would you take to make your institution more human

Lisa Sherman: look I think the way I even think about our organization and the companies that we work with, I think it really always goes back to what is our reason for being what is our why, and how do we then go about executing the why? What are our values? You know, how do we go about doing it? And so for us, it’s really always looking at who are our stakeholders and what is important to them, and how do we demonstrate our purpose fostering a society where everyone can thrive to all of those constituents? And I think that the same would hold true for every, every business enterprise

Dov Seidman: you know you’ve you when you addressed our next gen fellows, you pointed out that life and the path ahead is is not linear. It’s curvilinear, that life doesn’t move in a straight line, and that that reality and adage has animated your own personal journey of leadership. Tell us about leading when you’re so conscious that there isn’t a straight line in terms of becoming a better leader, having the impact you want, being successful around leadership, this kind of non straight line reality that you saw early in your career embraced, how has it informed leadership in a way that others can emulate?

Lisa Sherman: I think, the non linear aspects to my career, some were intentional zigs and others were unintentional Zags, you know. And I’ve learned, and I learned so much from, you know, those times when things were hard and when there were challenges. And so I feel like I bring a perspective I want and try and bring a perspective to the organization that we have to try new things, and it’s not all going to work, and that’s okay, because I think we’re going to learn so much, especially for the things that don’t work. I also know that to lead, especially in times of challenge and change, is very difficult, and if you don’t have the trust of the team, there may be performative action towards the things you want to do, but it’s not going to really take hold. So I like to say that I like to try and lead at the Speed of Trust. You know, I I’m an impatient person. I like to move quickly. But I also learned the hard way early on that if I didn’t build the trust amongst the people that I was working with, we might have some short term wins very quickly, but it would never stick

Dov Seidman: so much of this you’ve explicitly said you’ve learned being an athlete, right in sports, about team, about trust, about leadership. Just what did you learn? Tell us about why you bring in sports. Um. Um, to how you talk about these issues.

Lisa Sherman: Well, you know, I, I grew up in a family that was very into sports. Thankfully, I was a little bit athletic, so I could, you know, play sports with, you know, my cousins and my family. And frankly, it was one of the first places that I actually felt good about myself. There was something about the camaraderie of sports and and just sort of the feeling of feeling like I was good at something that that gave me some confidence. But then I also quickly saw when I got into more organized sports in in school. You know, as much as I didn’t love going to practice every day, like I saw the results of practice, I saw the benefits of accepting feedback and coaching from our coaches. Who would, you know, tell us things we weren’t doing well, or helping us strategize. So coaching, and there’s so many life lessons I learned through sports, how to win, but more importantly, how to lose, how to be a good loser and a good sport, how to really work on a team. I was always into team sports, and it was pretty clear that everybody was probably better in one position or another, and how if we weren’t all in sync, we weren’t going to win the game, even if we had the five best athletes, if we weren’t in sync, we were not going to win the game. So I learned the value of teamwork, and honestly, all of these lessons and early experiences have served me so well in every aspect of my life,

Dov Seidman: and created a strength that you I think it’s totally related to you know, you’ve said very publicly that you were in the corporate closet for 17 years, and that when you came out of that closet, you were not only happier, you were more creative and more productive. And you’ve also made it a mission as a leader that there’s all this verbiage out there and rhetoric around we need to create workplaces where people can bring their full authentic self to work, but you really mean it, and your journey of becoming that person who could be full to you, what have you learned about that journey, and how has that influenced how you create environments where that could be everybody’s reality?

Lisa Sherman: Well, I think, you know, when I finally had the courage to come out of the corporate closet, I thought that the benefit would be that I could, you know, I wasn’t hiding anymore. It was not holding on to a secret which was becoming very, very difficult and painful. What I didn’t fully understand was how much energy it took to hide and what was freed up in me, not expending all of that energy, you know, making up stories about I called it pronoun puppetry, you know, I would, I would substitute him, he and we for her and she during the weekends, when people would ask what I did, I don’t have to think about any of that anymore. And so I just it was almost like I exhaled for the first time in decades. And that was then opened up for me, the ability to think more, just think better and be more creative, and all of that energy went to very positive things. It changed the course of my life in every way. And so for me, I’m so hypersensitive to people, not to feeling other people who don’t feel like, feel like they’re covering for themselves, they’re in some closet, and trying to do whatever I can to create an environment where they feel like they can step out of the closet and into the light.

Dov Seidman: So you’re really trying to scale your over indexing on, on empathy.

Lisa Sherman: That is a great way of putting it. And I don’t know that I would have ever I didn’t know that that’s I wouldn’t have said this is my mission in life, because it wasn’t. It just turned out that my experience, my personal experience, and sort of the the trauma of that and the incredible positives of that have just informed the way I live my life. And I think that’s exactly right.

Dov Seidman: So if I were to ask you to give advice to the next generation of people who. Are consciously and intentionally on on a leadership journey, besides telling them to really nurture their own sense of empathy and inspired in others, besides that, because I know that’s what you would say based on this conversation we just had, what else would you tell somebody starting out on their leadership journey around how to be thoughtful and deliberate about becoming the kind of leader they aspire to be.

Lisa Sherman: You know, I think what I would, I would say, is that it would feel, it feels very important to get in touch with your personal purpose. What are the things you really care about? What are the values that you live by? And then I think it’s about using your voice effectively, even if maybe sometimes what you say or how you use your voice doesn’t necessarily work out, but having a belief in something and then trying to act on it. I don’t think whatever would always serve somebody well.

Dov Seidman: So in the spirit, thank you, Lisa. In the spirit of wrapping up earlier, you brought up your antipathy towards the see me adage that hope is not a strategy, because we’ve aligned around the notion that without hope, there is no strategy. Your day in, day out, you’re dealing with painful, foreign issues that can, you know, create some despair. What the What leave us on a hopeful note in the midst of all of this? What inspires hope for you? What makes you hopeful?

Lisa Sherman: I am very inspired by the the young people that that I work with every day, because they bring a level of courage and authenticity that I did not have or even think was possible. I didn’t even know what it was when I was just starting out, and for many, many years into my career. And so that gives me a lot of hope. It makes for some interesting conversations many days at the office and and in other places. But you know, I I love, I love the spirit, I love the energy, I love the passion that they bring. And I think it’s forcing us to be better people, and it’s forcing us to be better leaders.

Dov Seidman: Well, thank you my friend, Lisa Sherman, for sharing your wisdom and doing so so openly and and in a way that inspires.

Lisa Sherman: Thank you for having me. Thanks, Doug. You.