“Build Back Better” has been a rallying cry in the disaster recovery community for 15 years. What began as an exhortation to construct stronger buildings and roads following hurricanes and earthquakes has grown into a broader mandate: to make communities more resilient by revitalizing local economies while preserving natural resources. President Joe Biden has adopted the phrase, first as a campaign slogan and later as a name for his sweeping economic and infrastructure agenda.
But building back “better” feels like a vague and woefully inadequate directive. Communities are still confronting the COVID-19 health crisis while also wrestling with an uneven economic resurgence, racial and gender inequities, and the alarming rate of global warming that has led to one weather-related disaster after another. So we asked the Fast Company Impact Council—an invitation-only group of forward-thinking corporate and nonprofit leaders, CEOs, innovators, and founders—to help provide a clearer road map for recovery. In a series of conversations, they highlighted achievable changes that could enable institutions and society to emerge from the pandemic as more sustainable, more adaptable, and more inclusive.
Corporations and fast-growth companies are well positioned to lead the charge. They’ve moved from pledging to address racism and sexism in their own ranks—which they’ll admit is still a work in progress—to using corporate power and scale to close opportunity gaps that only widened during the pandemic. “Building, fostering, and advancing a pipeline of diverse talent and teams is key to an equitable recovery,” says Kathryn Guarini, chief information officer at IBM, which is partnering with historically Black colleges and universities and nonprofits to offer skills training and jobs. Jennifer Johnson, CEO of asset manager Franklin Templeton, says that the company can support, through its mutual funds and other instruments, investments for a new generation of companies working to increase “the attraction, recruitment, and development of underrepresented communities.”
Newer companies say that they can address social ills in a long-term way by building sustainability and trust into their products from the outset. Sridhar Ramaswamy, cofounder and CEO of Neeva, is developing an ad-free private search engine—in contrast with big tech companies that monetize users’ data. Stuart Landesberg, cofounder and CEO of natural goods startup Grove Collaborative, is trying to eliminate single-use plastic packaging, which harms the environment and wildlife. As Gregg Renfrew, founder and CEO of clean beauty brand Beautycounter notes, “Today you have companies that, in their DNA, are trying to solve problems in the world—the business itself is an engine for change.”
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