Cindy Moehring chats with Andrew Ciafardini, Chief Sustainability and Global Public Policy Officer at FIS to discuss his incredibly diverse career. Take a listen to their conversation that covers why ESG is here to stay for the long term, how fintech companies handle and implement ESG initiatives, and how fintech maintains data privacy.
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Episode Transcript
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0:00:15.4 Cindy Moehring: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The BIS, The Business Integrity School. And today we are very fortunate to have with us Andrew Ciafardini from FIS. Hi, Andrew, how are you?
0:00:27.1 Andrew Ciafardini: Hi, Cindy, glad to be with you.
0:00:28.7 Cindy Moehring: Good. Well, we are really glad to have you here to be able to hear from a fintech company, which we haven't yet on all things ESG, but before we jump into that, let me just tell you all a little bit about Andrew. He has a really fascinating background. So Andrew right now is the chief sustainability Officer and Head of Global Public Policy for FIS, a fintech company. They are a global leader in tech and solutions and services for merchants, banks and capital market businesses. In addition to his responsibilities for sustainability and global public policy, Andrew also oversees the risk departments, client relations and training and awareness functions. Prior to his time at FIS, he also was at Worldpay, and he spent some time at Chiquita brands. But here's the really interesting part, before he entered the private sector, he spent time as a public servant on both the legislative and executive side, including serving as a State Rep in Ohio. So Andrew, that is a really cool background. So what did you do on the executive side? Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about that, before you jumped over into the private sector.
0:01:35.6 Andrew Ciafardini: Sure, no, I've been very fortunate to have a very interesting career. One of my early bosses said Life is a series of adventures, and I certainly feel that that's how my career has been. So early on, I got involved in politics, worked for the now US senator from Ohio, senator Rob Portman, and that led me to working in Washington DC for seven years in the George W. Bush administration. So I had the chance to have a number of interesting roles in Washington DC, including helping the federal IT CIO for the federal government, as well as serving directly in the White House as a special assistant to the President for intergovernmental affairs. So it's been a lot of fun.
0:02:16.6 Cindy Moehring: So now you're in Ohio, I'm here in Arkansas, we're still dealing with the COVID environment and issue, but fortunate enough to be able to connect in this way, which is just, I think fantastic for the audience to be able to be able to hear from people who are all over the world, really on the important topic of this season, which is ESG. And we have interviewed some others I have for this season of the podcast, but they have not been in the fintech area, so again, I think it's gonna be really interesting to hear how a company in that space deals with ESG. I'm sure it's gonna be very different than what we've heard about... Kind of consumer products companies. But before we get into that, I always like the audience to get to know the guests a little bit more than just their bio or what you did in Washington DC. So how did you actually get into this particular space, Andrew, the ESG that goes along with the public policy space, how did your life journey lead you to that?
0:03:17.1 Andrew Ciafardini: Sure. No, it's a great question, and I think a lot about that a lot, and I've been really fortunate throughout my career to fall into some really interesting things, and part of that is because I'm driven to solve problems. And one of the opportunities that came about at FIS was that we were doing a lot of really interesting things, a lot of things in sustainability, a lot of things around ESG, different topics, but it wasn't being done across the business in a systemic and institutionalized way. And so when we identified that this was something that we needed to take on, my boss, the CEO, the Chief of Staff to the CEO, said, Hey, would you be willing to take this on? We think because of your background in communications in Public Policy and doing some of the philanthropy at a previous company called Worldpay, which FIS acquired could be really interesting for pulling this together.
0:04:08.2 Andrew Ciafardini: And so it was a great opportunity to sort of dive right in about two years ago and really help build this program up. And while there certainly have been a lot of people in sustainability in many different companies for decades, at a lot of the bigger companies, especially those that are in energy or those that have a major sort of physical impact in terms of the environment, many companies, there's not enough sort of supply and demand out there in terms of people that can actually pull this together. And I read an interesting document on the chief sustainability officer and the role, and it talked about... It was a combination of communications and marketing and public policy and all this stakeholder management. I'm like, That's all the things I've done, so that's how I fell into it, and I think it's what's enabled me to be successful so far in the role.
0:04:56.2 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that there are a number of roles in business now that are kind of focused on the stakeholder at large, where people are starting to get out of their silos and figure out, Hey, it's a lot better if we think about this from the company's perspective from a horizontal point of view, figure out all those connection points and maximize the resources we have internally that have some of these competencies that come to bear in several different areas, so that's really cool. That's also, I think it's good for students who are part of the audience here, to hear that career is not always linear and life is a journey, so being able to find your way along and focus on competencies while you're doing it is a... I think a good skill.
0:05:38.1 Andrew Ciafardini: I think when we think about that career ladders, I say I might not have been on the same ladder, but it's all... But I've jumped from ladder to ladder, and most of them have been incremental to the things that I've done right. So there haven't been far stretches, but they've really built that to your point, that's how you can make a really great and broad career.
0:05:56.1 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I would agree. So let's now start talking a little bit about ESG in particular. And I think sustainability, I think corporate social responsibility, even this broad view of corporations purposes to serve all stakeholders, all of that's kind of been a little bit on the side for many, many years. I think many would be of that opinion, but as of late it's really come into focus and it's kind of core, being seen as more core to what a company is by investors and by consumers and really by all the stakeholders. And my question for you is, have you watched that kind of evolution, can you identify a tipping point, or do you think there was a tipping point, or what kind of brought us to where we are today with a significance of ESG?
0:06:46.5 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, I think that's a great question, and I view it through a number of the lenses that we just talked about, both my public policy hat looking at this from a political standpoint, looking at it from a communication standpoint, and to your point, this idea of multiple stakeholders out there. And when we think about what ESG is all about, it's really about a larger set of stakeholders involved in capitalism. Some people call it stakeholder capitalism, not just necessarily shareholder, and obviously shareholders still, you've gotta do well financially before you can do well in many of your other things. But it's broadening that view of how these other stakeholders really should have a seat at the table, and how is your company responding to your overall societal impact.
0:07:33.2 Andrew Ciafardini: The stakeholders aren't just people, they are the environment too, for instance, is a stakeholder and stakeholder capitalism. And I think you see with the Business Roundtable, which is one of the leading business trade associations in Washington, representing many of the... Most of the Fortune 500 companies. A couple of years ago, they took a shift and say, Hey, the purpose of a corporation isn't necessarily only for shareholders, but also for these other stakeholders. And so they really talked about the purpose of a corporation, the World Economic Forum, which is the leading sort of business form of the World has made that shift as well. And so I do think it's here to stay for those reasons, because that is an acknowledgement of where society expects businesses to go.
0:08:18.6 Andrew Ciafardini: And one of the things I always remember in my communications days is Edelman, which is a big public relations... Always did a study about trust. And they rated government, they rated corporations, they rated all kinds of different institutions. Over the last 10 years, in particular, corporations were actually seen as most trusted by people and consumers and others. Why? Why, because many corporations around or many of ESG topics, were stepping up to solve problems that government wasn't willing to solve. But I think what you've seen is government nod and then that's where it translates over into the investor side, the shareholders, the Millennials, the Gen Z, say, Hey, we care about the environment, we care about this, and if government's not gonna do it, we're not gonna invest our money in a place that doesn't support what we think needs to get done in terms of your societal problems.
0:09:10.8 Andrew Ciafardini: So I think that's why the shift is happening, it's this virtuous cycle of pressure among pressure among, pressure that... And pressuring on these different stakeholder groups, and that's why I think it's gonna stay. We've got the momentum now. When did the shift happen? I would say the last five years, you've seen a significant shift because I think earlier, as we were talking before the podcast started, if you were in energy or heavy manufacturing, other things that had more clearly identifiable stakeholder issues or impacts, those are the kinds of companies that have had this kind of focus for years. Now every company has to have a focus on this, and when you think about climate change and hitting the goals of keeping the earth between 1.5 degree centigrade, the temperature rise under that, every business has to be part of that, not just certain businesses. So that's why I think some of these things are really taking that approach.
0:10:06.4 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I think you're right. And that Edelman Trust Barometer report, I still find that quite useful to take a look at, every year when it comes out. And one of the things that it made me think of just listening to you talk just then was, their finding... I think it was just last year when it was for corporations, if you really wanna create trust, you need to be both competent but also ethical. The ethical component of that, they found this time, was like 76% of the equation for companies. So again, I think that's sort of an indication of how important, making sure you listen to all of the stakeholders and represent all of their views at the table really are, if a corporation wants to be trusted.
0:10:52.5 Cindy Moehring: I think another really important thing from that report... And we'll talk a little bit about this more in our podcast here today, is how this whole topic of ESG really is not even gonna be able to be solved just by one company or just by the societal institution of corporations. Really it's gonna have to be collaboration between business and government and to some extent NGOs as well. And in COVID, I think we saw a little bit of that with businesses trying to fill in the gaps for where maybe they saw business slacking and trying to move a little bit quicker but hopefully, we'll see some additional collaborations in this overall space of ESG. So when you think about, Andrew, a fintech company, you think about ESG, it's gotta be a completely different lens than like a consumer products company. So I wanna spend a little time talking about all three parts of that, the E and the S and the G, but can you just take a step back first and tell us what are the issues within that overall big bucket that are the highest priority for a fintech company like FIS?
0:12:06.0 Andrew Ciafardini: It's a great question, and one I think about a lot. And as you may know, when you look at some of the different metric rating frameworks that we try to align to as an industry or as a company, particular SASB, that's Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. We're in the software and services industry, right? So the set of material issues that we have to think about as a fintech company may be different than a consumer package goods company, right. Not that they don't have some of the same issues, but there may be more material issues for them versus someone like us.
0:12:37.3 Andrew Ciafardini: Obviously, the biggest impact that probably a company like ours has is we are a huge consumer of energy. And while we're not shipping our products to you, we're not putting them on boats or planes or things because they're digitally delivered, it takes a lot of electricity to do that. And so that energy usage and the climate emissions that result from that are probably one of the top issues for us, right. And when we reported this year in our sustainability report for the first time, we broke out our data center energy used versus our overall use, and not surprisingly, it was the most of all of our energy use. Now, we'll see year over year, based on the fact that most people were working from home this year, maybe the facility energy goes up, but energy tends to be sort of a top one.
0:13:29.1 Andrew Ciafardini: For our industry, the S in terms of social meaning, Human Capital Management is probably one of the top things. And when we think about... When investors think about ESG, they're not just thinking about how are you... When we think about the word sustainability, it's not just about environmental sustainability, but it's the sustainability of your business. What are the risks to your business that if you don't tackle these things that your business model is not gonna be sustainable. So for instance, there is a huge competition for talent right now, as we all know. And if we didn't have as a company leading human capital management programs, leading inclusion and diversity programs, meaning robust inclusion networks, professional opportunities, mentoring, training on the employment side, and not just training for what you have to do to do your job, but really investing in people to think about longer term career training.
0:14:31.2 Andrew Ciafardini: Employee safety. When we went through COVID, we put our employees first and said, Hey, how do we make sure that we're creating safe work environments, how do we shift as many people as we can to home, that can work from home for those that have to be in the office. So those were some of those material topics that the rating agencies are saying, If you don't have good sustainable practices in these areas, you're gonna lose out and your business model is not gonna be sustainable. So those are two of the biggest ones for us. Governance on the governance sides for a fintech company, people think typically about some of the labor issues or the environmental issues, but core to societal purpose, for instance, for a company like ours is data privacy. We manage and protect a lot of financial data that moves around the globe. And so if we're not using that responsibly, if we're not using that in a way that's protective of the end consumer and our merchant and banking clients, then we don't have a right to operate. So that is a material ESG issue for us.
0:15:34.6 Andrew Ciafardini: And finally, one is on financial inclusion. So when we think about what is our purpose in society as a company? Right. Our purpose is to empower the digital economy, from banking services, to capital market services, to merchants, when you swipe that, we're... In the United States, one out of four credit card swipes you make is probably coming through our company, and what that means is that we have to be reliable and we have to make sure that no one is left behind in the digital economy. As cash gets less and less frequent, checks get less and less frequent, how are we making sure that nobody is left behind in every community going forward. So those are some of the societal things that we think about in our particular... For a fintech company.
0:16:13.6 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, it's funny when you would say that, 'cause I write checks very rarely anymore, I almost never carry cash, I try to have a few dollars in my pocket so that when I go through the car wash, I can at least tip the guys who are kind enough to dry the car, but it's just become, to your point, such a digital space that the paper check writing and carrying of cash almost feels a bit outdated, but that's a whole topic for another day. Let's though dig into a little bit on the governance side and data privacy, which is a huge, huge issue right now for pretty much any tech company. But can you share with us a little bit more about that with respect to data privacy, what FIS is doing, what progress have you really made in that space to drill down on data privacy as well as making sure that the other aspect, not just data privacy, but you're bringing... You're fulfilling your true purpose for those, particularly maybe the unbanked.
0:17:17.5 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, no, it's a great question. So first, if you really look in some of these talk, how... The way I structured our first two sustainability reports one we just published in June, and the previous one the June before. I structure actually the reports in the... Do the chapters in the order of sort of materiality in a way and make use of that, and number one goes to what we just talked about about making sure there's that financial inclusion going forward. The second chapter though, is just as important, which is protecting our clients in the financial system, because it's not just the data that we have for our clients, but we have to protect the whole financial system when we think about it. And so we're the custodians. Sometimes we're just processing that data for someone else, or sometimes we're holding the data for them. And privacy couldn't be more important. One of the things that obviously we've seen over the last five years is a plethora of privacy laws, both at the state level, there hasn't been one at the federal level in the US, but obviously Europe had GDPR, the rest of the world, is just a number... And really when we think about not only data privacy, but free speech, a whole bunch of other types of ESG issues, right, and social issues, the world is trying to figure out how to... What's the right balance, right?
0:18:38.1 Cindy Moehring: Right.
0:18:38.5 Andrew Ciafardini: What we put in our report this year, and we talked about it last year, there's a robust chapter, one, we have a lot of strong governance and oversite on how data can be used, and it starts with the client. How do they want us to use their data? What is the way... And if they do give us more permissions to use their data in other ways, how do we anonymize that data? And even when you think about data protection and data privacy, so after one of the big retailer breaches a number of years ago, part of the reason that a lot of retailers got breached was they were still using sort of regular credit card numbers. So what we do sometimes is we tokenize the number. So when it gets actually transmitted to us, it's no longer even stored in the system as a credit card number. It's stored in there so even if it's breached, it's really useless to the cyber criminals for the retailer going forward.
0:19:38.6 Andrew Ciafardini: So we think about this 360 approach that's really individual and consumer-driven, client-driven, and what we can use, and then making sure that when we have the data, how do we protect it as much as possible? And that also leads into operational resiliency where not only is it about protecting the data and the usage rights for it, but also making sure that it's the availability of that data, the uptime of that data, the uptime of our systems is really applicable.
0:20:05.9 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I just can't imagine how important operational resiliency is for a company like yours. When you think about what you just said, one in every four credit card swipes somewhere, FIS may be in that chain, realizing people really don't use checks and cash much anymore, and it is all digital, if that were to go down, that would have a huge effect on the economy. So let's talk for a minute about... Let's go back. And you talked also about the use of energy being one of the main issues in the data centers and how much energy they use. And so tell us a little bit more about that. Tell us about FIS' environmental footprint. What does that look like and what progress are you making to improve on that?
0:20:53.6 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, and this is an area that I think there's going to start to be some harmonization across the world as it comes to, how should you review reporting data? How do you do comparisons between companies? And there's a lot of... There's been a lot of development on this. The greenhouse gas protocol is, for instance, the protocol of the standards that we use to sort of measure our own emissions. Because the usage of energy in itself isn't necessarily bad, it's the emissions that are caused by the energy. And so, if you could get renewable energy, wind, solar, hydro from your local utility, technically, that would be essentially net zero emissions into the atmosphere. So if you had a... One of your data center's powered by that, you really are not putting any emissions into the atmosphere on that. But that's obviously not the case in the United States that every local power plant can do. It's not the case, really worldwide. And that's one of the things that... So as we think about, how do we address this, what is the biggest thing that we can do as a company to offset or mitigate that energy use?
0:22:07.8 Andrew Ciafardini: So obviously, I was just on the phone with our CIO of the company a couple of days ago, we started talking about, Okay, as we do upgrades in our data centers, how do we make sure that we're buying the energy-efficient power backup systems? How do we make sure that we're replacing all of the lighting with LED lighting? Could we start installing solar panels on these so that we can bring some of the consumption in-house, the power generation in-house? But that's really about reduction and efficiency. But our big strategy is, how do we get to 100% renewable usage across our footprint? And that's a commitment that we made back in March. We made several commitments. One, we said we're gonna offset and get to carbon neutrality for our scope one and two emissions, which are getting largely around the energy use. Two, we're gonna try to get to 100% renewable energy by 2025 along with the carbon neutrality. And three, we're gonna set science-based targets in line with the Paris Climate Accord.
0:23:06.6 Andrew Ciafardini: So climate, and we earlier talked about that, it's about keeping the Earth from warming another 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do that, every country has to have a national contribution, that means every company as a percentage has to do a certain amount to get there. But to get there, it's gonna be tricky over the next five years, not just for us, but for every company. Because so many companies are making these commitments, but there's not enough supply of renewable energy in the market today. And so what I think you're gonna see as a rapid market development of these energy projects. There's gonna be a fuel of investment to really ramp all of this supply up not only for the United States, but globally.
0:23:52.2 Andrew Ciafardini: How interesting. You talked about harmonization, 'cause there are so many different rating agencies out there and standards that they look at, and the benefit that that harmonization may create. Just last week, Gary Gensler, the SEC said he's gonna have his staff start looking at whether or not public companies should be required to report in a consistent way, potentially all the way to scope three emissions for energy use. What do you think about whether or not that's needed in terms of regulatory, or do you think that in the spirit of collaboration, companies as a whole, multinationals can help with the winnowing down of what the transparent harmonization of the standards should be? Where do you come out on that?
0:24:46.3 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, there's been a private sector effort even among the framework agencies to try to drive some harmonization between themselves, and obviously there is some market incentive not to do that as well, because there's a whole industry that's growing up around this with a little bit of different and a little bit of a... Different weightings on different kinds of standards and what one group may want over the other in terms of being the right one. But you also have Europe considering European standard, there's other regions of the world, APAC Lat Am, everything that you've got to think about as well. From what I hear, I think companies, at least in the United States, would love to have a one or two stakes in the ground that they could sort of center around. And in FIS, we've taken sort of a blended approach over the last couple of years of a blended SASB and GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative framework, to meet the needs of our European investors as well as the US investors, and trying to take a blended approach on that.
0:25:54.6 Andrew Ciafardini: But I don't know if all the global regulators will be able to agree in a short period of time on that. So I think if the SEC puts down a stake in that, I think it will be... And I think they will be due by the fall. We think that there will be a promulgation of those initial rules. Now, the question is, are they more principal-based? Are they more prescriptive?
0:26:17.4 Cindy Moehring: Right.
0:26:18.7 Andrew Ciafardini: I think that that is the big question. And do they align to an existing standard, like the greenhouse gas protocol and other things like that? Because as we talked about it earlier, it is hard to compare apples and oranges. And even when you think about when we went through our emissions and breaking out the data centers this year, I asked our consultants, I said, "Well, tell me the definition of a data center that should be included under the greenhouse gas protocol?" And the problem there isn't a specific definition. So is a server closet with 15 servers in it a data center, or? And so there's still, I think today, even with the advancement of the accounting around greenhouse gases and emissions, there's still a lot more questions and flexibility to really drive full comparisons. But we'll get there. I mean this is not unlike financial reporting early on in its early days.
0:27:17.8 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I think you're right, but I would agree with you as much as we all may like to think, there could be one global standard and that would make it easier for everyone, I'm not so sure that we'll get there. It may be country-specific and still trying to figure out how to have a blended approach to meet the global standards. Love to watch that unfold. So the other thing that I think is somewhat interesting is for reporting, we're talking now about the climate and what those reporting requirements may be, and there certainly are a lot of governance reporting requirements and financial reporting, social issues that the S in ESG is something that hasn't yet been picked up on by the regulators in terms of thinking about how to report out on that. So I guess a couple of things come to mind for me in that bucket. One is, do you think that there will still be, for example, that sustainability reports that may focus more on the social issues, what consumers may wanna know that would be separate from a reporting regime for... Imposed by regulators? How are the social issues in ESG gonna get picked up for transparency purposes?
0:28:32.2 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, so I think it's a great question. So there are... So I do think in terms of what the SEC is thinking about in particular, is around diversity and inclusion metrics in particular, and they did have some guidance earlier this year around, or maybe it was last year, around how to describe a little bit more around your human capital management strategy and we're voluntary right now, but there was sort of, "Here's the guidelines in which you should disclose these particular things." And so I think diversity and inclusion metrics will be one that the government will probably maybe request. Obviously many federal contractors, public companies report their EEO-1, which is a complete breakdown that's not usually a public document, although a lot of investors and others are requesting that, and if you're a federal contractor, I could see the Biden Administration... They don't go all the way with the SEC. And all public companies using the federal contracting lever to pull companies to move out on that. Interestingly, you're right that there are some clearly defined human capital management metrics when we think about talent, they wanna talk... Disclose some of the frameworks, not the government, but retention rates, your employee engagement rates, how engaged are your employees, and what's the standard for how that's really calculated though, and it's different in a lot of companies.
0:29:55.9 Andrew Ciafardini: What is your rate of hiring in certain under-represented minority groups or in gender? There's numbers that we talked about training and learning, like how many hours of non-mandatory training is being taken, how many courses do you offer? So there is a whole litany of metrics around those particular places. There are also around labor management issues with organized labor and different things like that as well. So it will be interesting to see where they go. Interestingly enough, you may remember many years ago before sort of this idea of more formal reporting on ESG and aligned to frameworks, most companies did corporate citizenship report or something that was more focused on philanthropy and community.
0:30:42.3 Cindy Moehring: Yes.
0:30:42.8 Andrew Ciafardini: I think we're just seeing more and more that that has sort of evolved into a more robust ESG report. So to answer your question, I don't think we'll see it separating out because it has to be a narrative. You have to tell the whole story. I like to say internally, the company, that our sustainability report is about transparency and telling people where we are today, but also an aspirational document on where we want to be and who we want to be. Because not every company is going to have great metrics to disclose on some of these challenges that they face, but that disclosure builds the trust that you were talking about before, and if you have the trust, then that goes a long way with all of your stakeholders going forward.
0:31:28.4 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, and if you can show progress and at least you are aware of the issues and you're working on them, then stakeholders are gonna be more likely to go on that journey with you. So that's interesting, we may end up having as a bit of a blended approach, even on what gets reported out, there will be so much required, but then companies will, to the extent of materiality on the remaining issues and the litany of the social issues that you just listed off, volunteer, be more transparent and be very authentic and say, "Here's what we're required to tell you, but there's all this other information that we know you'd like to know, and we're gonna put all of that together," and it may be more of a blended, required and voluntary reporting that we see. So that'll be very interesting to watch all of this evolve. It's a very fast-moving field, I would say. Andrew, this has been a great conversation. One last question I always like to ask my guests before I let you go is, for some recommendations for folks who wanna learn a little bit more about this space, do you have any good books you've read lately, or podcasts that you could maybe recommend, or a good documentary for somebody that wants to go a little deeper, either on ESG generally, or how it relates to FinTech companies or any of that?
0:32:43.0 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, so I think if there's something very quick and most people would have it on-demand or YouTube it even, the 60 Minutes episode where Bill Gates talks about what's coming and how he sees sort the green revolution, for lack of a better term, and I think he does a nice job sort of future-gazing of how things will evolve over time. He's obviously written a book as well about these topics. There are plenty of... I learn every day there are plenty of documentaries on all of the streaming services that I'm not gonna recommend one in particular because some of them can be very outlandish and some of them can be very... And I know the truth is always somewhere in the middle of some of these things. But there is... The Bill Gates interview is, if you want sort of a snapshot, a sort of...
0:33:39.1 Cindy Moehring: That was a good one.
0:33:41.4 Andrew Ciafardini: Yeah, and it's not long and it's easy to watch.
0:33:42.7 Cindy Moehring: It is, and it really makes... I thought it was very... He was very plain spoken in that, so it was very... It was engaging. I actually saw that one live too. That's a great recommendation. Well, good. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for helping us understand the whole world of ESG and how that relates with the FinTech industry, I really appreciate it, and we're very fortunate as well to count your CEO as one of Walton College's alumni, and I'm also very fortunate to have your CIO, Kara Hill, on our external advisory board. So I appreciate you spending some time with us today and talking deeply about the topic of ESG.
0:34:27.3 Andrew Ciafardini: And on that point, this really has been... Our CEO, Gary Norcross, is why the company has made so much progress on ESG, and that commitment has to start from the top, and it has to be not just about meeting an expectation but doing the right thing. And he just talked about that this morning on one of our leadership calls. So I'm glad he's on the board there, and that Kara is on it as well.
0:34:51.2 Cindy Moehring: Yeah we're very fortunate. Well, thank you, Andrew, this has been a true pleasure, I appreciate your time.
0:34:57.3 Andrew Ciafardini: Alright, thanks, Cindy.
0:34:57.4 Cindy Moehring: Alright, bye-bye.
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Cindy Moehring is the founder and executive chair of the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative
at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She recently
retired from Walmart after 20 years, where she served as senior vice president, Global
Chief Ethics Officer, and senior vice president, U.S. Chief Ethics and Compliance
Officer.
