In 2019, Bishop T.D. Jakes attended a Black Economic Alliance event in Martha’s Vineyard with top executives from Goldman Sachs and the Ford Foundation. It focused on issues affecting the Black community, including the digital divide, where he learned that the majority of future jobs would require a background in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Despite not having a background in STEM, he founded the T.D. Jakes Foundation to help bridge the gap between the powerful and the less powerful. 

 “STEM was not the challenge of my generation,” he explains. “But I believe that leadership sees a problem and then seeks to solve it. I have a responsibility to see how I can leverage my platform to solve it. For me, that platform is the millions of people I interact with on social media, many of whom would not follow events at Martha’s Vineyard. I wanted to be a part of the solution.”  

 Jakes lives at the intersection of two worlds. As a company CEO, bestselling author, and Hollywood movie producer, he rubs shoulders with the business elite. As a senior pastor of a large church, he interacts with community members each Sunday, seeking hope and guidance. This balance of grounded realism and heady idealism has given Jakes the means to identify grassroots problems and leverage big business to solve it.

 “The best way for a leader to leave an indelible impression is not to inspire with a speech but to move forward with action,” he explains. “When I sit down with CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, I’m encouraged that many recognize that profit margins are not the only considerations for remaining relevant in the 21st century. They increasingly understand that their success is intertwined with the betterment of the community. The customer feeds the company, but the company also has to feed the customer. They are interdependent.” 

 At Jakes’s church, even though its doors are closed, the church continues to respond to the needs of members and the surrounding community. “We’ve been able to reinvent ourselves through technology successfully,” he says. “Through digital connections, we have been able to serve more than 7,000 freshly cooked meals to first responders in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and distribute more than 10,000 boxes of fresh food to our community members.

 “We have to be intentional about closing digital divides and other societal gaps,” he continues. “My children are grown, and I’m a grandfather, but I can’t be isolated from these concerns because what affects one of us affects all of us.” The trait that Jakes most admires in a leader can be summed in a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem: “To walk with kings and not lose the common touch.” And another that reads, “To be relatable and engaged rather than to be idolized.” 

 “I admire leaders who are comfortable in any setting,” explains Jakes. “Whether it be among the wealthy and influential or those on the lower rungs of society. These leaders strive to do more for humanity. Randall Stephenson, the former CEO of AT&T, comes to mind. For several years, we’ve been collaborating on how to solve the nation’s criminal justice problems through the Texas Offenders Reentry Initiative (TORI),
a national award-winning program for returning citizens that I founded. I love seeing leaders go the extra mile. As CEO of one of the nation’s largest companies, Randall didn’t have to work with me on this issue.
He could easily have looked the other way.” 

Inspired by the reinvention around him, Jakes is partnering with major companies such as Lifetime and Sony to produce films in conjunction with his for-profit, T.D. Jakes Enterprises. The movies are designed to entertain but also conceived as vehicles for disseminating uplifting messages. “I think such partnerships demonstrate how corporations recognize the need for partnerships with community leaders,” says Jakes. “It shows that they understand the benefits of building alliances with trusted brands
that influence everyday people. For me, it is an opportunity to communicate messages of hope through new platforms.”

Peter Diamandis is the founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. If there’s one thing Diamandis understands about innovation, it’s that it needs to be incentivized.

Since 1994, the XPRIZE has launched over $140 million in prize purses, including the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE, the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, and the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XPRIZE. As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started more than 20 companies in longevity, space, venture capital, and education. 

 In mid-March of this year, when the COVID-19 pandemic was in full bloom, Diamandis received a call from two friends, Lou Reese and Mei Mei Hu, co-CEOs of United Biomedical, a synthetic peptide diagnostic and vaccine company. “They reminded me that their company had developed a SARS vaccine 20 years ago, but because SARS did not become a pandemic, it didn’t require production of a vaccine,” recalls Diamandis. “Our discussion quickly turned to COVID-19, and we decided on that call to attempt a COVID-19 vaccine. In early April, we started a company called COVAXX and capitalized it within 45 days.”

 Their proprietary platform has developed 30 different vaccines using synthetic peptide vaccine technology, which is super low cost, safe, and extremely effective, and they’ve entered pre-clinical testing. Currently, they’re conducting human trials and plan to have 100 million doses manufactured in Q1 2021.

 Being so close to the search for a cure, Diamandis feels hopeful at the speed at which they identify and solve problems. “People forget how rapidly we went from identifying a lack of ventilators to having companies and teams around the world design and manufacture ventilators at scale,” he says. “We went from having no vaccines for COVID-19 to more than 150 in development in less than four months. The rate at which entrepreneurs using exponential technologies can address and solve problems is staggering.” 

Diamandis is also moved by how the world responded to the tragic murder of George Floyd. “People are using their voices and platforms to demand justice and equality, educate each other, and listen with an open mind,” he says. It may not be all of society, but the combination of COVID-19, the need for racial and social equality, getting our economy running, and the ability to discuss everything on social media, has awakened many people to no longer be silent. People are now standing up for what’s right.”

 He feels it’s critically important that leaders inspire and guide people toward a compelling future. “For me, it’s about having a bold vision that inspires not only a person’s mind, but also their heart. I admire the ability of leaders to listen and hear the concerns of the people they lead with empathy. And to help those individuals imagine a hopeful and compelling future for themselves, their families, and their communities.”

 Importantly, Diamandis also admires leaders with an ability to create the future, not just let it happen to them. “We need people who can bring the capital, the technology, the people, and the mindset to get results. Real leaders have a massively transformative purpose. They’re not doing something to make money. They’re not doing something just to sell a widget. They have a meaningful purpose in their life that is bigger than themselves, inspiring them to wake up every day with determination. Through that sense of purpose, leaders inspire their teams and their companies to do extraordinary things: dream the biggest dreams to make a dent in the universe.”

Being an author and speaker, and holding seminars with her husband, Tony Robbins, is a large part of what keeps Sage Robbins motivated during tough times. With the external world reeling from the isolation of a global quarantine and everyone’s daily lives disrupted beyond recognition, what gives Robbins hope is knowing that life is always bigger than any problem we will ever face — whether personally, in our families, at work, or collectively. 

 “There are seasons and stages to life,” she says. “No matter what education level we have, where we are from, how we grew up, or the shade of our skin, we will all experience ups-and-downs and the growing pains of different seasons of our life cycle. There are certainly those of us who may prefer summer over winter, or fall to spring, but each season offers us the gift of growth, insight, life experience, and a broader perspective.” 

 If we are metaphorically in winter right now, then Robbins thinks this is a calling to come inside, to go within, to reflect, to slow down. “It’s a time to become more efficient, reconnect to a higher purpose, and prepare for the road ahead,” she explains. Many people innocently believe that if they yell loud and long enough, or perhaps destroy something or someone else, they’ll be seen and heard. In Robbins’ personal life, yelling can sometimes make the people she loves tune out or walk away, or even fight back. “There are parallels to the world stage in our inner world and with our families,” she says. “It’s all a part of the human condition.” 

 “As a business owner and leader, I feel there is power in recognizing our humanness. We are better off recognizing our strengths and also our blind spots.” Robbins points to the strange reality of social media and news platforms that attempt to tear us down for being precisely what we are — human. “There is an unrealistic expectation for people in leadership roles to be ‘perfect’ and not make mistakes, or without errors in the past,” explains Robbins. “In my experience, goodness does not equal perfection. Rather, it’s a trajectory of growth, evolution, a path forward, and a willingness to see one’s whole self and learn from mistakes. There is such a power to stand in our center with nothing to defend. I certainly didn’t get here by being a perfect human, far from it. I’ve failed, I’ve fallen, I’ve missed. The pain of those situations called to me and awakened me to do my part. It made me take responsibility for what I was missing.”

 According to Robbins, as old structures fall away, the process can be painful, messy, clunky, frustrating, and awkward. This is especially true if we focus on what was, rather than switching toward what life has to offer now. “Leaders recognize that new decisions and actions need to be made to serve the present,” says Robbins. “As much as the death of the old can be uncomfortable, we humans are incredibly adaptable, intelligent, and inventive. Understanding the seasons of transformation and cycles of life allows us to acknowledge that what was, may never be again. We often think of transitions in terms
of life and death, the end of a relationship, or loss of a job, but life is usually more nuanced than that.” 

 Robbins doesn’t think we got to where we are today by being perfect and safe. “We got here by having the courage to step into the unknown and take a leap of faith, despite the adversity. If we develop the willingness to embrace the natural seasons of life, we can lead those we love with grit and grace into the next season of growth and re-creation.”

“No one wants to hire you when your resume says ‘served as a monk for three years,’” says Jay Shetty, who at 26 years old, was $25,000 in debt and living with his parents. He was directionless, depressed, and confused about his purpose and working 80-hour weeks. He felt like he wasn’t living up to his potential and knew he had more to offer.

Ten media companies rejected Shetty when he pitched them on his mindfulness-based video ideas. Three media executives told him he was unqualified and too old to have a career in media. Now a highly successful purpose coach with more than 3.5 million followers on YouTube, Shetty believes that self-awareness can change how you see everything.

 Despite the global pandemic, lots of things give him hope. “During my monk training, we learned the importance of perspective and not getting wrapped up in the high emotions of what’s happening at the moment,” he says. “There’s a lot of research on storytelling and the brain — that we create stories to make meaning and sense — but it doesn’t take a scientist to understand that we are storytelling creatures. One thing that’s especially useful right now is that this current global story is still unfolding. As Steve Jobs said: ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.’ It’s easy to try and jump to conclusions or to tell a negative story about what’s happening, but we have the power to shape our narratives. Science also tells us something else we know from experience: Generally, change feels bad, even if it’s for the better. But we can choose to see things differently. We can look at many things that are happening right now and choose to see opportunities.”

 A recent article in Forbes pointed to companies showing primary interest in people over profit right now. The author, Adam Grant, reckoned that these companies would do best when economies around the world start to rebound because people — employees and consumers—will remember how they were treated. “Standing by your people and everyone who makes your business successful isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a smart business decision,” says Shetty.

 Shetty came across some interesting research that shows concrete strategies to perpetuate hope. Brain research from the lab of neuroscientist Andrew Huberman at Stanford University shows that what keeps people engaged in challenging tasks in the long term —whether it’s an extreme endurance sporting event or something like what we are facing now — is to receive little dopamine hits along the way. It balances our adrenaline, which would otherwise have us give up at some point. “What’s fascinating to me from a corporate and from a leadership perspective is that some of the things they’ve identified as helping to administer these dopamine hits are a feeling of teamwork and group cohesion, a feeling of being supported, and a feeling of purpose,” says Shetty. “There are others, including laughter and play, that leaders can
key into, too.” 

Fabien Cousteau’s hope for our planet lies in a revolutionary underwater research station and habitat where the world’s best thinkers can address humanity’s most pressing concerns.

As a renowned third-generation ocean explorer and environmentalist, Cousteau’s PROTEUS™ project, in conjunction with his non-profit, the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, will work on viruses and cancers, examining chemical compositions that might deliver results in weeks rather than years. PROTEUS™ will also tackle food sustainability and climate change.

 Cousteau likens PROTEUS™ to an underwater version of the International Space Station, a platform for global collaboration among the world’s leading researchers, academics, government agencies and corporations. At a time when humanity is still reeling from the COVID pandemic, Cousteau believes PROTEUS™ — and the promise of the ocean — hold critical answers for the future.

 “I’m continuously inspired and impressed by the young creators I meet through the FCOLC’s programs — artists, activists, scientists — and what they are speaking up about,” Cousteau tells Real Leaders. “Creating a planet where our younger generations can grow up to live more sustainably and in balance with, versus against, the environment and each other remains a constant motivator.”

 PROTEUS™ will be located off the coast of Curaçao in a biodiverse Marine Protected Area, about 60 feet deep (equivalent to three atmospheres). Equipped with state-of-the-art labs and the latest in freezers, microscopes, and other technologies, Cousteau says PROTEUS™ will host scientists, private companies, and NGOs who need to complete years’ worth of research in days. He expects the lab’s biggest impacts to come in ocean conservation; renewable clean energy including solar, wind, and ocean thermal energy conversion; and food advancements such as hydroponics and aquaculture. The findings will be transmitted to land via daily live video streams, social media, and news stories.

  “We are living in extreme, complicated, difficult times,” he says. “We are witnessing daily the need for disruptive solutions.” Cousteau believes this is our chance to refill the Earth’s capital.

 “We can and should be innovative, disruptive, and bolster new industries creating a just, fair, and vibrant economy based on valuing all life and the lifeblood — the ocean — that sustains it,” he says. “Much like this pandemic, climate change is indeed personal. It impacts each of us daily and in our own homes.”

The role of real leaders in all of this is to lead by example and practice what they preach, he continues, explaining that this type of leadership is what perpetuates hope in companies and communities. “I was raised with an understanding of the importance of the ocean — that ocean health is human health,” Cousteau says. “This awareness consciously guides so many of my actions, from recycling to being aware of the foods that I put in my body that are low-impact to the environment. As a real leader, it is my responsibility to put my values into action and hopefully inspire others to do the same.”

To function as a real leader requires tenacity, inquisitiveness, and inclusivity, he says. “A real leader must push boundaries but do so in a manner that inspires and motivates others,” Cousteau says. 

What does he want our world’s real leaders to understand about his work? That the ocean is our life support system and is indispensable to solving the planet’s biggest problems. 

“Challenges created by climate change, rising sea levels, extreme storms, and viruses represent a multi-trillion-dollar risk to the global economy,” says Cousteau. “The knowledge that will be uncovered underwater will forever change the way generations of humans live up above.”

American entertainment reporter, television personality, professional wrestler, actress, and businesswoman, Maria Menounos knows how to keep variety in her life. When the pandemic started, she began a daytime show, Better Together, as a weekly journey through health, wellness, spirituality, career, relationships, and finances.

“What I want to do is expose people to top experts and allow them to have that “a-ha” moment without going through a near-death experience like the brain tumors my mom and I incurred,” she explains.  

“In March, when the pandemic hit, I knew we would all face challenges like never before. Jobs would be lost; uncertainty and depression would soar,” she says. The show has brought inspiration, healing and sanity to more than 13 million viewers across all platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. She also recently inked deals with GSTV and Coinstar to reach another 145 million viewers a month — to receive branded Better Together tips at gas stations and supermarkets across the country. “Instead of focusing on all the many things we can’t do in these challenging times, we spend our energy focusing on the things we can do.” 

Menounos believes that people are inherently good. “We all come from different backgrounds and are shaped by different sets of experiences, but there is so much good in the world. We need to listen to and understand each other.” Menounos thinks honesty is paramount. The best leaders work together on solutions, recognizing that tough moments are an opportunity to grow and be better. “Strong leaders aren’t afraid to make tough decisions. They have a way of cutting through their fears and all the noise to get the job done. They look at all the facts and make the best decisions they can at the moment.”

Rebecca Henderson is a renowned Harvard professor who debunks prevailing norms with a new outlook and a practical way forward. She believes this way of thinking is an antidote for a system that has lost its moral and ethical foundation. Her arguments, as she teaches the MBA program at Harvard Business School, are a clarion call for reimagining and remaking capitalism. Beri Meric, cofounder of IVY, asked her about the role of capitalism.

What has been great about capitalism so far?

Capitalism is probably the greatest invention of the human race. If you think about what’s happened in the last 50 years, the population of the earth has approximately tripled, and GDP has quintupled. So, simultaneously, as we’ve got more and more mouths to feed, we’ve generated more and more prosperity. The turn to capitalism in China brought a billion people out of poverty in the last 20 years. 

What are the shortcomings, and how can capitalism be improved?

Inequality is a big issue. We’ve generated enormous prosperity across the world, but in many countries, particularly the United States and the UK, that prosperity has not been widely shared. So, there’s a significant fraction of the population that hasn’t seen a real increase in their standard of living for the last 20 years.
And many people are losing hope.

Where do the new opportunities lie?

Reach out to other people in your industry and ask, “Are there problems we can address together that will make us all better off? And can we join together to do that?” That could mean addressing human rights abuses if you’re a mining company, or committing to purchase sustainable palm oil if you’re a consumer goods company. We’re seeing these kinds of coalitions spring up across all sorts of industries. They’re good for everyone in the industry, and no one is at a disadvantage by participating.

There are billion-dollar business models on the other side, but you need to have the courage and the focus to go and get them.