Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and board member of Alphabet Inc., and Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, speak with Jenna Gilbert of Human Rights First.
Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Accenture’s Julie Sweet And More Than 30 Others Are Bringing Private Sector Muscle To A Very American (Yet Controversial) Cause.
As President Biden announced last Tuesday that the U.S. would again admit up to 125,000 displaced refugees over the next 12 months, the announcement rang hollow; after all, only 20,000 were actually processed the previous year. Policy without execution is worthless—and now an expansive group of top entrepreneurs and corporate leaders has emerged to try to make this goal a logistical reality.
Meet the CEO Council, 36 top corporate leaders, led by Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Accenture’s Julie Sweet, now serving as private sector ballast in support of Welcome.US, the nonprofit organized by Bush and Obama administration veterans last year to help resettle refugees. The CEO group has been quietly operating for the past six months—but Pichai and Sweet now feel compelled to speak out about their efforts.
“When these are people here, how do you help them settle down?” says Pichai, as he sat at Google’s dazzling Pier 57 event space in New York, where Google and Accenture hosted an all-day clinic to help 22 refugees and their families get through the asylum application process. “Everybody understands the scale challenge.”
Welcome.US itself launched last year based on the concept that the U.S. government needed help just to integrate some 80,000 Afghan refugees, many of who had assisted the U.S. military during its two-decade stay there. And then came the Ukraine war, which further underscored the urgency—and the need for the private sector. Welcome.US CEO Nazanin Ash approached Sweet, whose company was already mobilizing around this cause, and Sweet in turn looped in Pichai, an immigrant himself who had also become involved.
“I think we’d all seen that the system itself wasn’t scalable, and there was a role for business,” says Sweet. “And Sundar and I talked about it then to say, ‘Is this something that really could lead to not just a one-time intervention, but scale and a change?”
They got a quick answer, initially targeting 25 CEOs to join, an effort that was quickly “oversubscribed,” as Sweet put it. The roster of now 36 leaders reads like a 21st century business who’s who: Founders like Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Snap’s Evan Spiegel and Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya; corporate titans like Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and Walmart’s Douglas McMillon; and Wall Street rainmakers like Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and AIG’s Peter Zaffino.
What followed, as Pichai and Sweet discuss it, sounds similar to the children’s book Stone Soup, where hungry people, with some coaxing, each supply one ingredient, unwittingly creating a meal for all. In this version, it’s $179 million in contributions, mostly in-kind. “Most companies were, in some ways, thinking about what to do,” says Pichai.
With the first goal to integrate these refugees, tens of thousands have received Google Pixel phones, along with a T-Mobile data plan, HP Inc. laptops with Comcast service plans and so on. The second goal: finding them jobs—also a service to American employers desperate to fill roles—with Pfizer, Manpower Group and Chobani taking leadership roles in terms of hiring.
Perhaps the most important goal, ultimately: changing public perception. Ask Sweet and Pichai about steering their companies into the backwards politics of immigration, and they squirm. Of course, the real answer, however impolitic, is that refugees shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s as American as apple pie—Emma Lazarus, anyone?—and it’s good business, too. Labor shortages aside, immigrants, particularly skilled ones, historically prove net job creators, as the ranks of The Forbes 400 bear out. “Citizens, communities, the private sector, civic institutions, are ahead of policymakers and politicians in their willingness to welcome,” says Ash.
Indeed, perhaps the biggest boosters of the CEO Council: employees, who appreciate their bosses taking a principled stand. The clinic at the Google offices required a host of volunteers: lawyers to file the asylum applications, but also people who can help newcomers fill out forms that can otherwise seem baffling to non-native speakers. Pichai considers such voluntarism good team-building, especially for a more hybrid workforce. “I actually find a lot more engagement and a set of shared bonding when we work on projects like this, he says.
“Americans want to help,” adds Sweet. “And this is something that, internally, companies were looking for. ‘Yes, I will write a check, but what I want is also an opportunity to touch lives.’”
One more dividend: building corporate muscle memory in a world where a new challenge seems to pop up monthly, and where private leadership, especially as a coalition, can offset government paralysis. “We had anticipated doing it, so that we could be ready for additional crises,” says Sweet. “We hadn’t anticipated Ukraine would happen when it did. But it was amazing to have the foundations in place.”
This article was first published on forbes.com