You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 4: Jennifer Sey - Dare to Sey!

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

My guest today is Jennifer Sey, an American author, filmmaker, business executive and a retired artistic gymnast, who was the 1986 USA National Champion. Jennifer began working at Levi’s in 1999, rising to Chief Marketing Officer and then Global Brand President.  She was fired from Levi's last year after speaking out against the lockdowns and specifically the harms caused to children in San Francisco; Public schools were closed for 19 months during Covid in San Francisco for 50,000+ children: the longest closure in the world, while (privileged) private schools opened up in 2020. Most of the affected children are underprivileged, and for them Jennifer fought while exposing the hypocrisy of the "Liberal Democrats" who pretend to advocate for equality & equity, and exposing the woke culture, both of Levis and the public. Jennifer refused an exit grant of 1 million dollars (!!!) in exchange for her silence, because her story and her mission are more important than money. Her recent book, “Levi’s Unbuttoned,” tells the inspirational story of her corporate career, search for authenticity, and ultimate refusal to bow to the woke mob. We talked about: Career path at Levis, their response to Jennifer’s views Levis’ $1m offer to self-censor California’s Covid restrictions, public schools closures Democrats hypocrisy in the US Free speech, media manipulation Labeling & damaging one’s reputation  “Viewpoint discrimination” Twitter’s new CEO “Woke washing”: Diversity & Inclusion, ESG  Predictions for the US Corporate America workforce Bud Light & Target failed marketing campaigns I hope you enjoy the show; please share it forward, leave a review and make sure your voice is heard! ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, subscribe and support my work. Thank you! -- SPONSORS -- ►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the latest episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): ⁠⁠⁠https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn⁠⁠⁠  -- LINKS -- Jennifer’s ⁠Twitter⁠ | Jennifer’s ⁠SubStack⁠ Efrat's Twitter:⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/efenigson⁠⁠⁠ Efrat's Telegram:⁠⁠⁠ https://t.me/efenigson⁠⁠⁠ Watch/listen on all platforms:⁠⁠⁠ https://linktr.ee/yourethevoice⁠⁠⁠ Support Efrat's work:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support Efrat with Bitcoin:⁠⁠⁠ https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson⁠⁠

Hello, dear friends and freedom lovers, and welcome to You're the Voice, the podcast that reminds you how important your voice is and the role you play in the world. My name is Efrat and I'm an independent journalist and podcaster with background in tech and marketing. I've transitioned into journalism when the gap left by the mainstream media and censorship was too big to bear. In this series, I interview intriguing humans, putting the spotlight on their stories and views. My guest today is Jennifer Say, an American author, filmmaker, business executive, and a retired autistic gymnast who was the 1986 USA National Champion. Her first memoir, Chalked Up, detailed the coaching cruelty inflicted on children in the sport of gymnastics, and her 2020 Emmy Award-winning documentary, Athlete A, exposed abuses in the Olympic movement.

Jennifer began working at Levi's in 1999, rising to chief marketing officer and then global brand president. In January 22, she was asked to resign because of her public opposition to the extended closure of San Francisco's public schools. Her most recent book, Levi's Unbuttoned, tells the inspirational story of her corporate career, search for authenticity, and ultimate refusal to bow to the woke mob. Jennifer is a mother of four and now resides in Denver with her family. I hope you enjoy the show. Please share it forward and remember, you're the voice. Jennifer Say, thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

I'm so happy to have it. I'm thrilled to meet you. And here in Israel, this is such a surprise to have you come here. It's amazing. So the moment I read in your blog that you were coming to Israel, I was like, yay, I've got to try and make this happen. Very cool. And you said yes, so thank you very much. Of course, of course.

All right, so maybe just for the beginning, by the way, my podcast is called You're the Voice. so what we want is for people to make their voice heard and you are one of those people that made their voice heard really early on in the last three years and i would love for you to just briefly maybe introduce yourself sure to the people who are watching yeah absolutely so i worked at Levi's the jeans company for 23 years and i worked my way all the way up i was a entry level marketing assistant in 1999 climbed up the ladder became the chief marketing officer in 2013 which is really where i kind of made my impact after four years of being in the company um no way more so i started in 99 2013. so 14 years 14 years i became the cmo uh we had a relatively new

ceo at the time and he sort of saw me with fresh eyes and put me in the job um and i held the cmo role for eight years which as I'm sure you know is a very long time it is it much longer than the average time that CMOs spend in a company. The average is I think 24 months because you I even heard 18 months it used to be 18 it's gone up a little I read I don't know it's a tough job you know a lot of scrutiny very public facing and everyone knows yeah what you need to the short tenure is not because they're so successful, they get promoted, they get fired, or they leave because they know they're going to get fired. But I was successful in the role, helped the company to an IPO.

When was that? The IPO was in 2019. And we had been on the brink of bankruptcy in 2011. This company, this iconic storied company that started in 1853. Anyway, I ended up my career there as the brand president, which was overall a product, you know, the jeans, design, merchandising, stores, all of it. And I got promoted during COVID, which I think is a testament to the fact that I was doing a pretty good job. But the reason we're talking probably more than my success as a business leader at Levi's is in March of 2020, from the very beginning, I was outspoken specifically about restrictions to children. I was opposed to all of it, but I thought I'll focus my efforts on restrictions

to children because i thought that that would be a bridge building issue ha everyone has children and care about children right says they care about children um and so i lived in san francisco at the time very quote-unquote progressive city although i would argue all of these policies policies are incredibly regressive despite the sort of positioning of them as progressive yes um 55,000 public school students in San Francisco kept from school for 19 months. Wow. Playgrounds were closed for nine months.

If you live in a city like San Francisco, no one has a yard. There's nowhere for children to play except the playground. It actually doesn't matter how well off you are. Everybody lives in an apartment, you know? So basketball hoops torn down, surfing not allowed.

anything kids could do to stay healthy and be outside not allowed adults could golf I mean as they could go oh yeah mmm how convenient exactly so and then in the fall of 2020 all of the private schools open so all of the schools were the very wealthy children in San Francisco $60,000 a year these kids could go to school public school children 50% of whom are low-income no school so i was very outspoken about this from march 2020 because as you know the data was clear from the beginning children were never at any risk not to mention it's a egregious violation of civil liberties even if children were at risk so anyway i was outspoken it took the company

maybe six months to notice i don't think anybody was on twitter i kept waiting for them to call me me. Not until September of 2020 did I get a call telling me I needed to watch it. I said no thanks and that was the beginning of an 18-month battle inside the company of me being urged every two weeks or so to stop advocating for children, of me being called every name you could think of in the book by employees from racist to murderer all while my peers sent their kids to in-person private school so that's a completely hypocritical completely hypocritical it was also on the heels so september 2020 is when they started to tell me i needed to stop remember summer of 2020 were all of the protests the the the protests the black lives matter the black lives matter after the

the murder of George Floyd and then all the white executives saying you know we are denouncing our racism and our privilege and we're going to fight for equality and equity and so my thing I kept saying was but this is the most unequal thing I can imagine the public schools are populated with black and brown children this is how are you bringing that into this battle they're not and they're not no they sent their own children to school private school with all pretty much wealthy white children well they weren't actively advocating for the schools to stay closed they were just staying quiet hoping nobody would notice that they said their kids but they were actively telling me i could not advocate for open public schools but i kept my job another 18 months

there was just this battle internally and i would get a call every two weeks oh really oh yeah they were persistent oh trying to shut you down oh goodness every two weeks from someone legal a board member somebody would be put up to the task of telling me I needed to stop eventually it was the head of HR who called me every two weeks and then you know that went on and on and I was your response to them no thank you it's let me take you back to the first no thank you yeah you got this call telling you yeah you cannot voice your view or your opinion your personal opinions that clearly has nothing to do with the company's that the exact words

where people are noticing what you're saying mm-hmm okay I figured they probably would at some point mm-hmm you need to think about what you're doing Jim because when you speak you speak on behalf of the company and I said no I do do not. Great. I speak as a mom of four, a public school parent in San Francisco for over 15 years. I don't have my job title in my bio. Yes, but you know, people, you do, you are the face of the company in many ways. And I said, I'll be very careful not to ever say that I work for Levi's, not to ever use my title and in fact because i started just sort of on social media but then i ended up writing op-eds and i ended up on the local news and then eventually on the national

news and i would always say because they ask you what do you want the chiron to be and i would say mom of four i said please do not i would always say please don't say i work at levi's and you know what they would say to me you work at levi's like nobody nobody even knew it was just so silly Yes. But anyway, I would say, I'm sorry, this is too important to me. I'm not going to stop. And I have, without going into a lot of detail, I had had a history of advocacy for children in my sports life. I'd been an elite gymnast as a child, and since 2008 had been very outspoken about the abuse in the Olympic movement. And so I said, I see this as an extension of that. And, you know, I said, are you telling me I have to stop now I'm remembering? And she said, I can't do that.

Of course they can't. And I said, okay, then we're done. Thank you. That would be a violation of the First Amendment, right? Telling you, you can... Well, not technically, because the First Amendment says the government can't. But a private company... A private company can, but I didn't have a contract saying you can or cannot use social media in this way. There was no policy. I'd been outspoken about politics in the past, but more sort of left-leaning.

Nobody said anything, so this would have been viewpoint discrimination, which is what it is. Yes, yes. But anyway, I refused in a very nice way to stop. And they just kept pressuring me. And then eventually, my own boss, who's the CEO, he is the CEO. He was my boss. He didn't like having this conversation with me. He would put others up to it.

But eventually, he would have to. And, you know, he held out. I was ruining my career prospects. You know, I was next in line for CEO. And I just kept saying the same thing. this is too important to me and let's dive into the kids angle for us again so school and playground closure were done kids were suffering I guess pretty bad impacts yeah I've seen that what have you been seeing in the U.S. about that yeah so I think it's interesting because now that we're

you know over three years out the harms are clear all of the studies show they're called you you would call it learning loss i mean testing scores for reading and math are at 30 year lows any progress that had been made in the last two decades um around sort of low-income children black and brown children and kind of closing that educational gap all of that has been lost of course the the gap has increased because the wealthy white children were in private school and even those who were in public you know in america i don't know if they did this here but you know um they would do these learning pods so parents would hire a teacher to come into the home and you'd have six neighborhood kids get together so they could afford it they could afford it so

those with means were able to kind of continue their education and those who didn't have means and this is what I could not stop thinking about is those children 50 to 60 percent of the children and most urban districts are low-income their parents are out working hourly wage jobs at the grocery store older children left home with very young children to care for them they don't have Wi-Fi to do the schoolwork they don't it's just the examples are endless of why this was not gonna work for the majority of American families.

It wasn't hard to imagine. Anyway, the learning loss, the impacts are grave. 30 years lost progress. The mental health impacts. That's what I also wanted to hear about. Yeah, so anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, eating disorders. All on the rise.

All accelerated during COVID and then now continue. Same in Israel. Yeah, it's the same everywhere. everywhere. I see the data. It's the same. Absenteeism is at an all-time high. You have some schools in San Francisco where I used to live, 90% chronic absenteeism, 90%.

That means they're absent from school more than 10% of the time. So these kids won't graduate, so you're going to have really, really high dropout rates. When you have high school dropout rates that are high, you have increased crime, incarceration drug use drug use teen pregnancy you know all of these things like this is going to cause generational harm and not just for the generation but the entire population and the economy and the economy all right they're not going to be able to hold jobs there's kids i mean what's really horrible is they're just waving kids through and graduating and they can't even read some of these kids so everything people like me said that is playing out

there is sort of acceptance of that in america learning lost mental health they say the pandemic did it versus pandemic policy of course um and they also there is no accountability because if if if it's the pandemic and not a policy choice there aren't any people to blame oh isn't that easy uh but i continue to be outspoken and the people like me who started this from the beginning because these were policy choices. Others made different policy choices and had better results. And so these people that made these choices should not have their jobs anymore. And if there's not acknowledgement that these were terrible choices, they could happen again. And because of that, I want to ask a question that may be a little bit controversial. Do you think those policy choices

were intentional is there like a bigger plan behind it to make the population less productive it's interesting or is it something that just happened because they made mistakes i know what i think about it but yeah curious to hear what you think i i don't think they were just mistakes i definitely don't i'm not sure i i'm kind of working out what i think here You know, do I think there's a grand plan to dumb down the population and are there four people sitting in a room going, oh, this is, no. But I think everything moves in one direction seamlessly without coordination. Which is, what is the general direction you see this going in? I think a conformist and obedient population that kind of obeys the rules, greater state control, more authoritarian in nature, offering the general public safety in exchange for their freedoms.

Safety and maybe even well-being. You get universal basic income, you get money from the government, you're more reliant on us. and then you do more of what we tell you to do yes because you have to you don't have anything without being told what to do but they accept it willingly that's what I find the most disturbing is I shouldn't this is the way of authoritarian since the beginning of time we will offer you safety in exchange for your freedom it's a good thing hey why don't you take this and people most well I shouldn't say most people in America most people in San Francisco were willing to accept that trade graciously but I think in America

you do have it was divided quote-unquote red states and blue states and people in red states were called freedom lovers they were positioned as really stupid rooms but I'm lovers I didn't die that he died that's nice but I'm grateful these are not folks I would have necessarily associated myself with in the past but there's a real streak of rugged individualism in America the country was founded on these basic freedoms freedom of speech freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom to congregate the Second Amendment you know gun around gun ownership which is I think anathema to a lot of people around

the world and certainly was something I questioned a lot in the past but when you see the government take that much control you're like okay maybe there was a reason for that or maybe maybe it's also good that we have that second amendment to kind of protect the first amendment yes basically the rationale and to kind of make the government know that they cannot go too far because there is a second amendment still i think that is the reason i mean i still am a firm believer that there should be some restrictions on it um the second amendment that is but that's like a whole other issue but look there were people that stood up and said no and it was very much divided along red state blue state lines my

husband and i in a very deep blue city in a very deep blue state stood alone but there was only so far ultimately the government could go because half of the population was not going to comply and what's fascinating is even though many of the democrats or the the blue states where like the people themselves were not saying no to it they we were still seeing the numbers of the interstate migrations from right california new york states to people from california people from san francisco where i lived seven percent a little bit more than seven percent of the population left between 2020 22 that's a massive number yeah highest in the country of any exodus guess where they went to the red states they went to texas and florida arizona

they went to texas and florida for the most part um now in you know they went to austin in texas which is like a blue town in a red state but what that says to me is you want the freedom of texas with the community yeah like California you know but it is really interesting so yeah a lot of people rejected that's like voting with your feet they voted with their feet the other part that's so interesting and I don't know why this I don't know if you experienced this here but all of the you know bureaucratic elite government leaders and public health leaders they were all caught breaking their own rules yes of course we experienced it here as well of course

I mean literally every single one but very high-profile ones like Gavin Newsom the governor of California he you know was having $800 meals at the French Laundry he kept his own business open while forcing other small businesses to close he went maskless at the Super Bowl like and on and on which to me said he wasn't scared of course they knew something that we did it but why no one cared no they would let them because that's the hierarchy that's the elite they can do whatever they want and we look up to them and we need to I also allow them to do whatever they also do that yes they also it Democrats I won't

speak to Republicans but they have this firm belief that their leaders mean well that they are well intentioned okay so we made a mistake everybody makes a mistake no he thinks the rules are stupid he wants you to adhere to them while he does what he wants he sent his four children to in-person school while he made yours stay home for 19 months he does not care about you but they believe fundamentally in the good intentions of democrats and that's what i don't understand that's the cognitive dissonance they're not they're not able to let go of that belief that someone else is it's a cult yes it's it's the of the party affiliation which is really about a cult-like kind of loyalty and adherence and

they won't let it go they can't see and then everybody anyone who questions it or leaves must be you know vanquished with the full force of of of the mob's wrath which is again quite cult-like it is okay I'm gonna ask you personally about you so the amongst your friends and family what was the process that you went through and what prices did you pay for speaking out and for not being in the mainstream narrative like everyone else pretty brutal um I I mean you there were colleagues i worked with that i would have considered very close friends at levi's i was 23 years there i went to weddings funerals held baby showers i don't talk to anyone yeah that's really no one there's a few that have left since then that have reached out to me

i assume they've been told they can't speak to me but they're also afraid to they were afraid to associate with me then I was tainted you know so I really don't have any of the friends I had from Levi's of you know having spent more than two decades there most of my oldest friends from college we don't speak anymore they find me disloyal I suppose to the party and confounding is one of the things I've heard family has been tough you know it's fine with my parents they don't agree with the things that I've said but they're my parents and ultimately we worked through it my brother and I haven't spoken in three years Wow so you

had to pay a lot of prices yeah but then I also want to ask you about the upsides of staying true to your values yeah what would you do that again and what does it feel for you to staying true to yourself and your values I mean I would do it again because I don't know how else to be me so it's terrible sometimes do I have moments where I'm like I mean I don't really have moments where I say I wish I hadn't done that I have moments where I go I wish I could go back to 2019 and just be sort of in the dark about yeah how sheepish you know my friends and family are how cruel they can be um i wish i just didn't know that but once you see

you can but once you see it there's nothing you can do and i have a new community of friends it's interesting um you've probably found this as well you know i i started to meet people online in 2020 there weren't very many people that were outspoken we come from very different backgrounds um some are conservatives their whole lives some are very religious christians definitely not my background some are disaffected liberals like me so really different backgrounds but have come together to say we believe in truth we believe in open debate we believe in basic civil liberties we believe in the individual's humanity and a right to kind of self-determination And it's interesting as we come out of COVID, we find ourselves talking about other issues

that are not COVID related and disagreeing quite vehemently, but we find a way to talk about it anyway. And I'm really grateful for that. And there is a conversation, there is mutual respect. Some things we really disagree on. I mean, we've had conversations about the issue of abortion and choice. We've had Dobbs passed in America. That's a heated subject.

Yes. we disagree vehemently and somehow we managed to have the conversations yeah we're committed to that and i'm very grateful for that wouldn't that be a society you want to live in that's the model that's the model and we we sometimes have to remind each other that we came together because we felt it was so important to have these difficult conversations we need to model that behavior for others if we can't do that because it gets heated sometimes but we are always able to kind of you know work through it but that to me is the gravest concern about the dynamics at play you know in america and i think more broadly around the world is this sort of the the the polarization and the

inability to speak about things we disagree on. It's, that's what causes the censorship. That's what drives cancel culture, right? That some views are too dangerous to be heard. I mean, that's a tenet of authoritarianism. That is it. I think that's one of the core risks we have for society. I couldn't agree more.

That, you know, more than, that was exposed to me More than this policy or that policy, right? That was revealed to me during COVID, what was happening. It had been happening, but I don't think I'd noticed. You know, cancel culture since the early 2010s on college campuses. We hadn't seen that much of it in corporate America. I am probably one of the highest profile victims of cancel culture. but that censorship of the illiberalism the suppression of speech the sort of

abandonment of a culture of free speech because freedom of speech is it's guaranteed in America you can't be censored by the government but private companies can but I keep telling you I'm not talking about I'm talking about valuing this as a as a core value of a free country yeah in our culture we don't value it anymore in fact we say all the time that speech is violence it's too dangerous you must not speak you can't come to this school you can't say that thing as a professor this is so alarming to me because what happens then is truth is handed down from the government truth is handed down from Pfizer truth is a government-issued talking point it isn't a process of you know

furthered by the Enlightenment principles to say we debate I mean the minute I hear the science is settled or the truth is done you know this truth is settled that's when you know it's not like the global director of communications in the UN said in an interview at the World Economic Forum last year she said in an interview about climate change she said we were alarmed to see the search results when you type in climate change in Google and because we own the science we decided to partner with Google I have this interview it's crazy we decide like to partner with Google and to start pushing into the system the truth right

because we own the science and we own the truth hence we own the truth right and then now when you go on Google we're relaxed you can see the truth there yeah so that's the perfect example for what you said now the truth is handed over to us from someone above and you will be fed that's right in that truth in the mainstream media and in social media and that is the biggest risk it is and that is the mind control that is and that's why as concerned as I was and am about the impacts to children from the school closures is why when i was told there is no job for you at this company anymore because i was offered a bunch of money to sign a non-disclosure i heard in an

interview that you were offered one million dollar package yeah that's unreal and you said no to it well i declined to accept the offer um i didn't want to sign a non-disclosure agreement because what is more alarming than the harms that were done to children and everything that happened during COVID is the censorship and this sort of decline of speech as a value in the country. And so if I signed a nondisclosure agreement, I would be silencing myself. I wasn't going to do that. You would be silencing yourself and you would be silencing that core value that you fight for exactly of let's talk about things let's put everything out there and let's have a conversation that people are intelligent enough to take what's right for them that's right if you don't i mean

you know to take it back to kids and schools and covid what happened from the very beginning is any dissenting voices and i mean more expert than me let's say doctors epidemia there were voices out there, statisticians, you know, there were people from the beginning saying, hey, wait a minute, this might not be a good idea. The median age of death is 82. Children aren't at risk, like all and on and on. They were deplatformed, smeared, vilified. A lot of them gave up and just stopped trying. Some have been dogged and persistent. People like Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, they've been just completely dogged in pursuing the truth and representing the truth. But if you didn't silence dissenting voices, if dissenting voices weren't silenced

by both the government and private companies, we could have actually had a conversation, a rational, thoughtful, fact-based conversation, and schools would have opened sooner. Which then leads me to think, since they're working so hard to shut out dissenting voices, why are they doing that? Why is it so necessary that all of humanity will go in one direction and not take the choice? Yeah, I think ultimately it's this consolidation of power and more centralized power, less for people, throw them a few bones, you know, safety, a little money, whatever, it's just

more centralized power at the end of the day. And both parties, frankly, are kind of, it's one party. It's a uniparty. Of course. You know, they all are in favor of... The left and right, me, or Democrats and Republicans. It's the same. I think it's the same.

But it's what's really just... We see that in Israel as well. What's disappointing is all, well, there's so much that's disappointing. all of the cohorts who should have taken a stand right libertarians their whole reason for being is less government more freedom yeah they went along journalists yes have been their whole reason for being is to speak truth to power and to challenge they're the ones who printed they're the ones who are supposed to be holding power to account they're the ones who are supposed to be questioning these large corporate entities instead they were carrying water for pfizer and moderna

and now even we know that some of them are getting a lot of money from these companies it's just so crazy to me it's crazy but you know what i realized is it's just human nature it has been since the beginning of time greed and power and just going with the group and complying yeah so that you can be included yeah and not feel like you're the villain right and I think we both have felt it in the last yeah three years and it's not a convenient place to be no it's not at all convenient it's not convenient but still I would never change it the irony is we are the ones who are accused of grifting and taking money I'm like where's this money I got no money I made a lot of money before I make almost zero dollars now yeah I find myself in

my journalistic work now thanks to all the money I made before right but yeah it's really not rewarding no there's nothing convenient about this no except for feeling more complete and I feel more integral and yes what I don't get there's a lot of things I don't get it's like why don't the why doesn't yet I don't even mean the other side but the people that know me or that knew me that know what's in my heart they know the arc of my life they could disagree with me but still understand that i'm not doing this as a grift or for money or for intention that i believe it maybe they think it's misguided yes but i really resent my motives being questioned i actually

think most people on the other side not the leaders who are just power grabbing but the acolytes who are just following i actually think they were well-intentioned i i mean i think they're wrong and misguided but i think they were well-intentioned i think they believed and still believe to some extent that lockdown saved lives i don't know how they can believe that at this point because the data is so clear that that's not the case but they don't read it but i believe i don't question their intentions i do of the leaders all the leaders i question their intentions that's a power grab i'm talking about regular people yeah they just thought they were trying to keep themselves safe and their families safe and they really believe these

things worked like i said misguided but they believe it why can't i be afforded the same um honesty of intention but i'm not i'm said to be a grifter and a liar and a this and that i'm like whatever, it's not a convenient place to be. 100%, out of a very large group of past friends and colleagues that I had that, similarly to you, I'm not in touch with more since it happened, since it started, there were maybe a handful of people that told me, we will fight for your right to speak out.

Oh yeah, I've not had one. Even though we don't agree or we don't see it, eye to eye and we sometimes even think you're crazy but we will fight for your right and we respect you and that was rare that's huge and and those friends obviously are the good friendships that i didn't have one of those that we have brave conversations about the disagreements and about what happened and about them coming to light with all the information that i'm showing but it's very rare yeah i didn't have a lot of courage yeah that was one of the things i found astonishing in the company because i was we would have these you know we were all working at home and so we

would have these virtual town hall meetings the whole company attended and in the chat would just be this string of insults i mean the whole format for the town hall was the ceo would just stand up and talk and take questions and they're all the there were all these questions in the chat like why is jen say such a racist how can she be the president when she's such a racist right in America I don't know about here but if you take a view that is outside of the you know left-leaning mainstream narrative the automatic go-to is you're a racist it doesn't have to be grounded in reality because in fact the the I would argue the racist thing was to close the public schools while the private schools were open it's just a label it's just a label but it's effective because nobody

wants to be called that and so it keeps everyone else quiet even if they might agree but not a single person not of the friends that i was close to no one said you know what i don't agree necessarily right but but i support your right to say it that's so disheartening that's really annoying yeah we don't have annoying we don't have the label racist here yeah we have other ones where i'm a conspiracy theorist and i got that or i got conspiracy theorist all right that's big popular one QAnon you know what that is I had to look that up I don't really think it's real but yeah racist anti-trans well if you were in Europe you would be called anti-semitic they do that in Germany for example they call them anti-semitic far far right extremist and

an anti-semitic I would argue people that are Jewish so that's ridiculous so I come out and help those friends yeah i was not here they can't do it pretty anti-semitic in the u.s now so i don't know that they would think that's an insult they i'm sort of joking um i was was i called i don't know that i was called anti-semitic it's just a cultural thing between countries yeah there was there's some suggestion of that for me and my husband i think people didn't know we were jewish But even after they find out you are Jewish, I mean, he was born and raised here. They don't care. They just keep going.

Of course. That actually brings me to an interesting angle because, you know, as a marketeer and as someone who is actually teaching people how to build their own brands, I teach personal branding. Okay. I always look with people about their brand identity. Yeah. What is your identity made of and what are your values and what are your characteristics?

And then I go into a semi-spiritual conversation with people about their labeling, about labeling in general and how we are addicted to those labels and how we care about what people say about us and the perception of us. Because when you build a brand, what you want to influence in the end is your perception, how people perceive you and is it in line with how you want to be perceived, right? And so I think that that war of hurting someone's reputation through labeling is so effective because it goes down to the core of your identity. And when people are not self-secure and don't have that center of who they are and what they stand for and what they mean and what their values are, you can shake that very easily. I agree with you. You know, and in the beginning, you know, in 2020, when these names were being hurled at me, it shook me, you know. And I didn't stop because I knew my intentions, but I did try to explain to people, here's why I'm not a racist. And then I realized by early 21, you can't explain to these people because they don't want to have a conversation.

they're just using that to silence you and more importantly because at a certain point they realized i wasn't going to be silenced that i didn't care to keep everybody else silent because they're watching what's happening and they don't want to be called these things yes um and so i just stopped caring great now and what happened you know then i had a new phase after i left Levi's in the spring of 22 and the story went a little viral and I was in the press for a bit and I was embraced by the right wing press and I had moments where I was like well I'm not going to talk to this person I'm not going to talk to that person and then I was just like screw it I'm going to talk to anybody that wants to talk to me and they can talk to me about things we disagree on

But like the point is we can talk to people we disagree with there is no one so outside the bounds of Acceptability that I can't have a conversation and if you want to You the left want to dismiss me and vilify me as some alright lunatic because I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson Then you're the idiot. I mean honestly So and those people that don't want to hear your explanations for why you are not cannot hear it because they're under the emotional yes campaign they're in the right they're in a cult but when I try to explain this to people in marketing terms I say this is there is a huge campaign going on yeah that talks to the

emotional level of fear yeah that's right threatening yeah and they're impacted by it so it doesn't matter what kind of information or data you bring it doesn't matter they cannot they're under that it's under that no you're right that's a good way to describe it and it's under the spell of um cnn which the audience is dwindling by the day the new york times and you know the cdc this is the spell they're under they think they're informed because they read these sources yes i see the headlines in these places i mean the new york times obviously cnn does well they do have headlines and i'm like i i can't unsee what i know like i see the manipulation at every turn um i laugh because they make fun of us you do your

own research yes i do i don't just go to buy a new car i do my research yes i don't accept the headlines from the new york times as fact after everything that they've done in the last three years not just three years 10 years you know 15 years everything from the russia hoax to you know it goes on and on um but they think their their image of themselves is that they are the well informed ones because they are mindlessly accepting the talking points from the government that's what's so crazy to me is they their belief about themselves is that they are the informed ones and that we're the idiots and if we follow that thread of the media and i take you like zoom you out a little bit to look at the media space in in the u.s and maybe even globally where do

you see that going because obviously as you said cnn's numbers are going down yeah the mainstream media is not what it used to be we see podcasts on the rise yeah even fox is now taking a a real hit and i i mentioned fox obviously that is the sort of largest sort of right-leaning media media source since tucker carlson left their numbers are i think a quarter something like that of what they were so to me it's a death knell for legacy media um and i do think it's becoming you know it's it's people like you in the digital space you know in a sense it's i mean that's where I get my news mostly, although I do still read some of the traditional sources because I want to understand what's being said to people. Me too, yeah, sure. You want to understand

the narrative. Yeah, exactly. The hard part is then you really have to kind of put together for yourself so many different verticals to have a well-rounded view and to start to decide for yourself. It takes, like, who has time? I mean, I do it, but it's difficult. It is. You have to curate for yourself all of these various kind of outlets and I I just don't think that most people have the time or inclination to do it but that's why you for example have your SAP stack where you write what you gather and what you cure it and what you see and then you are of service to other people that don't do it or that I try I mean I'm not a trend of decentralization and oh for

sure in media for sure yeah you do have to work a bit harder but then you find those people that you can rely on that may have never been journalists before but yeah they serve you because they do that work which is quite difficult yeah i think that's right and there are you know well-known folks that are are doing this there are a few standouts obviously in america you have journalists like matt taibi and megan kelly and and you know they're doing this work and have large audiences and large at some larger than you know fox news shows at this point um and i certainly seek them out as well as those that lean further right and those that lean further left because i want the kind of well-rounded view so i can decide for myself i'm not going to say it's

a fortunate or unfortunate it's the state of affairs that is the state that is where media is going legacy media is dying it's all but dead because they aren't trustworthy yes that's they're just not trustworthy and then you had the recent you we had the recent appointment of uh the new ceo of twitter which comes from the legacy media i know and that that's a weird kind of i thought it was a very strange well it's not a strange choice we know why he made it she comes from legacy media which is NBC Universal but she comes from the commercial side you know meaning sales ad sales so so he wants to strengthen that he needs to get revenue back right the company is tanking the revenues are way down I

think ad revenue was down 60% last year something like that he knows that he needs to bolster revenues fine I get it it's a business at the same time then And make her head of ad sales, not the CEO. Because inevitably, and I've worked with tons of people in sales, you know, both on the media side as partners, but internally at Levi's Apparel Sales, they will always try to change, adapt, mold the brand to be what the client or the customer is asking for. And so if the media partner she's working with are saying, OK, I'll come back to Twitter if you do X, Y and Z, if you ban these people, if you silence these people, that's what she's going to bring back to the company. And that's what I find concerning, because I think his intention around having it be the free speech platform is the right one. And I think if you build the brand as the place for up-to-date news for truth and open debate and dissent, that eventually you will have enough eyeballs that the advertisers have to come back. It's a longer road than this new person saying, okay, take these people off and I'll bring you advertisers back, which diminishes the platform.

We'll see what happens. I mean, I think there's enough video of her out there to kind of know where she's going to try to go with this. We all understand where she's coming from and where she would ideally would like to take it. And I think everyone's questioning Elon Musk for that weird choice. But we also know where it's coming from, needing the revenue. Yeah, I understand the business need. Yeah. But I am also very worried about where it's going to go with the fact that we don't have many other platforms today that do promote free speech.

Zero. Zero, yeah. I suspect the appointment won't last long interesting I mean I think he's probably just sort of difficult to get along with regardless like you know I'm sure there was some conversation that his vision is the vision and that she would go along and if at any point she challenges that we know he's quite mercurial he's gonna just say yeah that's my guess but who knows let's see what maybe she'll go along with this vision Wow that would be a hundred and

eighty degrees if she does yeah if she does which I don't really think she will then she's not gonna get the ad dollars to come back as quickly as he wants so she'll be ousted for that they will not subscribe to that company like advertising in that company yeah it'll be interesting it's definitely what you know what regardless her career she's now a ceo and she'll be a ceo wherever she goes next because you know and i know that's how it works of course once you have a stamp once she's a ceo her profile has been raised she's set no matter what speaking of personal branding she did her thing even if she didn't succeed in the role it doesn't matter especially

not in woke left america no she's kind of a famous ceo now that's it that's all that she You will get the next one, no problem. And that's also where, do you see yourself, like, taking more positions? Me? Yeah, in companies. I totally would, but no one will have me right now. But would you go to a company that, you know, you don't, you don't, it's not in alignment with what you believe in? No.

No, you won't? No. So you'll be more picky? Well, I thought Levi's was. I mean, I'd been there 23 years. I would like to go back to a full-time job I don't need to I'm consulting and I'm doing fine but I would like to I like doing that work but I wouldn't do it anywhere where it wasn't a really truly inclusive culture where it wasn't a I want a company that's focused on

product excellence running a really strong disciplined business and isn't distracted by all this other nonsense so speaking of that other nonsense so one of the most popular cultural phenomenons of recent years is the diversity and inclusion label that we hear everywhere so let's talk about that a little bit do you feel there's a real diversity and inclusion policies or is it just whitewashing and you know i see in companies so many companies that it relates mostly to hiring women or to lgbtq and uh you know doing events that yeah promote that or just showing externally that that's what we stand for but these are the boundaries like they don't go further than that and most companies don't really walk the talk like they say diversity and inclusion yeah

you want to see it everywhere if they are diverse and they are inclusive yeah i think it's mostly woke washing i think they they don't i don't think they realize that though i think they've woke washed themselves so they so again they have good intentions and they don't see their own boundaries i think so i mean i try to be as generous as possible but i think so um so they don't they don't see viewpoint discrimination as discrimination no because your view is violence and you're evil and you deserve to be that that's this that's the problem with speech is violence it you know that whole view says that we can't have open debate and dissent because one side is beyond the pale one side they're nazis i mean quite literally

so that's not a viewpoint that we should include in the conversation i mean it's a lie obviously i get it so that's the strength is in the paradigm the the the shift that needs to happen is in the paradigm for companies to really truly be walking the talk and being diverse and inclusive if they are able to shift their mind from the paradigm that says these are the boundaries and whatever is outside those boundaries you can't talk about because it's violence because it's that's a cultural shift that has to happen and I the only the only way to move that back to celebrating a culture of free speech is more free speech and so people like us have to just keep

talking. That's the only way. I agree. That is literally the only way. And it's very inconvenient and uncomfortable for those of us who are willing to do it. But eventually, I think more people will. I mean, most people follow after all. And so they will follow when that view comes back in. I think for companies, there's a few things that are going to happen. One, business is tough right now this is really tough in israel too i think around the world right um they're gonna have to get back to kind of no nonsense business fundamentals they just can't afford all this time wasting ridiculousness you already see in america there's a push to return to office because no one's doing any work at home there's unproductive um there's layoffs that are starting

with these overbuilt bureaucratic HR teams, which have bloated DEI organizations, and you have a backlash, consumer backlash, to campaigns that tout sort of values instead of product. We've seen it with Bud Light and with Target. Can you say a few words about that? Yeah. Like, those are great examples. Yeah.

So, Bud Light, do you guys have Bud Light here? No, but we know it very well. Okay, it's a light, crappy beer. Yeah, we know it very well. It's a terrible beer. It's like Maccabi in Israel. completely undifferentiated like but was the largest uh share beer in the country by by a lot um so a few months ago i believe it was april at this point they did a sort of commemorative beer

can with a transgender influencer and they didn't even sell this beer i mean it was kind of a non-event but it just pissed off the it woke the beast i guess because the huge segment of the american audience said we are done this is ridiculous we're not buying in now what they're not buying into is wokeness broadly um but i think with you know it's being billed as anti-lgbtq and all this it's not they're saying don't push politics you know down my throat when i'm just trying to buy a beer all i want is to buy a beer and enjoy it with friends this is divisive ideology the divisiveness is around this idea that men can be women which i don't believe is true um that you know sex is assigned and not

an observable fact people are saying that's a lie i'm not gonna go forward with that anymore and everyone so there was a boycott of bud essentially bud light everyone thought it would peter out in two weeks but we are two or three months in at this point they've lost the number their sales have plummeted down 25 every week one week after the next and they've lost the number one share position and they fired the vp and they fired the vp of marketing who a week before this campaign came out said that the consumers were disposable and fratty and hopeless and horrible oh my god so that's what's happening with bud light and they have not recovered it seems like they may not they may not at all you think let's see it's a long recovery at this point

i don't think it's a trust issue yes well at this point that reminds companies again the the well they also at the end of the day they also demonstrated they don't know their customer and they were disrespectful to their customer and now because they discontinued the can they fired the marketing leader now the left is mad the left-wing activists and they're saying you did not support the LGBT cause in the right way so now they're everyone's met the difference is those left-wing activists weren't their customer anyway so you know it's losing the sort of centrist and the sort of right-leaning and then at target but this was just on the heel you know

june is pride month i think it is here too from what i can see it's different months and other parts um and target had done pride merch gear for years and years rainbow t-shirts everyone's fine with that nobody cares right this kind of went two steps further and they had um tuck friendly women's bathing suits for you know for for transgender people who want to wear women's bathing suits but still have are still men um and then they partnered with an artist babies as well right i think and all kinds of gear for babies so that felt i think to a lot of people like okay this is too much in the indoctrination that's the word they would use and then they partnered with an artist on a collaboration who had furthered in his own art imagery that I would argue is very

violent um kill trans satanic kill transphobes get pictures of guillotines with heads like and he says oh it's funny it's not funny that's not funny so Target's business has also been impacted they pulled the merch or pushed it back their stock has been downgraded so these These are very powerful American iconic companies who are now suffering the repercussions from just taking it all too far. Then bringing you back to what you were talking about before, you think that we're going to go back to a corporate world where businesses are focusing on business, on product? I think so, but I think it's not going to happen overnight.

two examples of brands and businesses that seemed just undisputed leaders who have now suffered tremendous losses it has to be causing American brands to kind of question pull teams together and go how do we kind of navigate this forward how do we get back to the basics and get back to business I think many people are also not aware of what ESG stands for but when you take ESG into private companies and you kind of that's how i see it threaten the company in getting funding if only if they follow yeah a certain esg rule and their scoring is not hurt yeah then that also forces the company to go in a certain direction and we see some states in the u.s pushing back

yeah on that i will say most of the employees aren't aware they're not aware you know they're not aware i was implementing that kind of yeah they're not it's not like even frontline kind of leaders this vp but it's not like she's like oh if i want to keep getting black rocks funding i need to make they don't know it's yes it comes at people from up down and sideways so you might have very very very senior leaders maybe just the ceo and the cfo who are aware of that and then you have activist younger employees pushing it and then you have the leaders who are you know they live in blue cities and blue states all their friends believe these things so they're really in a bubble and they think if i put these things out everybody's gonna like it

they don't realize that half of the country has an issue with it and they're able in their minds and this is what they did with me to go these aren't reasonable people who think these things these are crazy people so who cares what they think like they didn't know anyone who thought what i thought about covid policy to bring it back to the beginning i was this like lunatic trumper from a place they'd never been in some like podunk red state like of course we can demonize her she's like fringe yes well no half the country agrees with me yes um but those people are demonized and they're not worthy of our respect but when it comes to businesses like button target yes while the senior most leaders might feel the

pressure of the BlackRock at the end of the day if the stock price plummets mm-hmm that's that's the that's like gonna change the ballgame I think so I mean there's people that care about me there's even BlackRock that's what they care about right of course they care about how the stock is performing how the company is performing have you heard of the story um there was this company called frank have you heard of this i think it's called frank and it was like this it helped um low-income kids applying to college get sort of public loans and stuff it started by this young woman in her 20s yeah jp morgan chase bought it okay the whole thing was a fraud okay her three million people on an email list they were all made

up they spent 75 million or 175 million i don't know millions and millions she defrauded them they are now suing her she was able to get away with it because she was saving the world and took all these kind of woke stances about helping underprivileged kids get into college they were they were wooed by that they were misled but they were wooed do you think they're going to do that again not do their due diligence they're losing they lost so much money at the end of the day money is what drives these people yes but at the same time they have their avenues such as some bankman freed with ftx to you know move money through and make more money and and that's also you know like a source of well i think what's interesting funding to the democratic party and

yes and and no one's talking about that it's true so that's like it might have been a little front for it that he was sort of a pawn in the whole thing and now they're willing to sacrifice him because everybody else got theirs yeah um yeah i don't know we'll see balancing it to the other direction like i agree with you that they do care about the performance of companies and that's what drives them in the end of the day but yeah they also find their ways there to get the money yes it's true well even now like leaders of these big companies they're still going to get their bonuses they're still going to get their money they're going to structure their contracts in such a way that they all get their money of course so i don't know it remains to be seen

it's going to be interesting that's for sure and i think the more people will push back from down under from the grassroots well we're going to see changes yeah i mean that's the other thing is that i don't what the consumers but what i i shouldn't say i don't understand for the younger employees i don't know why they buy it they're the ones also being harmed right the the senior leaders are raiding the coffers of the company they're pretending they care about these sort of woke values that the younger employees do the young employees are satisfied by that even though it's a pose and it's a charade and they're just stealing money yeah i use nike all the time as example here they throughout 2018 i think 17 to 19 and they still do it all these women's history

month campaigns all this you know girl power stuff at the same time many many lawsuits happening at the company about sexual harassment internally about not paying pregnant athletes about abusing young women in the running project yes why don't the employees care that they actually treat female employees like shit yes they're satisfied with a women's history month campaign no i'm pathetic and i think it goes back to the education system and the indoctrination the fact that we are brought up to be obedient and compliant and just take authority and not make a fuss about well it's and believing the ad campaign is the same as believing the headline in the new times oh yeah oh yeah so yeah it's people have to find sovereignty and have to find independent

thinking again and that's very hard in the culture that we have created here in the last 20 30 years it seems like there is no amount of hypocrisy because it clashes in front of their eyes all the time and it still does it yeah correct it's very difficult it has to come from within i think eventually maybe i'm just an optimist which is great i think i think there's you know 10 15 who are true believers who will never wake up who will always believe in the good intentions of the government and big pharma i think that there is 50 60 percent of kind of people who are just silent right now yes who will wake up i i see that happening and speaking of the generation I was just doing a podcast here in Israel which is one of the most

popular podcasts in Israel in Hebrew that gets hundreds of thousands of views or listens every every episode and I spoke out about the whole global agenda and came in with a lot of information that people have no clue about and tried to connect the dots for them yeah from climate agenda into the central bank digital currency that's coming in to carbon credits which is the cousin of social credits and and just painting the whole picture for people and I did it in a very subtle way I tried it's hard to do it in a subtle way but but I did it and I got hundreds of messages and reviews from people after this episode that it woke them up that it helped them see it yeah especially young

people and that believe a little bit more in you know healthy life or you know healthy kind of living and and want to do good for it for the environment and an earth which which is something we talked about I kept on saying how the people who are running these agendas are they're nefarious because they take things that are truly important yeah and they piggyback on it with their vicious intentions yeah and I showed examples for it just like the lady from the UN so you have to try and break it down to people in a nice way yelling at them and telling them they're stupid is pointless no to just show them really show them

how they're being manipulated yeah I think for everyone it's a different moment that kind of wakes you up because arguably i was in a collection of moments yeah i mean arguably and there's certainly a lot of people that yell at me like oh you're so late to the party you didn't notice this until covid of course okay fine i welcome anyone who kind of wakes up at any point and so for everyone it's a different thing you know for some people during covid it was the fact that these blm rallies were permitted to go on while they were while they were told you know your kid can't go to school with yeah 14 other children or you have to be locked or you can't have a wedding or you can't visit your father in the hospital or you can't like on and

on like that was a real moment for a lot of people yes um for other people it was leaders not following the rules they set for i mean some people always accepted it and they're like i said there's 10 15 there's still true believers that think that the lockdown saved millions of lives because the new york times says so um it's a different moment for everyone person but then we just have to keep counting on the fact that there is a moment for i think there is most maybe not all people it's not all people but it's most but it's most people my belief is you have 10 on either side yes 10 that sort of saw it from the beginning or see it 10 that will never see it yes and then you have all these people in the middle mostly who and some who maybe were

questioning from the beginning that we're too scared yes others who were like okay i i trust but you know most people will go with the group and slowly but surely they start to come over because the group moves over here we'll see the chasm shifting um how do you see this going forward in the u.s in terms of economic changes like the economic collapse that a lot of people are talking about, like the de-dollarization, workforce changes. We talked about the Democratic versus Republican country migration. There's a big shift happening in the U.S. now. Yeah, there's so many things happening. Many, yeah. You don't have to touch on all of them, but just like the...

See, I think one of the trends you see, I'll use this just as like a microcosmic example, you see CEOs standing up now and saying, you need to get back to the office. Come back now i know i told you you didn't have to you have to to me that is an example of getting back to business and ceos saying i don't i don't care what like we are not productive we are not making money and you are not working wow so you need to come back and it's happening across the country um and the companies who came back i've talked to a few ceos who made the call early like in 2021 and and said, you have to come back, they tend to be outperforming the companies that didn't do that. And those CEOs will say, it was a controversial decision at the time, but I'm so glad I made it

because it's given us an advantage. So I think that's an example of CEOs kind of coming to their senses and saying, we got to just get back to the basics, get back to business. But I think there's a long road ahead. I think business is going to be tough now for a long time. The fact is you can't shut down the world's economy and global supply chains and not think there's gonna be ripple effects. Of course. So you have all these confluence of circumstances, right? You have inflation, you have, I don't know

if they're not willing to call it a recession, but a recession. It is a recession. They'll call it next year a recession. They'll call it, yeah, after the fact. And then you have all of this bloat in organizations and all of this lack of focus that came through woke policies, whether it's overbuilt DEI organizations or marketing campaigns

that don't talk about product. These are all separate things, but I think they're all going to come together to get back to sort of common sense business practices. But I think it's going to take a really long time. Yeah, and maybe in the meanwhile, Americans will grasp again the power of America as a world leader in business because a lot of the power is shifting to China and people are starting to realize that,

that they have to rebuild a lot of the power that America gave away to China or to other countries? I would think so. Or they're just ceding their position as a global leader. Because otherwise I think it's going to be harsh, very harsh. Yeah, I think the problem is what makes me nervous is younger people. And their future. Well, not just their future.

They seem the most eager. Younger people to me, and this is what I saw during COVID, seem the most eager to give up their freedoms and give up their free speech and all of it in exchange for safety and what they view as kindness. I don't view it as kindness, but they seem most eager. And the fact is, is those young people are the ones in 10 years that are going to be running things. it and they seem it's almost like an old fogey attitude for gen xers to actually value freedom that's me gen x so i don't know i mean the young people are going to determine the path they want wow they're gonna choose that i think leads us to the beginning of the conversation of how important it is for us to continue to do what we do in order to impact the young generation and help them find their voice and their sovereignty? I think at the end of the day, truth will prevail.

It will. And there's going to be independent journalists who keep pushing and fighting. I mean, let's use a very narrow example. More and more is revealed every day about the lab leak theory, which was always the common sense view, but was targeted as a, you know, billed as a racist conspiracy theory. it's going to be the default truth position in about five minutes because it's just so obvious always what what happened you know will there be debate about malicious intent versus accident

all of that i'm not sure that's knowable but it's going to be the truth any minute that that's what happened is my belief right and it's going to be because of independent journalists who continue to pursue the story dog of billy the truth will out in the end and all the young people who didn't believe it or who believed it was a racist theory will pretend they won't pretend they'll believe they always supported what is now known as truth i mean there's other issues that are going to be i don't want to get into you know too much about gender ideology and you know i don't know what the laws and policies are here around i think i'd probably know around a bit less but very but going in the right going in the same direction as the u.s but right but there's

northern european countries who are already moving away from it because they've already seen the truth the truth will out in the end is my view i really hope so and and on that message jen Where can people follow you or read you or hear you where what's the best way? Well, I had a book that came out a couple months ago called Levi's unbuttoned Which you can't buy here in hardback, but you can buy digital and audio you can buy did we can you get it shit? Of course, okay and you can do digital and audio and then Twitter is where I am most active and then I have a sub stack Jennifer say on sub stack

it's called say everything say everything which is a perfect name i love it yeah okay thank you thank you like huge amount of thank you oh thank you so much this is a great conversation and happy to be here i had a pleasure talking to you me too thank you yeah absolutely Thank you.