Last month, I was invited to my high school alma mater, the Frederick Gunn School, to be interviewed at a school-wide assembly.
The surprising prompt: “Should we trust business to strengthen democracy?”
Business’s role in American democracy is one of the thornier questions our program has explored with business leaders in recent years. The January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol thrust U.S. business leaders into the uncomfortable position of defending bedrock institutions of democracy. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 again brought business leaders into a conversation about their responsibility to uphold global rule of law. Hundreds of global corporations unwound their business ties with Russia after it violated the sovereignty of the relatively young Ukrainian democracy.
In the 2024 Presidential election, the conversation grew more fraught as “defending democracy” came to be associated with the Democratic Party. Many business leaders, determined to stay non-partisan, took no public position on the issue. It was a remarkable shift from the post-January 6, 2021 moment.
I was curious to hear how a group of 14 to 18 year olds are thinking about this question. How do they view something that confounds CEOs of the most powerful companies in the world? What are their expectations of business? What are their assumptions about democracy?
My biggest concern was how to talk about these complex issues without making students feel helpless.
The interview started at the 30,000-foot level of business and democracy, but student questions brought the conversation closer to how they are thinking about futures. These students were most deeply interested in being part of a prosperous, fair, and stable society. Business and democracy are means to those ends. Over the course of my interview and the discussion that followed, the questions these students posed were both humbling and hopeful.
Teenagers are already asking the questions that confound professionals.
My primary takeaway from this experience: The biggest challenges facing today’s leaders and professionals are table stakes for today’s high school students.
“How are companies who say they are committed to sustainability squaring their commitments with the water demands of data centers?” one young woman asked.
“What impact does private equity have on democracy?” asked another.
“Isn’t this whole question of business and democracy really about lobbying?”
Having been at the table for both sustainability and finance conversations for the past 15 years, I was surprised to hear teenagers ask such pointed questions.
After the formal event was over, several students waited patiently to ask me still more questions.
“Do you think cryptocurrency could be good for democracy?” one young man asked. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that he is already in Bitcoin.
“How can I know what information I see on social media is real and what’s not?” This young man’s concern was palpable, both for his own well-being and for the impact that social media companies are having on democracy.
After all the other students had gone, one young woman remained. Her question was born of conversations she has been having with her father, who has a senior role in finance. “How will people develop careers in finance when all of the entry-level analyst jobs are being replaced by AI?”
These are challenging questions, and for many of them, we truly don’t know the answers yet. I found myself qualifying my answers with, “it depends” more often than I would have liked.
The future we get depends on choices that we make individually and collectively. Democracy needs to be maintained for it to survive. Will we choose to uphold it? Business needs the freedom to innovate but also stability and rules to flourish. How can we continue to balance stability and ingenuity?
Through their incisive questions, these students reminded me how much agency we have and how important it is to use it in this period of rapid change and uncertainty. I tried to emphasize that their choices will shape the outcomes they care so much about and that those choices will start to matter sooner than they think.
That is advice we adults should also take.
Finally, I walked away from this experience with some extra motivation. Teenagers care a lot about the issues that today’s leaders are working on, and they are paying attention. The world we are handing them is far more complex, uncertain and fast moving than the world that was given to my generation, but they also seem more prepared for it. I’m confident they will learn from our successes and failures, but I do worry about what lessons we are teaching them with our choices.
When it is their turn to shape the world, will we be role models or a cautionary tale?
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