By Roman Wright ’19, Staff Writer

The inaugural global speaker for the 2015-2016 school year began with few surprises and few controversies, unlike Mr. Kislak’s speech. Besides sharing stories from Dr. DiBianca’s childhood, it largely stuck to the agreed-upon formula for how these speeches generally go.  Not to criticize Ms. DiBianca personally (her non-profit business acumen is beyond reproach), but her speech lacked aspects of the holistic perspective that would place her thoughts into context.  

Overall, she focused on corporations’ role in improving society.  Her company, Salesforce, certainly demonstrates benevolence in its mission to help the local, underserved population.  The company also adequately regulates itself by vowing to be “carbon-neutral,” or emitting no carbon without taking some in, by 2025.  Salesforce is an example of a modern company with a moral compass bent on helping the community.  Unfortunately, however, many companies do not share this same outlook and are willing to operate with no moral grounding.  For a more thorough discussion about the role of corporations in societal betterment, it would therefore be necessary to mention the role of government in regulating such immoral behaviors. 

Ms. DiBianca specifically mentioned Salesforce’s commitment to attaining carbon neutrality by 2025, a goal, she argued, that all companies should share.  Despite stating that the company is at present  unaware of how to accomplish that, she emphasized that it is important to establish goals even when the method of achieving them is not clear.  This axiom comes from a woman with great business experience. However, she left a key question unanswered: should a similar standard be applied by the United States government? Her lack of a clear response leaves the discussion incomplete.  Especially on such a topic as carbon emissions, glossing over the government is overlooking an important source of the problem, as the 113th Congress has given over 33 billion dollars in exploration and drilling subsidies to oil companies.  Congress is not worried about reducing carbon emissions, and with such a large sum of money at stake, it is highly unlikely that the oil companies, which are the main sources of carbon emissions, will cease their drilling and exploration activities.  The large amount of carbon polluting the atmosphere is a universally recognized problem, so it is incomplete to speak of curtailing carbon emissions without addressing government involvement.  

The second goal of Salesforce, and the second point of Ms. DiBianca’s talk, was commitment to charitable works.  She talked about the foundation’s work with education – such as helping seventh graders with their math homework – and giving two percent of employee time to charitable causes.  However, as before, she neglected to mention  the role of government in charitable works.  Some of what the government does can be described as charity, but the government can – and should be able to – encourage private charity by organizations that are less righteous than Salesforce.  

Considering the role of government in encouraging charity, Ms. DiBianca only described part of the solution to fostering companies’ positive role in society. Although it can obviously be a bore to talk to an audience about taxation, it is the easiest way for the government to encourage charity.  Namely, the government should provide tax incentives and deductions for all forms of charity, not only financial contributions. It would be possible for the government to give incentives for companies to operate in the manner that Salesforce does, thus increasing the benevolence and morality of corporate America.  

The third main focus of Ms. DiBianca’s foundation is to reach out to minority groups and women, offering them the long-overdue opportunities that they deserve. Partnerships with such organizations as Black Girls Code were cited as proof of this objective.  This program of private affirmative action was again discussed without any suggestion of the federal government’s role.  Indeed, when asked about just that, Ms. DiBianca avoided the question, and instead gave a heartwarming, if pandering, response.  

On all three major issues she addressed, discussion of the government’s role was lacking, revealing only partial solutions to the societal woes she described.  Her speech brought an important conversation to Newark Academy, but to have a fuller dialogue, the government’s role must be placed in context with her foundation and corporate charity overall. 

For another perspective on our kickoff Global Speaker, check out this commentary article by Meghna Padmanabhan ’17.