Dana tells us about how she went from working on her family's farm to walking through the doors of Merrill Lynch. Why she decided to become an entrepreneur in philanthropy. The most misunderstood thing about what she does. And why her spiritual side plays a big part in her work.

Dana's recommendations

Finding the Mother Tree - Suzanne Simard (book)

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Hello and welcome to BWB Extra, where we get to know CEO of GreaterShare, which is a philanthropic investment model, Dana Bezira, a little better.

So let's wind the clock back.

Okay.

And go into how you ended up doing what you're doing.

Gosh, going way back.

So, farmer by background, educations in agriculture.

Where, where, where in America?

San Joaquin Valley, California.

Grew up on a farm, uh, one of five children, free labor.

But upon wanting to return, my dad was like, Nope, there's not enough business here for five of you to return.

So you got to go out and do your own thing.

In there, in the golden lands of California.

What kind of farming in the golden lands of California?

So we had a dairy.

Uh, therefore the calves.

We grew all the commodities for the dairy and we also had a commercial cotton operation.

Wow.

Yeah, so reasonable size.

And so, uh, you know, wish I would have gone to a career fair or something similar coming out of school, but didn't.

They're rubbish and wouldn't have to

go into law enforcement.

Or maybe that's just me.

So, uh, randomly ended up doing, working for an artist doing Lost Wax Bronze Sculpture in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Whoa, whoa, say these things slower, Lost Wax Bronze Sculpture.

What the hell?

Bronze Sculptures.

Bronze Sculpture.

You use wax to make them?

You make a wax form.

Correct.

You cover it in bronze and then you heat it up in the wax.

Drips out.

Nobody knows this happens.

Wow.

Brilliant.

It's how the ancient Greeks used to make.

It's true.

Lost wax.

Surely you make bronze sculptures.

Yeah.

That's what the company does.

That's what the company did.

That's what the artist did.

Okay.

And, um, he was wonderful and brilliant, but he is very creative and I'm not.

And his business partner, his business backer kept telling me he's going to make you crazy.

And, and eventually he did make me crazy.

And so his business partner sent me to see at the time, uh, Smith Barney.

I mean, he kept saying, you're great with numbers, therefore, the mathematics.

Smith Barney's a big, big bank, is it?

It was, a brokerage at the time.

It's gone, is it?

It's gone.

Thankfully.

So, he sent me to see a buddy of his there, tested, did great on the test, and this gentleman said to me.

But you're not you're not really one of us like you don't come from wealth You don't know people of wealth You wouldn't be able to

manage money for people of wealth because you don't him to fuck the fuck off Precisely where I'm headed so over his left shoulder.

I was looking at the Merrill Lynch Bowl so on on the way to get my car, I just went in there and spoke to the manager and said you should

hire me and he said why and I said cuz That guy made me angry, and I tend to do well when I'm angry, and so he hired me on the spot.

So I ended up working at Merrill Lynch for almost a decade, and during that period of time had a whole lot of learnings for the things we're

talking about, like why do people with more money pay less, and why do we treat them nicer, and why is so a lot of inquiry at that time.

One of the families that I was working with introduced me to the Heron Foundation and kept saying to do the types of things you want to do that care about people,

place, and planet in addition of financial return at the time, this is in the 90s, late 90s, you're going to have to get out of regulated financial institutions.

And we were going to lunch one day and he took a piece out of the trunk of his car and said, you need to work for somewhere like this.

And it was the Heron Foundation in New York City.

That was 20 years ago.

I mean, you know, to fix the world, you do wonder a little bit that they, you know, somehow we need to reverse the voting process, don't we, and sort of, you know, give money to people like you to run.

You know, which you are.

So I've done that.

Well done.

Have you got a long term goal?

I do.

I mean.

I think on the one hand, I would love to see an economy that works for all people and little bits and pieces, uh, getting towards that for

me personally, I have what's called my noble goal, which is to always hold space for connection and to bear witness to the context of others.

Wow.

I need that one.

Yeah, we need to unpack that one again.

Americans are so well practiced in their phraseology.

Hang on.

You know what, me and Pippa are, you know, like, you know, I would like to have croissants this week, you know?

It's like, you know, I don't want to kill badges anymore.

What's my long term goal?

Yeah, I couldn't even start.

To hold space for...

To hold space for connection.

What does hold space mean?

Yeah.

So for me, make room for, I want to hold space for who you are and connecting with you and give time.

You want to make sure you're giving time and opportunity.

Correct.

And that's what holding space means.

You're not going to book a room at the Ritz and just wait for someone to turn up.

I could try that.

I'm not sure it'd be effective.

It's amazing where your mind goes.

So you're, as a principal, you're trying to say that you, you, you know, unlike my fine self, you want to make sure that you're giving people plenty of, plenty of space to fulfill a certain attitude.

To treat people as an end, not a means to an end.

So you're not just a cog in my economic wheel.

I want to see you.

I'm not just talking to you because I want something from you or you're going to do something for me.

Or, you know.

Whatever.

Yeah.

I'm talking to you because you're a person and

I'd like to know who you Pippa need to work on that.

So we'll have it next week.

It's going to be very impressive.

What was the second bit It's a.

Bear witness to hold space for connection and to bear witness to the context of others.

So something like, give an example, I spend a lot of time in New York City, you're on the subway, somebody's losing their shit on the subway, you know, I don't have any way of knowing what they just came from.

Did they just come from a doctor's appointment with their child where they got bad news?

Did they just get reamed out by their boss?

Did they, you know, it's just to say, I see you.

Ream means screwed.

Like, you know, just.

Just to say, I see you, I acknowledge, in Buddhism they would say, my humanity acknowledges your humanity.

Okay.

It's basically saying you never know what's going on with other people.

Correct.

So don't judge by the outward kind of behavior.

Yeah.

Because there could well be a reason for it.

Anyone, anyone who's had kids has learned that.

Yes.

All those years of people screaming at their kids in the supermarket, beating their children in the supermarket while we judged them and now we're like, correct, oh my God, I'm raising my hand in the supermarket.

What, what's the most misunderstood thing about what you do?

That it's binary, that it's either or, that you're either a good investor or you're a philanthropist, and it's acknowledging that you could be both.

So again, that's the profit thing.

Either you're an investor here to make money, or you're here to do good.

Right.

What's the biggest problem facing the industry then?

I think we may have discussed it.

Yeah, I think we talked about that.

I, I think it's this idea that anybody's got it nailed, that anybody's got it right.

That there's, there's an answer to be found.

Yeah, be forgiving, be forgiving in your choices.

Yeah.

And, and what, what are you guys doing about climate change?

Is it something that comes up a lot or does philanthropy take first place to that?

No, absolutely not.

So I would say, um, climate change has become cross cutting.

So in my prior work, we would always say climate change is a social justice issue because it's not your high income communities that suffer repeatedly from flooding or sewage.

So.

climate is a social justice issue.

Climate is also an education issue.

And one of the NGOs we support now talks about education.

They, they deal with nursery age children.

So they talk about education as a vector for introduction to sustainable living.

Because when you're touching a child who's young, you're touching their family constantly.

So introducing the idea of recyclables or helping a child that's young, correct.

Okay.

Thank you for the cultural catch.

So, you know, out of this, you're trying to build this business, what's, what's the exciting thing?

You know, this is it now?

Is this, you know, your baby and you want to go for it forever?

Um, we'll see, but, but I'm super excited right now about blending the idea that we need to tell as a society.

And again, correct for cultural challenges here.

But I see it really as a Venn diagram.

We want to tell a new story about investing in wealth.

Like, what wealth is for and how people utilize wealth and what its potential is.

Another piece, we want to tell a new story about capitalism and power.

That people can generate fees and they can use those for good and marshal good through their business.

And we want to tell a new story about philanthropy, that philanthropy needs unrestricted revenue in order to do the type of R& D that we were talking about earlier, the unrestricted assets.

I think you make a very good point on that last, they need an income stream.

They do.

That they, they don't have to put currently fill in forms and say what they did.

It's so imprecise that sort of, yeah, you must go and do this.

And it's like, yeah, we changed our mind halfway through or whatever.

And the reporting, I mean, for God's sake, it's just like filling in bullshit all the time.

Anyway, yeah, I'm with you.

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What's your biggest fuck up?

Well, we've talked about, we've talked about private prison, so on the specific, we talked about that.

But, but I would say, generally speaking, my, my mistake was having a I think it's fair to say having a career of individual high performance issues, uh, success mistaken for the capacity to lead.

And that really set me back a long way to understand that individual high performance does not mean you're prepared or fit to lead a team.

And really having to pause.

So you were focusing on doing your job really well.

Yeah.

Thinking that would make you a leader.

I wasn't thinking that.

That's exactly, no, but that is exactly the fundamental problem of most law firms.

There you go.

You've understood this one much better than me.

You're really good at what you do.

You're a really good lawyer.

You make loads of money.

You advance, you become a partner.

Now you run the business.

Oh yeah.

And like, they're not managers.

They're just really good at that one thing, they're not good at handling people because they're normally on the spectrum.

Yeah, and I, we would say falling forward, you know, by individual success it was just always falling forward, which was great,

but then you find yourself leading people, feeling, at least for me, feeling completely unprepared to lead people or a business.

So you're CEO, so you're leading people right now.

I am.

What makes a good leader then, do you think?

What are you trying to focus on?

I, I think being able to broadcast what the future vision is.

And, and then tactically, what are the incremental steps for how we think we're going to get there?

Uh, assuming that we learn, that we're a constant learning organization.

If how we thought we were going to get there turns out not to be how we're going to get there, then what is our approach to resilience and reevaluating and learning?

Well, no, but I would lay money on the idea of those kind of long term goals that you've got of bearing witness to people's kind of humanity.

Yeah.

Works really well as a leader, right?

Because that's what people really want.

Yes, they want to be seen.

People want to be seen.

People want to know that the people they're working for know who they are and slightly.

It's kind of hard to do it a lot, but slightly care about who they are and what they're going through, right?

Yeah, I guess I'm understanding it better.

It's very meditative again.

It's very Buddhist, the sort of, you know, it's a bit like, um, with kids I've read in some book, and it's very true, especially with my very young kids.

They don't want me to do anything but watch them.

Right.

You know, all they just want me to do is watch, and then they're happy.

If I get involved, that's sort of actually, I mean, it depends what you're doing, but...

Yeah, I mean, the terrible thing is when you're going through shit, and you say to somebody...

This terrible thing has happened, and they say, Why?

Well, what you want to do about it, is you want to do this, and if you did this, you'd be fine.

And you're like, I don't want to be told how to solve it.

I want you to go, I'm so sorry.

This is a lady thing, I think.

Yeah, but it is!

Because the whole, you know, mansplaining is called mansplaining for a reason, right?

Well, I'm not allowed to explain anything to a woman.

Yeah.

I mean, how dare I explain anything to a woman?

Sometimes you just, as you say, want to be seen.

You don't want a solution.

In a company, as a boss, you're almost saying, I have to think what their vision is, and then I just have to just absorb what everyone else is doing.

Listen and watch.

And then I will have things to say and opinions about it, but I spend most of my time Tell your wife, don't a hip hop fan, bear witness comes up.

Bear witness.

Anyway, now I'll be using it.

It's sort of, it's a, it's a very, it sounds like a very aggressive term, it actually means just sitting there watching.

Yes, well, yeah, but really acknowledging, acknowledging your energy, your, there's a word for James, but acknowledging your energy and your space and the space you occupy.

And it's actually Maya Angelou, to your point about children, Maya Angelou used to say that um, the way an adult reacted when a child entered the room paints on the canvas of who they are.

And what they believe about themselves.

And as a parent, I've always tried to remember that.

That, do you like, or are you like, oh, I'm happy to see, even if you have to.

You paint on their canvas by how you are.

How you react to them.

When they enter a room.

So don't react.

React positively.

Yes.

Greet their presence with enthusiasm.

I think that's pretty good advice to try and be a CEO, have a plan, that's helpful, and a vision that you communicate clearly and regularly

to everyone who's involved in said vision, and then sit there and watch and appreciate what they're all up to, like ants in a maze.

What's your passion outside of work?

Passion's outside work, no surprise.

It also overlaps with work.

It's this idea of continuing to cultivate self awareness and work with people who are interested in moving in that direction.

This moment you had with that, what are they called?

This bloke who said, oh, you don't know how to talk to...

This has been fundamental, uh, Smith and Barnes or whatever.

Yeah, it really has.

This has been really fundamental to your mind.

It's sort of, you know, I always joke that your worst teacher in the world might have been your best teacher, the one who said, oh, you'll never amount to anything.

That sentence is so powerful.

It sticks in your brain, always.

Because this is still driving you, this sort of like, because it was a lack of acceptance, what's interesting, it was a personal element to it.

Yes.

Lack of acceptance.

And judgment.

And judgment.

You don't know me, you didn't hold space, you didn't see me.

No.

Ironic that these are the things that drive me.

What's the worst advice you've ever been given?

Uh, fake it till you make it.

The, the idea that, I don't know, for me that implied not seeking learning, not trying, just pretend.

And that somehow you would arrive.

And I sort of eschewed that for all the reasons.

I mean, faking it till you're making it can be absolutely fucking disastrous, right?

Yes.

You've got an example coming.

No, no, I'm just thinking in your line of work, on my line of work, if somebody tells me they know how to do something as a lawyer and they don't have a clue, then you're in real trouble.

Yeah, it could be disastrous, yeah.

Becomes pretty clear quite quickly, though, normally.

Yes, it does.

What's the best piece of advice you were given?

Uh, one of my former partners at Merrill Lynch, um, closer in age to my father, said, um, to me that I would get my feelings hurt, because I got my feelings hurt a lot in

business early on, that I would get my feelings hurt a lot less if I stopped wanting people to do things for the reasons I wanted them to do them and just helped them to do them.

So, for example, if, if they agreed to make an investment, I should just leave it alone.

They didn't have to worship at the altar of why I wanted them to do it.

Yeah.

Just to let them do it, to help them do it.

It's a little bit ends justify the means.

Correct.

Isn't it?

Yeah.

Well, and I think, I think in his case.

I wouldn't let it go.

I was a lot younger then, but you know, I wanted them to say yes to whatever I wanted them to do, but then I would keep at them until they understood all the reasons I thought they should do it.

You want it, yeah, you wanted them to sort of agree with you philosophically.

Correct.

By which time they're like, I'm not doing it now.

exactly right.

I don't know.

Everyone has a philosophy.

Correct.

A lot of people just work on gut or just, no, I don't want to do that.

Or you don't know about something that frame there like your example of what framed your life so much.

Yes.

So I want you to say, you know, no, but you know, it's quite important.

You dress in a certain way and do these and then it will work better.

You'd be like.

No!

No, no, no, no, no!

I just got a vision of Andi as a small child.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Not to take everything so damn seriously.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially myself.

Or personally.

Or personally.

Everything was personal.

Everything had to be unpacked.

And then I would want them to go back and to convince them otherwise.

Like, let it go.

Oh God, you were, you were, sorry, in your 20s, you must have been quite, quite a force to be reckoned with.

We wouldn't have wanted you on the podcast when you were 23.

You have been a podcast that went on for seven hours.

Oh yeah.

And it's just like, yeah, you know this thing, life, it's about to happen to you, and then let's have another chat, you know.

Yeah, I know.

But that is, you know, it hits on the, you know, half the reason of change in society, they have this problem with veganism is the evangelical nature.

You know, it's that frustrating thing of, you know, 20 year olds sort of telling you adults how they should be living and how they should have done all these things.

And they were like, you know, like, I mean, I'm what, you know, it's like, it's not as simple as it seems, you know?

So I, you know, I think it's, um, yeah, anyway.

Recommendations to read, watch, listen?

Yeah, so, owing to my agrarian roots, I love right now Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree.

She's a forester, um, who has turned four He, she, who has turned No, I wasn't taking the piss that time, sorry.

Turned the field of forestry inside out by, like, all the learnings about what trees do.

Oh, trees communicating and chatting.

There's a bloke, uh, who's really into, you know, had some book who's changed the world.

I think he's Danish or something.

He's got a beard or something, you know, anyway.

Well, he must be Danish.

Yeah, not all Danes have beards.

So, Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree, because I also think Mother Tree is metaphorical for all the things we care about, you know, where's the wisdom?

Um, but also Robin Wall Kimmerer, uh, an indigenous wisdom keeper, I believe she's a plant botanist who, um, just does a lot of teachings through, um, We'll say biophilia and biomimicry, the patterns in nature, really, really smart.

And she's actually one back to this point of mutuality.

She, she tells a story, um, which I think is a wisdom tradition story about, uh, basically, uh, uh, non native saying to an indigenous person, you know, you had a particularly bountiful hunt, how will you store the extra?

And the indigenous saying like store the extra.

Question mark.

I store it in the belly of my brother.

Got it now.

We were talking about that.

I get it now.

The idea that to, to literally store it as absurd, but you store it by paying it forward.

You store it in the belly of your brother so that when you're in need, when you have something, it will be repaid at least in theory.

Yeah.

That's nice.

You know, out of all of this chat, a bit like America, so much more open to their spiritualism and stuff in a way they might be able to, you know, dream of sort of.

Saving the world.

It was so, you know, be, be better at some of this stuff in, in terms of sort of, um, you know, investing in the right way or whatever.

'cause we're so practical down here, you know, I mean, we're the inventor of the sandwich.

That's all you need to know.

, you know, that's our version of food.

So that was this week's episode of Bwb Extra.

And we'll be back tomorrow with our finale for the week, the Business or Bullshit Quiz.

Stay tuned.