Opening Keynote with James Rhee: Goodwill Found. Goodwill Measured

Using his seven years as the unlikely and heralded Chairman and CEO of Ashley Stewart, a business with deep roots in Black American communities, as the basis for his narrative, James Rhee weaves together a tapestry of ideas including humanism, neuroscience, race, economics, and capitalism to paint a picture of what is possible through the mutually reinforcing forces of kindness, math, and goodwill. His book, red helicopter, empowers readers to lead change in business and in life. As all booksellers know, what we read shapes our society, and James offers a simple path to a world that is at once kinder and more successful. As a long-time private equity investor, an educator as the Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship at Howard University and Senior Lecture at MIT Sloan School of Management, and student of life, James implicitly and explicitly makes the case for a set of measurements that captures and scales what’s best in us. It is there, alongside a few financial and accounting formulas, where life, money, and joy can be valued.