Andrei Cherny
CEO and Co-Founder of Aspiration
“If we hire and retain the highest quality people we can, who believe in the Aspiration mission, who are themselves beacons of that mission, our customers are going to be happier.”
Summary
On this episode of Leadership Matters, CEO Andrei Cherney tells the story of his early life as a second-generation Czech immigrant to the US, and how it inspired him to found a sustainability-focused “values-based” financial company.
In this wide-ranging conversation with host Alan Fleischmann, Andrei shares his thoughts on Environmental, Social, and Corporate-Governance, or “ESG.” He uses his green financial company, Aspiration as an example of how leaders can use the ESG model to improve worker & consumer satisfaction, as well as combat global climate change.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Andrei Cherny is a long-time businessman, entrepreneur, changemaker and thought leader in sustainable banking, investing and financial services. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aspiration, a financial services firm dedicated to bringing fair, sustainable banking and investment products that help its customers both “Do Well” and “Do Good.”
In addition to co-founding Aspiration, Mr. Cherny has spent nearly twenty years working to make the financial system more sustainable and accessible.
A former Clinton White House aide, he was the youngest White House speechwriter in American history. His 2000 book, The Next Deal, showed how business and government would be transformed by people’s demands for more and better choices. He is also the author of The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour. Mr. Cherny is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of California Berkeley Law School.
Follow Andrei on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
Clips from this Episode
Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with an old friend Andrei Cherny, the co-founder and CEO of Aspiration. We'll be talking about his journey, how he's been a pioneer in the most innovative ways to embed environmental sustainability into businesses, and into our everyday lives. He is deploying his leadership to rethink the way capitalism works for all of us. Andrei Cherny is not only the co-founder and CEO of Aspiration, he's been a person who's been building sustainability solutions for businesses and consumers for years, ranging from carbon neutral neighborhoods to a credit card that he's doing now that helps its users reach carbon neutrality, to an emerging sustainability as a service concept that manages the carbon footprint of companies of all sizes. Andrei has had a fascinating journey to get to this point. He was the youngest White House speechwriter ever. That's when I met him. He founded a popular public policy journal, he prosecuted financial crimes, and counseled leading elected officials and companies. Across his diverse experience, the common thread is serving the public interest, finding a way to pull the levers of power across all sectors to make a difference in people's lives. Born into a Czech immigrant family, Andree’s story is one of grit, determination, and unwavering optimism. He is the best of our country, and he's just getting started. Welcome, my friend, to Leadership Matters.
Andrei Cherny
That is very kind. And I can't believe you had my mom write your introductions here.
Alan Fleischmann
I gotta say we've had amazing CEOs like yourself here. But you're the one that I probably could say I've known the longest. And I've been so impressed by everything you've done, you know, you've been successful in everything you've done, truly, because I rate success as someone who imagines something and then pursues it. And when you see an opportunity, you seize it. And, you know, your life has always been about doing well, but doing good more importantly, and it's impressive. And I'm curious, you were raised in California, in the California San Fernando Valley, you’re the son of two Czech immmigrants, right, who escaped communism, tell us the journey about their journey to the United States. You were born in the U.S.?
Andrei Cherny
I was born in the US, and they had just recently arrived a matter of about a year earlier. And of course, that upbringing, and that background shaped me to a great deal. I find that a lot with children of immigrants or those who came to the country at a relatively young age, there seems to be this real sense of gratitude to America a real sense of belief in the American dream and the American ideal, because we've lived it and my parents were both the children of Holocaust survivors. And so all four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Both of my parents were born just about a year after they got out of the camps. And they each grew up in Czechoslovakia. And they were part of the artistic community that was flourishing there in the late 60s around the time of the Prague Spring, and early 70s, with a bunch of people, including people like Václav Havel, who became president years later and was in the theater world back then. And my mother was asked by the Czech secret police, maybe their version of the KGB, to spy on some of the others in in that world and report on them and, and she said no. And they said, Okay, fine. You have two weeks, pack your bags and and you're leaving. And so I think in those two weeks, my parents got married, and left the country together, and ended up in in Los Angeles, where I was born raised.
Alan Fleischmann
Did they have any family at all in the states when they came here?
Andrei Cherny
They did. They did: my father's mother was one of nine children. All of whom survived the Holocaust, and were in the worst of the worst camps. But just by sheer luck, of course, and happenstance. they all survived. And most of them had migrated already to Los Angeles. And my parents–my dad's parents–had come also a couple years earlier. So he had his parents and sister in Los Angeles when they came.
Alan Fleischmann
And your father became a school teacher and your mom a psychiatrist, if I’m not mistaken?
Andrei Cherny
Also as something probably pretty common with immigrants, they were up and coming and relatively successful in the movie and theatre business back in Czechoslovakia and, of course, have to start all over in the United States and did various things along the way. But my dad has spent the past almost 30 years as a public school teacher in LA, and my mom eventually went back to school starting with remedial English classes and worked her way up through night school to get a PhD in psychology.
Alan Fleischmann
And so she's a psychologist?
Andrei Cherny
Yes.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow. And when they came here they didn't speak English, I assume?
Andrei Cherny
My dad did. My dad did some, my mom: hardly any, maybe a couple of words if that. And so I grew up, English was definitely my second language, because it wasn't the language we were speaking at home. And I didn't really learn English until I started preschool and but, but of course, as time went on, they became Americanized.
Alan Fleischmann
Does anyone speak Czech at home when you're all together?
Andrei Cherny
Not anymore? Not anymore. I have a, I have a younger brother, who's six years younger than me. And he knows very little Czech because by that time, we are already all speaking English.
Alan Fleischmann
And can you just speak Czech?
Andrei Cherny
I can understand it. And can get a few words out in a way that completely butchers the language, but not much more than a few words. Maybe if I was back, hearing it for a longer period, it would come back to me, but it's somewhere way in the recesses of my mind.
Alan Fleischmann
Have you gone back? Have you've been to Prague and gone back to the Czech Republic?
Andrei Cherny
So my parents weren't allowed back in, of course. And, you know, I grew up with just this description about this almost magical land that they had come from, where they thought they would never go back. Right? This was the 1970s. This is the 1980s: Cold War. That just seemed something completely impossible. I had a family that lived in Vienna on my mother's side, and when I was 13 I went to go visit them for the summer. And got to spend the summer in Vienna and in Austria with them. And for whatever reason, my parents and relatives thought, “well, Andre, we're never going to be allowed back into Czechoslovakia. Why don't you get on a train and go from Vienna to Prague. And kind of fudge what exactly your name is and who your parents are. So you get allowed into the country.” So I was 13 years old. This was the summer of 1989, July of 1989. No clue that anything would happen. And I have a 13 year old now, I barely let him get on a bike to ride over to his friend's house. My parents thought yeah, it'd be fine. Send Andrei into a communist country in the middle of the Cold War with a fake identity and see what happens. So looking back on it, it's hard to wrap your head around, but I did it and got off the train there and had another relative who, of course, I’ve never met or spoken, to met me at the train station. And I got to spend a week there in the summer of 1989. You still saw Soviet tanks in the streets and soldiers marching and never would have occurred to anybody that three months later, all of that will be gone.
Alan Fleischmann
And I was actually in Prague and in Europe the same time living in Germany. And that whole summer, people talked about how communism is there forever. There'll be no opening. And, you know, everything changed that fall. I mean, it was amazing.
Andrei Cherny
That’s amazing. Now it really, it speaks to how fast change can happen.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, and how technology and innovation and television: it's not a shock to me, but maybe it’s that same 13-year-old, 12-year-old, you got involved in politics at a very young age, volunteering on campaigns. But I'm always curious, you know, when you came from a family that literally had to uproot itself completely and start over after the kind of the shadows of the Holocaust and in the shadows of communism. And then you come to this country. I believe my family came from Germany and Europe and I feel like, you know, you understand when you're powerless what that really means and you have a choice: get involved in the arena and become part of the power and do good with it, hopefully, or stay on the sidelines and you risk a lot. I'm just curious whether you–it sounds like you were pretty precocious–if your parents were willing to send you off at 13 to go to Prague. But I think when you were 12, you volunteered in your first campaign politically?
Andrei Cherny
No, that's right. Look, this was not by any means a political family or family where we sat around talking about politics, it was, of course, a conversation when something was in the news. But as you said, I grew up in the shadow of understanding that what happens in the world actually affects people. That when you turn on the nightly news, and Tom Brokaw, would be talking about “here's what's going on in the summit between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev or whoever it might be.” Those were real things for our family, our entire existence had been changed as a family because of those kinds of events. And so it never felt like something that was distant and didn't really matter. Everywhere I looked in my family, there was daily reminders of how much what happens in the political system matters. And that democracy is fragile, and it can disappear. Because my family had seen that happen, at least a couple of times over the few decades before. And it was a family like a lot of immigrants where there was a lot of struggle economically, to pay rent on our apartment and make sure that we were able to make ends meet and there was times we were on food stamps. And so yes, an understanding of how much the individual matters and that the decisions that government makes matter to people in the US and they matter around the world as well. And so all of that brought me as you said, at age 12, to volunteering on my first campaign.
Alan Fleischmann
You got on the local Dukakis campaign for president, was that what it was?
Andrei Cherny
And you know, I was inspired by the charisma of Michael Dukakis to get involved in in the political world. And I got on a bus to go maybe half an hour away to where the local Dukakis headquarters was. This wasn't even the California headquarters. This was not the Los Angeles headquarters. This was like the field office. And I walked in. And anybody who has been in a political office like that knows, this is not some fancy place. It's a pretty schlubby office that they were able to rent for, for cheap. And I walked in and you had a bunch of older ladies stuffing envelopes off the side. And they looked at this kid walking in and asked what they can do for me. I said, “I'm here to volunteer.” They said, “Oh, that's great. Any any thought on what you'd like to do?” I said, “Yeah, I'd like to work on foreign policy.” And they kind of looked at me wasn't weren't sure if it was a setup? “Well, most of that's done out of our Boston national headquarters. But there's some other things you can do here.” And I said, “Okay, great.” And so they walked past the old lady's stuffing envelopes and pass the people doing phone banking, and took me to this back closet where there was a vacuum cleaner, they said, “Why don't you start by helping us vacuum the floor.” And so that was my first job in politics and I tried to work my way up from there.
Alan Fleischmann
How many days a week were you working? At the age of 12?
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, you know, this was, of course, volunteering. And so, you know, it was maybe once a week or something like that.
Alan Fleischmann
Now, we're very similar. And I joined a campaign for Paul Sarbanes when I was around the same age. And I walked in, and I had this great ambitious idea: when I walked into the campaign headquarters, they were going to pluck me out and give me some great, thoughtful assignment. And I think I was the equivalent of a runner. If somebody had to send something somewhere, give it to Alan, he’ll go run it. But you forge relationships, actually, it's funny in lifelong relationships, which people who get involved in political campaigns soon realize, but I think if you, you know, as one of the most well read people I know and a deep thinker, not just an academic type thinker, but someone who actually thinks and then does. I'm curious, did you have inspirational leaders? Were there people out there in the world that you said, wow, you know, I'm inspired by them. There might be you know, they've mentored you from afar?
Andrei Cherny
Absolutely. No, like, a lot of kids of my generation and the generation before somebody like John F. Kennedy was somebody that I of course admired. Somebody like Mikhail Gorbachev, right, who, obviously not not an American leader, but I saw him at a very young age, as somebody who was doing something incredibly, incredibly courageous and stopping this entire edifice that, you know, the kids of my generation were worried that the world was going to come to an end, or there was going to be a nuclear winter, day after and so on. And him taking the courageous step against not only what he was facing internally, but around the world to, to, in effect, make peace was was enormously inspiring. And then when I was a few years older, then Governor Bill Clinton, and this was when I was maybe 15, 16. And I was one of these kids who, when everybody else was watching MTV, I was watching C-SPAN, and would listen to this young, up and coming, governor in his early 40s. And, and loved what he was saying. And I remember of my dad, looking at a newspaper, probably in 1990, or 1991. And, and we were eating breakfast, and he started chuckling. He said, “Oh, you know, that guy who gave that long, horrible speech at the 1988 convention, he now thinks he's going to run for president against George Bush.” And I got all upset. I said, “No, not only is he going to run for president, he's actually going to win.” I just said it, because I was so pissed at him for making fun of Bill Clinton. Who knew what would happen?
Alan Fleischmann
So it didn't, but actually, fast forward, you're now at Harvard, which is pretty amazing in itself. And then this is a wonderful, inspiring story, too, I think of you never know what happens in life, if you do good. And you wrote a column. And tell us a little bit that 1996 election: you wrote a column, caught the the eyes of President Clinton, I believe directly, and it's fired him to want to hire you. But what happened there and who reached out to you and what was that column about?
Andrei Cherny
So I was, of course, volunteering on the campaign, and so on, and was also for our school newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, their election columnist. And so I would write a series of columns during the election on different topics. And one of them was about this idea that the election actually did matter. And if some of your listeners may remember the 1996 election, though, there's maybe little reason for them to do so. But people were calling it the Seinfeld election. And saying he was election about nothing. And the argument in that column was no, we were actually debating some really important ideas. And what President Clinton was running on was this idea of what later became called “the third way,” but this idea that government's role wasn't to be big government and do everything for people. Nor was it the conservative idea of “get out of the way and leave people on their own.” But it was really at this notion of empowering government. And what I wrote in the column, there, was around government's role in giving people the tools to build a better life for themselves. Well, it happened that the then White House Communications Director, a guy named Don Baer, who we both of course know well, was on campus shortly after the election, and picked up a copy of the paper and that column was, was in it. And completely unbeknownst to me, he he read the column on the flight back down to Washington DC, liked it gave to the President Clinton who liked it, he assigned it to his cabinet to read. He use that line about giving people the tools in his inaugural address. And I knew none of this I of course, heard the inaugural address, but I heard that line. I even had no memory that I had written that, however many months before, but that sounded good to me. And got when I was in the newspapers office, this is of course pre-voicemail, or any of these kinds of things, pre-cell phones. Up on the board, there was a thumbtack with a piece of paper saying, “Andrei, the White House called for you, call them back.” Like okay, yeah right. And they said, “No, there's somebody called from the White House. Like what what could that be? And so I called and, of course, Dan was White House Communications Director. So busy guy, wasn't exactly at his phone, and so he would call me back and, of course, I didn't have a cell phone. So this went on now for weeks. And, finally, I was, during a break, in Washington, D.C., with a with a good friend of mine and we were driving out to see the Manassas Battlefield. And I stopped at a payphone because I knew I had to try calling again at this convenience store out in the middle of nowhere and call and put the quarters into the phone and and Don Baer got on the phone and said, and told me this whole story, and ended with “And now President Clinton wants you to come work in the White House.” So you can imagine…
Alan Fleischmann
What year are you at this point?
Andrei Cherny
I was a senior in college, I was a senior in college and planning on going off to law school or whatever else. And it's, of course, a moment that's etched in one's memory because of how much it was one of these continental divides of my life.
Alan Fleischmann
And you said yes, of course.
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, I, you would think so. But I said, Well, you know, what, let me let me think about it and weigh my other options. Which I look back and think like, you know, what an idiot, but you know, I would have these conversation, my friends, well, you know, I don't want to miss out on going to law school. And if I go do this, I'll never maybe get a chance to go to law school later. And the things when you think you're when you're 21, 22 you have your life maybe mapped out and, and, and you think that one, two years is forever. Then in the meantime, his own staff, a number of whom went on to do great things, of course, and probably rightly said to him, “Are you crazy?” Why are you hiring a 21-year-old kid to come be a White House speechwriter, who's not only never been a speechwriter, he's never worked a day in his life, you know, outside of whatever odd jobs I had done along the way. And so he had to basically fight his own staff. And to make a long story short, I started–maybe make a long story long–I started in the White House 10 days after I graduated, as a speechwriter. Doing speeches for President Clinton, but Al Gore’s senior speechwriter and his only speechwriter for a bunch of time,
Alan Fleischmann
Was with Eli that you were working, with Eli Attie at the time?
Andrei Cherny
So I was there before Eli started. And so for at least a few months–three, four months–was the only person and then then Eli came on board.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing.
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. And I'm here with Andrei Cherny, the CEO and co-founder of Aspiration. I, we’re talking about his journey, and we're going to be talking about Aspiration in a moment as well. What do you remember best about being a speechwriter? And how long did you do it? Because I know one of the things that we talked about Aspiration will come out again, you were one of the early writers thinkers with Al Gore, who obviously was the, I guess, the world's premier thinker at the time about sustainability and climate change before anybody even use those words. You were writing about things like that, right? You were actually talking about, you know, the Amazon when nobody was talking about the Amazon, talking about sustainability when no one even knew what that meant.
Andrei Cherny
Absolutely. That's one of the memories that sticks out so vividly. I started as a speechwriter, I did that for a little more than a year and then left to go run what we were thinking of as Al Gore's brain trust outside of the White House to create policies that we would then be able to run on in the year 2000 outside of the White House policy apparatus. And I was doing that. But remember, that time as a speechwriter, the really very lonely fight that he was waging to get people to pay attention to, as you said, what we were calling back then global warming. And he would go around the country, and give these speeches on the topic. And talk about what he had done in Kyoto during the climate accords, there and so on. This is–people will remember him for Inconvenient Truth, some people may remember that that came out of a PowerPoint presentation–this is way before that. And before Inconvenient Truth, before there was such a thing as PowerPoint, it was literally him going around the country giving speeches with an easel and whiteboard and these series of big graphs showing things like the rise of CO2 level in the Antarctic core. And of course, everybody was making fun of him, and people were calling “Owl Gore,” and people say “Why are you talking about these boring, esoteric, scientific issues that are not real concerns for people you should be talking about bread and butter, real issues that that's what people are looking for,” and then people coming to him and saying, “You're endangering your chance to be elected president?” And the fact is that was true. We talked about Michael Dukakis: Michael Dukakis, President Clinton, they all won the state of West Virginia, Michael Dukakis was lost in a landslide, but won West Virginia in 1998, because it was such a democratic state and had continually voted Democratic. Al Gore lost West Virginia, he lost Kentucky: places that President Clinton had won. That probably would not have been the case, but for him speaking out about climate change. He would have been president, but he did it because it was the right thing to do. And that's something that stayed with me incredibly powerfully.
Alan Fleischmann
And you wrote about these things with him, you were–
Andrei Cherny
Absolutely! I was there, when he was giving those speeches, I was helping him write those speeches, I was trying to figure out how do we get people to pay attention to an oncoming threat. And he would talk about that in these speeches. And he was somebody, not somebody where you would put words into his mouth. He was a writer himself, he cared a lot. And so if anything, I was maybe offering ideas, and he would craft them into his own language. But I remember the speeches we were working on where he would talk about the challenge of awakening people to a threat that was not there yet. Now climate change is all all around us. We see the hurricanes, we see the wildfires, we see the crazy temperatures all over the country. And people can see that. That wasn't the case in 1997, 1998, it was something where we were going to be facing real impact years and years and years from now. And we would talk about how do you get people to pay attention. And once we do so–
Alan Fleischmann
You know, if only we listened to him then.
Andrei Cherny
We’d be living in so much better of a world in so many ways.
Alan Fleischmann
And clearly in this last week, we're seeing flooding everywhere in Europe and China and elsewhere. And we've seen some horrible things in this country in the last few weeks, months, as well, in many ways. He created the language, but he also, people thought he was trying to scare people. The reality was he was telling people what they needed to know.
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, no, it's probably worse than what he was describing, faster.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, no. But to you, you did that for a bit more. And then you left went back to California. You actually did go complete your law degree at UC Berkeley.
Andrei Cherny
Yep.
Alan Fleischmann
Which must have been an odd thing to do, you had such early success. And, but it sounds like you just wanted to get that law degree. And you knew you had to keep going.
Andrei Cherny
I want it to be my own person. I never really saw myself as climbing the the Washington, D.C., ladder, and wanted to be like God and do my own thing. I came back and worked on the 2000 campaign, specifically being the person in charge of the Democratic platform and helping to craft that where I believe that was one of the first times that I got to meet you, because then returning governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was the co-chair of the platform drafting committee. And so that was exciting. And then after that, I ended up coming back to Washington, D.C., again, for the John Kerry campaign. And after that, I decided I was bad luck for Democratic presidential candidates and needed to get out and move on to something else.
Alan Fleischmann
So that's when you went to Arizona?
Andrei Cherny
And along the way while I was in law school, I met a met a girl from from Arizona, whose last name is also Fleischman. But unrelated. And she followed me to D.C., and then we were deciding where to move afterwards. Again, I didn't want to stay in D.C. And I wanted to move back to California. She wanted to move back to Arizona, and we compromised and moved to Arizona. And that was my first lesson in married life. And, you know, we now have 20 some odd years after we met two great kids. And it all turned out well.
Alan Fleischmann
And it was there that you prosecute some financial crimes, you got involved with the Attorney General.
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, I was an Arizona Assistant Attorney General for fraud and public corruption. Which was a fascinating job. In many ways, maybe the most fun job I've ever had. Because I was in court almost every day and very much on the ground floor. I had gotten burnt out of dealing with issues at the 10,000, 50,000 foot level as you do in Washington, D.C., and felt like I wanted to have some real impact and not just be involved in losing presidential campaigns. And so I got a chance to do so. And this was around the time of the financial crisis leading up to the financial crisis and then after in the aftermath of the financial crisis. So a lot of home mortgage fraud, a lot of fraud talk targeting older people targeting Military families whose spouses were deployed. And yeah, it was a great opportunity to really see a lot of those challenges up close.
Alan Fleischmann
Now, while you were doing that, you were also writing The Candy Bombers then. You love to juggle things, it's amazing. And that was about the Berlin airlift. Right?
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, that was 1948, right after World War II.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah.
Andrei Cherny
So this was during the Kerry campaign, at times when campaigning wasn't necessarily all that fun, I would have my daydreams about what I'd rather be doing. And one of them was, in essence, writing the book kind of books that I liked to read, which were history books that weren't boring history books, but exciting and felt like a great story. And, and, of course, this was right out in the teeth of the Iraq war. And you saw people all over America, I'm sorry, all over the world, protesting against America, and huge, huge crowds protesting against George W. Bush and America and our national standing around the world being at a then all time low, though, we've managed to beat that since in the last four years, and really thought when were these when was a moment people really loved America. And and I thought back to the Berlin airlift, which I didn't know much more than the one sentence description that after World War Two, the Soviets had blockaded the western part of Berlin, and Americans had to fly food and supplies, in these planes to them. In order to beat the blockade, I didn't know much more than that, and found this just incredible story with these incredible people involved in it. And, and so that was my, my night job. After I got home from working in the attorney general's office, I would, late at night, work on the book, this was when I was younger, and pre-kids, I couldn't do that anymore.
Alan Fleischmann
Today, let's talk about Aspiration. Because I know there's a lot more to you between then and there. Because you've gotten very engaged in Arizona politics and continue to serve, you still do get engaged, and you're still very involved in community life, I know as well. But I like to refer to Aspiration as the first ESG financial institution. I know that's not technically the way we want to call it. But what led you to be a co-founder, what led you to want to start this company because you know, now that we think about, you know, where you want to put your dollars and where you want to, you know, engage in your own personal capitalism. Many people want it to be values driven, not just value creation, and you obviously saw something–again, very pressing, like everything else–and you said, “Okay, I want to be part of this,” what what led you to do this?
Andrei Cherny
It really started more from asking the question of how I could do something that would make a difference. I was doing some strategic consulting working for some big companies, and frankly, not enjoying it all that much, and had a longtime friend, who eventually became my co-founder, who had had success on Wall Street and was wanting to invest in new companies. And we and others started asking the question of what would a financial institution that actually worked for people and actually made a difference look like. That didn't really exist out there. And in so many ways, you had these big banks that, then and now, make money when people do worse: the worse they're doing in their lives, the more overdraft fees and late fees and service fees. So a clear distrust from that and a distrust based on values, as you said, because that wasn't as present in our society, then back in 2012, 2013, as it is today, but you're starting to see businesses think about their role in a positive light beyond just, “here's what we do, and here's our profits and loss,” but that they had a larger role that they could play. You've been at the forefront of that conversation and revolution over these years. And so we started Aspiration really with that in mind, of what would happen if you start from scratch and and so really created a financial institution that said, let's take this ESG revolution sustainable investing revolution that's happening on Wall Street, and of course has grown by leaps and bounds since then but was even apparent there, and bring it into the financial lives that actually matter to people. Most people unfortunately don't have a meaningful part of their life in investing but everybody has a bank account and and a lot of people have have credit cards. And how can you make those sustainable and make those a way so they're fair to people and and allow them to have a positive impact on the environment and on human rights and other big challenges and, and really believe that if you could do that and build that to scale, not only could you create a good a good business, not only could you make a real impact for the individuals that were part of Aspiration our customers, but that you could really at scale, move the needle on things like climate change, or inequality of wealth. And, and those were the questions that led us to start down the path.
Alan Fleischmann
And now you've got what, four-million-plus Americans who use–
Andrei Cherny
Five million now!
Alan Fleischmann
Five million, okay,
Andrei Cherny
Growing fast!
Alan Fleischmann
… Aspiration financial services, I mean, your growth has really been rather extraordinary in the last year, let alone the last two years. You're one of the largest neo-banks in America. What do you think is happening right now you're getting to that this idea of stakeholder capitalism that is driven, you know, consumers, but you know, Aspiration is offering things that people want. And it's really moving.
Andrei Cherny
It's, as anytime you're building something, there's all kinds of twists and turns and along the way, but taking a step back, it's exciting what we've built. Because we realized that not only could we make people's financial products sustainable, but we could build sustainability tools for people on top of those financial products. And then had been bringing that to businesses as well as individuals. And really starting to see enormous impact from that. We're doing things like letting people plant a tree with every purchase they make. And we launched that about a year ago, planted over 15 million trees in in the past year, planting more trees in our in Central Park. And so it adds up.
Alan Fleischmann
And I don't think it's possible, that the big traditional banks–usually I guess you could go down the street and get your your bank manager, bank owner, and they could you know, they could invest with you and do things with a community and you knew who they were. That's not really the case anymore with the big traditional banks. I don't think they can actually build the same trust that you're building. I mean, I think at the end of the day, they're far removed, they're not, you're not, it will look like it's a it's a transaction rather than the transformation you're trying to lead.
Andrei Cherny
I think that's right. Distrust them. Less than 10% of Americans trust their own financial institution. And no wonder why that's the case. And, of course, that has all kinds of negative consequences, because people aren't using some of the financial products that actually would help them. Because of that lack of trust. You're right, that community bank has disappeared, there's been so much conglomeration, most people are now banking at one of three, four or five national banks. I think part of what Aspiration has been able to do has been to recreate the idea of a community. Not a geographic community, not that bank branch down the street. But a community of people with shared values and shared concerns, this group of conscious consumers, as we call them, people who are thinking about ethics, people are thinking about environmental sustainability, as they're making daily spending decisions around what kind of eggs to buy in the grocery store, what kind of coffee to to purchase, or what kind of clothes to wear. And now with Aspiration, for the first time, have a financial institution built around those concerns as well, that actually will allow them to have a meaningful impact, starting with the fact that when they move their money from any of these big banks, we're not doing what these banks are doing, which is you're using their deposits to fund oil and gas exploration, pipelines and drilling–the very things that are driving climate change. We guarantee that their deposits are fossil fuel free, and then we go from there.
Alan Fleischmann
But usually when you get privy to things that you can do good in the world, you have to put a lot of money into it. Well, you're offering something is that just by putting your money in, no matter what level of the magnitude, you'll be able to do good right away–we're going to do right by whatever investment you give us. Which is pretty good.
Andrei Cherny
Absolutely, you're absolutely right. And I think that's probably the central problem that we're thinking about and trying to solve, which is now as opposed to the Al Gore days of 25 years ago. Most Americans care, are concerned with climate change, want to do something about climate change. Most people don't know where to start. Most people don't really have actionable ways to make a real impact, as you're referring to. Yes, you can go put solar panels on your roof. Yes, you can go buy an electric vehicle. Those are big things, one time things and enormously expensive. And on the other end of the spectrum, yeah, it's great for people to change their lightbulbs to be more energy efficient or recycle their aluminum cans, we should all be doing that. But we also know that's not going to move the needle. And I think Aspiration pretty uniquely comes in to a place where, when people use our products, they have easy, automated ways to make a difference, they're still enormously powerful. We just launched Aspiration Zero, which is our credit card. And it's really, I'd say, the first product of any kind out there just by using it once a day, allows people to completely offset their carbon footprint, and builds right into what you're already doing and make something like that really easy.
Alan Fleischmann
And we're living in a cashless society increasingly, so certainly accelerated during the pandemic. So the idea that someone actually is using their card and doing something every day–they can live their lives and actually do good in the world by doing so which is pretty amazing.
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on Sirius XM, I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with Andrei Cherny, the CEO and co-founder of Aspiration, we're talking about his journey, we're talking about his company that is doing extraordinary things with 5-million-plus users. You also just raised the company wide minimum wage to $25, and you argued in a Fortune op-ed, that it was not only the right thing to do for your employees and the community, but it was also the best interest for the company, for Aspiration. Explain to us a little bit about that conclusion. We have a lot of CEOs, a lot of investors are listening to the show. And the fact that you made a decision that really did take into account multiple stakeholders. And at the end of the day, you said this is good for my business, to raise the minimum wage. It’s a beacon, you know, an example, frankly, for others who quickly followed suit, I think some big institutions did follow you. Partly because they see you a little bit of you kind of nipping at their heels a little bit.
Andrei Cherny
Well, you're right, it wasn't an easy decision, and probably shouldn't be, you know, we're a company like every other company that wants to deliver for our shareholders, along with everybody else. I, of course, thought about it, as I mentioned before, that kid who grew up on food stamps and thinking about what was the right thing to do, I thought about it from the standpoint of somebody who believes that we as a country should raise our minimum wage. But I said, neither of those is the way I should be thinking about it as CEO, that's not my job to bring in those personal views into it. I have to make the right decision for our company and all the stakeholders in our company. And what I decided was that, for what Aspiration needed to do, raising our minimum wage to $25 an hour was going to be what would best build a strong business. Because going back what you're talking about before, we're a company where the customer comes first, and we're building a community. And most of that minimum wage increase is affecting, for the most part, the people who are in customer engagement, the people who are answering phones and helping people when they're calling in with with a problem. We want to have the best of the best there. And if we can bring in and hire and retain the highest quality people we can get, who believe in the Aspiration mission, who are themselves beacons of that mission, our customers are going to be happier, and they're going to do more with us. And so I really saw this as an investment in our company's success.
Alan Fleischmann
And how did people respond?
Andrei Cherny
Almost universally positively. You know, we really got a lot of powerful and positive feedback for people who've been seeing this go on and, especially in this post-covid world, asking these questions about how do we build the workforce of the future? And and so hopefully, this was one data point for people as they're thinking about that.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s great. And your employees are national, right?
Andrei Cherny
They're all over. Yeah. Which is true, especially in this over the past year and a half, and wasn't necessarily true before. But as with a lot of companies, we're now able to hire people wherever. Now that also means that people wherever have a lot of options, because people are not all kinds of companies are knocking on their door. So not only do we need to hire people, we need to keep them, and this was thinking about that as well.
Alan Fleischmann
So fortunately, and I guess increasingly, you're becoming known for offering sustainability as a service to companies. So you know, I think historically, from what I understand, it's been very focused on the consumer. But now there's a B2B focus as well, where you're really able to help companies, and there really isn't a difference. And you and I talked about this, you know, companies have to think about their investors or consumers and customers, their communities and their employees, as do you. And what you're really doing is you're giving them a solution from the business level as well, for them to actually, again, speak to the same customer and consumer you're talking to?
Andrei Cherny
That's absolutely right. You know, when we were talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall, I said that change happens slowly, and then all at once. And that's what we're seeing with climate change as well. You know, of course, I've been involved in this fight for so long. But really, over the past 18 to 24 months, we've seen just a sea change in Americans’ attitudes around climate change and the level of concern. You now see 62% Americans saying that it's a major threat to the country, not even counting those who say it's a threat. You're seeing the number of people who are not just concerned–but alarmed–double over the past year or so. And that's leading to not just changing attitudes, but changing behavior. And you're seeing more and more consumers out there making decisions, as consumers and as employees on this front, on where they're going to spend their money and where they're going to spend their time. And businesses are now having to react to that. And so while you used to see especially bigger companies making carbon neutral goals by 2040, or 2050, and you'd see smaller companies, they're really sustainability focused talking about this. It's now happening across the board. I mean, it really is this zero to one moment, that's in some ways, a little bit like the birth of the internet. You used to see dotcoms were different than all the other companies. And then at some point in the late ’90s, early 2000s, every company decided, we need to get a website to we need to start doing something on this front. And it's the same thing with sustainability, we're just seeing so many companies who are waking up to the need, that the financial need that they have the business need, that they have to respond to the demands of consumers who are looking for sustainability and employees who are looking for sustainability and try to figure out a way to tell that story. And Aspiration really has a pretty unique set of technology and tools and, in fact, the consumer base that allows us to serve these companies and help them make this transition.
Alan Fleischmann
In life, you have to always think about supply and demand. You anticipate the demand and build the infrastructure. Now you have this extraordinary moment, I guess today, where you're the supply and the demand and both need to grow. The demand is growing quickly–it is that Berlin moment where all of a sudden people say, “This matters, this is my urgent priority. I want a values driven financial institution that's going to do right by all the issues I care about in society.” And at the same time, you're got to build the infrastructure to meet that demand. That's an amazing opportunity. It's also a great talent. How do you scale? How do you continue to scale the way you are because you're growing rapidly?
Andrei Cherny
We’re growing very rapidly. We've made some commitments and locked in the ability to plant literally billions of trees around the world, or they're sometimes called nature based offsets or above ground, carbon capture biomass. But they're trees and and that allows us to be able to serve our individual customers and our business customers at scale. And then very competitively, along with really the reason that people come to Aspiration, whether they're individuals or whether they’re a businesses, which is really because they want to be part of our mission, and it resonates with them.
Alan Fleischmann
And then do you can you imagine that? This is a question you probably can't answer, but may ask anyway. Can you imagine yourself becoming a public company?
Andrei Cherny
Well, I can imagine it. And who knows what the future holds?
Alan Fleischmann
I'm probably not the first one that's ever asked you that question. But I can imagine with the rapid pace in which you're driving the supply to meet the demand, the innovation, the creativity, and the fact that you've grown so much even during the pandemic, I got to imagine that scale is everything to meet that demand. And you are in the world of neo-banking, leading the way which can be lonely. So let's go, let's for the next few minutes talking to you, the CEO. Because you've been an innovator, you've been a prosecutor, you've been the master of the message, you've been a creator, and you've been a leader. And the challenge and I would say a CEO, you get to be all those every day. But what is the thing that inspires you the most? And what do you say is the biggest challenge? And who inspires you? Just as you were describing who inspired you to get involved in public life, who's out there inspiring you as a CEO? Is there anyone out there that you look at and say, that's the kind of CEO that I admire?
Andrei Cherny
Yeah, I think I probably take pieces from a lot of different people. None of us is perfect. And probably any of the CEOs I've tried to take some lessons from have certainly not perfect either. And so, you know, there's aspects of Jeff Bezos that and people like Steve Jobs that Ii think about, and of course, aspects of them that I would would not always emulate and would look elsewhere. You know, what keeps me going is really the reason that we start Aspiration, first place, it's the mission. We talk about my background, I wasn't somebody out there thinking about, oh, how do I start a financial institution, that wasn't where my head was, as we say, at Aspiration, we didn't set out to build a better bank, we set out to build a better world. And, and that's what keeps me keeps me going, frankly, is what we're actually accomplishing. And the difference that we're we're making, somebody asked me that I was interviewing for a job not too long ago, you've been at this eight years, what, what gets you out of bed in the morning to keep on working on this. And my reply was, frankly, it's only Aspiration that gets me out of bed in the morning, otherwise, I'd be looking at the headlines and all kinds of terrible things happening here and at home and around the world and would want to put my head back under the covers. ButI know that if I get up and if I do a good job as CEO that day, and if we as a company do a good job that day, there's going to be more people who are going to have better financial products, they're going to be better for them and make a difference to them and their families and put more money in their pocket. And there's been more people who are going to be making a positive impact on our world. And we're going to have planted thousands and thousands and thousands of more trees and made a difference in the fight against climate change. And so that's really what keeps me going.
Alan Fleischmann
And the fight continues which is the most powerful part. And are you doing writing anymore?
Andrei Cherny
No, I frankly, can barely even do reading anymore. So one of these days, I hope to get back to the point where I can spend some time reading books and doing things like that. But it's pretty all consuming, the work that we're in the middle of.
Alan Fleischmann
I guess, when you think about it, you know, your life has been built as a leader, as a thinker and a doer around public sector, civil society, and private industry and private sector. What you're doing with Aspiration right now is all three.
Andrei Cherny
In some ways, yeah. In some ways, it is. Look, we were talking and joking about that 20, 21-year-old who had his life all mapped out, and I was going to go to law school, and then I was going to do this, and then I was going to do this. And, and, and none of those things turned out the way that I did. And I would never have imagined 25 years ago that I would be doing what I'm doing now. But what I think is important than the advice that I give to now younger people is not not think about the road, but think about the destination and think about what is that Northstar? What are you trying to accomplish? Because you're going to have to take all different kinds of paths to get there. And as long as you really know what matters to you, and what you're trying to do and what you care about, then you'll hopefully find continue to find different ways to do so. And I and I think I've been fortunate to get to at least try to make a difference in government and in nonprofit and civic life and and in the private sector as well. And hopefully make a little bit of difference along the way.
Alan Fleischmann
What advice would you give to CEOs and investors right now who are struggling to speak the language of ESG and do the right thing. I mean, my advice would be to get engaged with you. That would be my advice. If they partner and invest with you, then that seems to be the way to go if you want to be part of the ESG world and stakeholder capitalism, but you tell me what advice you'd give.
Andrei Cherny
Well, I'd certainly love to help them. And so thanks. But my advice is to really think about something like sustainability, not as a box to check. But as something to weave into your business, weave into that customer journey, weave into the employee experience. You know, again, going back to the analogy, I said before about the the move into the dotcom era, you had the dotcoms, and you had people, you had all these businesses starting a website, but their business wasn't online. And eventually, the businesses that succeeded were those that changed the way they do business to move into this new world and new expectations. I think the most successful businesses coming out of this giant, incredibly fast shift that we're experiencing probably the fastest shift in human history around sustainability that we're now seeing, the businesses that succeed are those, they're going to really not just respond to the demands of investors, not just check the box of what government is going to be mandating. But really think about that bottom up demand that is just increasing with each passing day. You know, it's, it's true in people like me in their 40s, it's even more true with people in their 30s, it's even much more true with people in their 20s a really different set of expectations. And those businesses that are going to succeed are those that really meet that demand among their customers and among their employees.
Alan Fleischmann
And then the demand for that is only going to be stronger and become increasingly urgent.
Andrei Cherny
Each passing year, yeah. There's not a year in the foreseeable future in which individuals are not going to want to do more when it comes to sustainability, and businesses are not going to need to spend more in order to have successful, profitable businesses.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, this has been such a pleasure, Andrei, for me, and for this audience, we only wish we could have longer than an hour, because there's a lot more to say. So you're going to come back on, we'll do it again. Because we're going to want to keep a real eye on what you're building with Aspiration. You know, you have really combined a career from the bottom up. You don't really have the bottom up moment, but you've been caring about communities. For 20 years, you've been about openness and fairness, and top priorities of urgency that matter to our globe, our country and our communities. And you've been an advisor to many, even a prosecutor, you've been in a story and you've been an author, you've been a White House advisor and aide. And you have really been recognized for being a policy expert, as well as a CEO. So we can bring you on this show we should for all those perspectives and more. Lucky for Aspiration that you do it everyday in your day job, and you bring it to the day, and you deliver. So I guess we should be grateful for what you're doing first and foremost, and I just like to ask you to come back on again, so that we can continue this conversation and you're going to be growing quickly. And I know the best days are ahead of Aspiration and you. And you've got pretty amazing investors with you I should mention that are pretty notable. You've got some great celebrities who we care and admire that have joined forces with you. The Robert Downey Jr.’s of the world. Who else would you want to mention?
Andrei Cherny
You know, we've been fortunate to have a lot of high profile people, like Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio, Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, most recently Drake, and others who come to Aspiration for the same reason, hopefully, that our customers are coming to us. Because our mission resonates. And they want to be part of a real movement to make a difference.
Alan Fleischmann
Keep doing what you're doing. And just know that there are many of us are rooting for you. And I hope many of our listeners and CEOs and investors join forces with you because if we keep scaling, there will be better.
Andrei Cherny
Thanks for having me on.
Alan Fleischmann
Grateful to see capitalism work. I know its values driven when it's under your leadership. And I also know the best is yet to come. So thank you for joining us today.
