The C.E.O. of UPS on Voting Rights and Vaccine Delivery

How did you move from the Milton Friedman perspective to the stakeholder view?

It’s been happening over years, but it really did start during the last recession, the housing crisis, when I was at Home Depot. I saw the power of investing in our people and really thinking of them as investments, not expenses. I saw the power of taking care of them during a time of trouble, and how committed they were to the company, and how hard they actually worked to create a great experience for the customer.

It was like a flywheel. Our people were happy. Our customers were happy. The experience was great. And we were creating a lot of sales and profit, which allowed us to then return some of that to shareholders in the form of dividends.

From a climate perspective, I think I’m maybe more sensitive than some because I actually grow crops. I grow corn and wheat and soybeans. So I have some sensitivity to what a warmer planet means. And, you know, I think part of my journey as just a human being is just really trying to determine my purpose.

For a long time, people would ask me, “What’s your purpose?” And I’d say, “I want my tombstone to read: ‘She made a difference.’” That’s all well and good and nice. But I’ve been really thinking about it, and I’m like: “You know, that’s not really why you’re here, Carol. It’s bigger than that.” And so, you know, I’ve landed on a three-pronged purpose statement for me personally: Lead to inspire, serve to create, and give to remain.

What did it take to stand up a supply chain that could transport vaccines?

We’ve been in the health care logistics business for over 15 years, so we have been delivering vaccines for years. We know how to do this. But we got ahead of some of the unique demands of the Covid-19 vaccines last year, because we believed that at some point there would be vaccines needing to be shipped that would require special temperatures. So we stood up freezer farms last year. We now have three of them. We manufacture a lot of dry ice. And since we started, we have delivered more than 300 million vaccines around the world.

And let me just tell you how complicated this is. Pfizer was making those vaccines in Michigan when they received the F.D.A. approval. We drove an eighteen-wheeler to their manufacturing plant, and the vaccines were loaded on to that truck. That eighteen-wheeler drove to a nearby local airport, and we loaded them onto a UPS-owned plane, and they were flown to Louisville, Ky., which is our largest air hub.

When the vaccines came off the airplane, they were processed and received special labels with battery-powered sensors, so we know at all times where those packages are. They were then loaded on to feeder aircraft going to the destination cities.