Our Founding Story
Written by Founder & CEO, Jill Miller
From Tension to Transformation
In the summer of 2021, I spent most days in a room on the West Side of Chicago staring at a quote that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from his Birmingham jail cell: “I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.” This is my story of how his words inspired me to confront and create the “constructive tension” that drives measurable change and uplifts communities.)
In 2020, George Floyd’s death illuminated the deep racial injustices in this country. As an executive, I knew these challenges were not just social. They are deeply woven into the American economy. In 2020 and 2021, US Corporations put $200B on the table with promises to drive positive change for a more racially and socially just America. As I watched this, I could not figure out how that money would benefit marginalized people, at scale, especially when much of that money was being earmarked for Supplier Diversity. Because in the modern American supply chain, women own fewer than 4% of the companies that support CPG brands. Statistically zero are black-owned. So even when businesses pledged that $200B to “do better,” I couldn’t help but doubt that they would really make a difference.
As summer turned to fall, I didn’t have all the answers, but I did know that we could not continue to point out where we were doing good without pointing out where we could improve.
From the C-Suite to the Street: My Guerrilla Market Research
First, I needed to get outside of myself and my singular experience. I embedded on the West Side of Chicago in a zip code so plagued by gun violence that only 2% of American zip codes are more dangerous. There, I listened to better understand what was preventing human flourishing in those communities. I founded Below the Line, where I consulted with PE firms who were converting private companies to employee-owned using trauma-informed guardrails, and worked with YWCA’s Breedlove program where I developed a curriculum for underrepresented entrepreneurs and ran 3 cohorts (and counting) to support Black female founders.
I called in a career’s worth of favors and free coffees and picked exec’s brains about their companies’ approach to solving racial inequality while I waitressed at Tavern on Rush, asking nearly every 4-top the same questions. From this guerrilla-style market research, I heard the message loud and clear: corporate leaders were in pain. They felt the pressure to act from investors and consumers but couldn’t risk outing themselves by speaking publicly about hot button issues. Everyone from the C-Suite to the street wanted to see social change in the US, but they didn’t know how to get there.
What Gets Measured Gets Improved
Over the course of my career, I only missed my sales forecast twice. I led two product rollouts that transformed efficiency and reliability on the factory floor. And I knew that every executive leadership team held conversations about wanting their people and communities to thrive, but at the end of the day, the families of the people on the factory floor were still suffering from circumstances thrust upon them by previous generations. So I walked away from 20 years in corporate to pursue my burning desire to figure out how to transform performative declarations into meaningful impact.
Talk → Action → Revenue
In a post Affirmative Acting world, every move must be tied to shareholder value, and enterprise orgs can’t have a beige flag anywhere on the balance sheet. At the same time, they’re pressured by everyone else to care about more than just profits. How ‘doing good’ creates value is the multi-billion-dollar question. The answer requires entirely new measurements.
My research showed me how most money resides in capital-intensive markets like factories and manufacturers, and the lightbulb turned on. If we could help a public company understand how they were themselves contributing to wealth gaps within their supply chain by measuring actions, determining their dollar value, and using data to drive improvements – we were poised to make a serious impact on equality in commerce.
The Magic in the Measurement
The key was to make “impact accounting” tangible, so I connected with Harvard Professor Ethan Rouen, who wrote a working paper on the topic. From there, the right people dropped into my life at exactly the right time like magic. The day after wondering why more black women don’t own a stake in the value chain, I met a Data Visualization expert from Nielsen who told me he could get me that information in 10 minutes. The day I said out loud, “I could really use a data scientist,” I got an email from the Chief Data Officer of Fortune 500. With this serendipitously assembled team of volunteers, we built our MVP.
Today, Lunum interprets a value chain’s actions around diversity, wage quality, opportunity, and job creation into real dollar amounts, and shows exactly how pulling one lever positively or negatively changes their impact in a system we call Bright Star Verification. This monetary figure on historically non-financial metrics lets enterprises satisfy their fiduciary duty, while showing consumers, customers, and employees their actions are more than just lip service. We’ve already been recognized in Gartner’s Beyond Supply Chain as a thought leader in “Objective Measurements for ESG” and “Elevating Humanity Through the Supply Chain”.
Fiduciary Duty: Delivered
When I read the headline in Crain’s in June of 2023 that McDonald’s was being challenged for the legality of its DEI policies in a letter of shareholder concern, I cried at my desk seeing it as one more cut tearing at the already battered human & civil rights fabric. It was a clear signal that it’s game time. Lunum has the answer to neutralize the rhetoric and make impact tangible as we help corporations pursue people-first policies AND generate the numbers that prove it enhances their bottom line.
First-movers are all in, because with Bright Star Verification, executives can stop banging their heads on their desks and finally know that they are reducing risk by using standardized data that empirically proves their impact. We’re giving every brand a chance to be the next Patagonia or Unilever, because when you walk your social responsibility talk, customers literally love to support you.
From Grassroots to Global
I didn’t have a choice about solving this problem. When I looked at an unjust world through my children’s eyes and the eyes of the people on the West Side, I couldn’t risk looking back in ten years and knowing I didn’t do the best I could to make a difference.
I believe this industry is ready for transformation. We’re helping executives “walk their talk” by using their platform for the good of the business and the good of humanity, and helping consumers shop with confidence, knowing that everyone involved in bringing a product to their hands had the opportunity to flourish.
Walk YOUR talk with us.
