41
CONSCIENCE
How CEO whisperer
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
mobilized business
leaders to dump
Trump—and helped
shape the new era
of “woke capitalism”
By Molly Ball
The CeOs sTarTed Calling befOre PresidenT
Trump had even fnished speaking. What Ameri-
ca’s titans of industry were hearing from the Com-
mander in Chief was sending them into a panic.
It was Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election,
and things weren’t looking good for the incumbent
as states continued to count ballots. Trump was
eager to seed a different narrative, one with no
grounding in reality: “If you count the legal votes,
I easily win,” he said from the lectern of the White
House Briefng Room. “If you count the illegal
votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”
The speech was so dangerously dishonest that
within a few minutes, all three broadcast television
networks spontaneously stopped airing it. And at
his home in Branford, Conn., the iPhone belonging
to the Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey
Sonnenfeld began to buzz with calls and texts from
some of the nation’s most powerful tycoons.
The CEOs of leading media, fnancial, pharma-
ceutical, retail and consulting frms all wanted to
talk. By the time Tom Rogers, the founder of CNBC,
got to Sonnenfeld, “he had clearly gotten dozens of
calls,” Rogers says. “We were saying, ‘This is real—
Trump is trying to overturn the election.’ Some-
thing had to happen fast.”
For decades, Sonnenfeld has been bringing busi-
ness leaders together for well- attended seminars
on the challenges of leadership, earning a reputa-
tion as a “CEO whisperer.” A committed capitalist
and self-described centrist, he has informally ad-
vised Presidents of both parties and spoke at Senate
GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s wedding. Now he
suggested the callers get together to make a pub-
lic statement, perhaps through their normal politi-
cal channels, D.C. industry lobbies such as the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and the Business Round-
table (BRT). But the CEOs wanted Sonnenfeld to
do it; the trade groups, they fretted, were too risk-
averse and bureaucratic. And they wanted to do it
right away: when Sonnenfeld, who issues invita-
tions for his summits eight months in advance in
order to secure a slot on CEOs’ busy calendars, sug-
gested a Zoom call the following week, they said
that might be too late.
The group of 45 CEOs who assembled less than
12 hours later, at 7 a.m. on Nov. 6, represented nearly
PHOTOGRAPH BY DONOVAN MARKS
SONNENFELD
ADDRESSES
ATTENDEES AT THE
YALE CEO SUMMIT
IN DECEMBER
2019 AT THE
ROOSEVELT HOTEL
IN NEW YORK CITY
