Episode 131 - Pastoring 120,000 in Public Markets with Pat Gelsinger
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Intel CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has been a leader in the Faith and Work movement for decades.
In this interview from the 2022 Faith Driven Investor Conference, Pat talks about some of the most important lessons he’s learned as he’s sought to bring his whole self into the workplace over the years.
He also gives insight into how leaders can balance their work and family life, empower their communities, and love their employees, partners, and coworkers who come to work with different faith backgrounds. Let’s listen in.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome, Faith driven entrepreneurs. It is an incredible honor to be here with Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel. And when we think his faith driven entrepreneurs about what it looks like to be a faith driven leader. A lot of us think, well, gosh, we can talk about our faith or be informed by our faith if maybe we're running a small company in maybe the Bible Belt or something like that. But other than that, we just really have to buy into a secular spiritual divide and maybe leave our faith at home and maybe just look at it on weekends in a church. If there is a place in America, at least that people think is not very faith friendly, a lot of people think Silicon Valley or they might think of big, publicly traded company. But we've got a guy here who is the CEO of one of the very biggest publicly traded companies in the Bay Area who's very serious about his faith. So, Pat, what an honor and privilege and a blessing for you to share some time with us. Thank you.
Pat Gelsinger: Hey, thanks, Henry. Appreciate what you do for the entrepreneurs. And a real pleasure to spend some time chatting today.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you. Thank you. So maybe we just start off with that, which is what does it look like to be driven by your faith and be a leader of a really big company?
Pat Gelsinger: Well, you know, it's been a journey for me since early on. And in fact, maybe a little bit of the story of how I got here is funny, where I was very young in my faith. You know, I was working at Intel a few months and, you know, I felt compelled by God to go into ministry. And I'm a very young Christian and I'm, you know, at Intel, maybe eight months at this point, you know, had just become a Christian, maybe five, four months earlier. And God says, go into full time ministry. And I started arguing with God. I said, I don't want to be a minister. I don't want to be one of those pastor folks. I love this technology stuff while I'm doing it. You know, I'm wrestling with God for a while and okay, God, I give up, right? If this happens, I'll go into full time ministry. And the answer from God was The workplace is your ministry. And Colossians three, 23 and 24 became my life verse work heartily. As for the Lord and not them, not from men. Knowing that you receive the reward of the inheritance, it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. And that's always been saying, okay, you know, I'm in the workplace, but I'm a full time Christian, full time minister, you visible for my faith in those roles. And boy, that's been the journey of almost 40 years now as a Christian, as a leader in the workplace. And to me it's been occasionally challenging but extraordinarily rewarding, knowing that, yeah, I work for Intel no. I work for the Lord Jesus Christ on a daily basis.
Henry Kaestner: So how does that work out? A lot of people talk about Saint Francis of Assisi, and that's the way to kind of inform what we do. And, you know, just preach the gospel, always use words when necessary. Of course, what's missing in that is that he is also one of the most famous open air pastors of all time. Right. But you've navigated through deed and excellence and also sharing your faith. This is not the first time you've talked about your faith in front of a public audience. How do you navigate that tension?
Pat Gelsinger: And, you know, in many ways, I'll say, you know, there's a couple of key rules that I've learned over time to navigate that. Well, you know, one is I'd say, you know, first the thesis behind how you bring your faith into the workplace. And today there's a lot of discussion on diversity and inclusion. And it turns out that for humanity, over 70% of all humans on the earth claim that faith is an or the most important thing in their lives. So if we're going to talk about diversity and inclusion, but we're not going to allow faith in the workplace, I'm telling 70% of humanity. No, the most important thing that you can't come into the workplace. So, of course, diversity and inclusion means that faith needs to come into the workplace, it needs to be visible. Otherwise, I'm telling you, keep that at home. But other aspects of inclusion you're able to bring into the workplace, you know, that doesn't work, right? You know, diversity and inclusion is all about bringing your whole self into the workplace, your ethnic self, you know, your sexual orientation, your social and your faith. So I say I'm proud of bringing my faith into the workplace. And in fact, if I, as the CEO who's the chief culture officer of Intel, can't demonstrate my diversity in the workplace, then how can anybody? So, in fact, I need to be representing my faith, what's most important to me or other aspects of my personality in the workplace. But then the second piece of it is, is I also then, as a Christian CEO, need to make it okay for everybody else to bring their faith perspectives into the workplace. And, oh, you're a Sikh. Tell me about being a Sikh. Oh, what's Ramadan? Yo, let's go. Hey, you know, I just was talking to my board of directors was celebrating Ramadan. I said, next year, I'm going to celebrate it with you and I'm going to do the fasting with you next year as well. I want to know about your faith and your perspectives and so on. And for that, you know, people might say, well, you're proselytizing if you talk about your faith. No, I'm bringing my whole self into the workplace. And I must make it okay for all other faith perspectives, including no faith. I hear someone say, you know, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any faith. Well, great, that's your worldview. And I need to make that okay too when they're part of my team, part of the workplace that we're together [......].
Henry Kaestner: So presumably when you encourage that and allow someone to bring their whole selves to work, people feel more welcome and they stick around more. They do more excellent work and and probably even flow through to the bottom line.
Pat Gelsinger: Yeah. And in fact, you know, there's lots of studies now that have shown that a more diverse, inclusive workspace brings better outcomes. You know, people, hey, if I'm able to, you know, bring my whole self into the workplace, I feel honored in my faith traditions or, you know, my cultural and ethnic predecent. Then I'm able to participate more effectively in work discussions as well. And I can bring those perspectives where, you know, I mean, the famous story of the first version of the Apple Watch, right, where it didn't detect the women's period because there was nobody on the design team who was a female. Oh, right. It's sort of like you immediately just saw, hey, not having a gender diversity was a total design flaw in the product. Well, this is every aspect of bringing yourself into the workplace. And how will this product or this decision be seen by different ethnic groups, different social groups, different genders, etc.? And of course, as we said, faith has one of those.
Henry Kaestner: So that's fascinating to me. I have a friend of mine named Chris Seipel, who is a big proponent for religious freedom, and he has a phrase that I really like, which is truth stands out in the marketplace of ideas, and that as faith driven leaders, we should welcome that and include that and encourage people to bring their whole selves work. So I think that's really cool. And one of the things that will probably be a surprise to most of our listeners and most of our watchers is that the concept of faith driven employee resource groups really started out here right at Apple and then Facebook and then Google.
Pat Gelsinger: and in Intel.
Henry Kaestner: And of course at Intel. Of course at Intel. But that would be a surprise to a lot of folks to think that maybe they're in Chicago right now are thinking, well, I don't really know. I could yeah, maybe if I'm in Nashville, I could but can't do it in Chicago actually out here that's now accepted business. Right.
Pat Gelsinger: And we have over 30 different employee resource groups now with the company. And one of the earliest ones was the Intel Christian Bible Network that I helped to start, you know, many, many years ago.
Henry Kaestner: How long ago is that? So that's a long time.
Pat Gelsinger: Over 30 years ago when we first did that. And in fact, you know, the first outline for the juggling act book was in preparation for my first speaking at the first Intel Christian Bible Network. You were talking about having a lunch time brown bag kind of event where people would show up and people sit Pat, Pat. You know, as a leader inside of the company, we really want you to, you know, be that Christian face as we kick off the Intel Christian Bible Network. And I said, Well, what should I talk about? Right. I don't know. You know, maybe, you know, how do you make faith work and your family fit together? Oh, okay. And that became the outline for the book. And I've given that talk, of course, you know, now probably a thousand plus times or.
Henry Kaestner: 20 years ago, maybe, you.
Pat Gelsinger: Know, the first version of the book was over 20 years ago. The second version of the book was, I think nine years ago now. Right. The juggling act. And it was really born out of okay, I got to come up with some talk for our kickoff of the Intel Christian Bible Network. And now that whole theme of [...] is really flourished inside of Intel. And we have, you know, different faith groups, different sexual orientation groups, different ethnic groups. You're also, you know, different classes, you know, a black leadership group. We have a, you know, a veterans group as well for those coming out of the military into the workforce, you know, and of course, across some of the other regions of the world, you know, different slices that are important for them. And in fact, last year, we were recognized by the United Nations as one of the most faith friendly companies. And I and our head of HR were recognized for that as well. Right. It's sort of like, wow, that's came full circle, you know, 30 years ago and now being recognized by the United Nations, it was like, okay, this is pretty special.
Henry Kaestner: It is really special. Okay. So let's go back to the juggling act a bit and this concept because all faith driven entrepreneurs wrestle with this, what does it look like? You've got four kids and they're all at home when you're writing the book. Talk to us about how you manage that. What was the juggling act about? Give our listeners a little bit of encouragement on that, please.
Pat Gelsinger: Sure. And it is you know, it's sort of why the title is very fitting, right because you're being stretched by work. And, you know, if you're a good employee, how much do you want to work more? How much time does your family want more? How much time does your spouse want more? More. Right. So you're just being stretched and, you know, how do you make that all work? And, you know, the juggling act was really my journey and how to make it all work. And, you know, some of the key themes that we developed in the book, one was a mission statement. Yeah, right. Where do you want to go? If you don't have a plan of where you want to go, any path will get you there. So get very deliberate about your goals, your priorities, your values, and then systematically take things out of your life and consistent with those goals. Yeah, right. And allocate your time to those goals and then build clear your value driven priority and mechanisms to live that way. So set a mission statement. Another is to have mentors. Right? Okay. Henry, you are my mentor. Here's my mission statement. Help me to live this way. Hold me accountable to what I said would be the case. Another is keeping score. And one of the things that people always get a kick out of is we had the at home chart, right, where, you know, you just sort of keep working a little bit later, a little bit later in the project and soon you've squashed the family hours in the evening. So we said, Hey, if I'm home by 6:15, that's a point. If I'm home by 5:00, that's 2.0. I like if I'm home after 6:15, that's zero points. If I'm going weekend days, that's a negative point. So that was the numerator. The denominator is the number of workdays and my secretary, an independent arbiter, would produce the at home chart on a monthly basis. So Linda would say, hey, you haven't been home much lately. Yes, I have. No, you haven't. Yeah, right. Well, now we have data, right? We look at the data and then she might say something like, Well, I felt like you haven't been home much. Well, that's different, right? The data says I have been home, but you haven't felt that way. Oh, that's totally different. But keeping score, keeping track. Are you living according.
Henry Kaestner: To talk about that though? So because one of the things I wrestle with a bit is kind of switching from my work life to coming home and I know so sometimes can really say like, I don't know that you're really kind of here, but I'm here. I mean, my independent arbitrator say you are absolutely home at 6:15, but I'm still thinking about customer acquisition or intellectual property or channels to market or whatever it is. Yeah. How do you have that discipline where you say, okay, now I'm focused on Linda and the kids. Yeah.
Pat Gelsinger: And I think, I think COVID has made this worse because now the day has no beginning and the day has no end. Yeah. So I think these matters in exactly this question have gotten harder in light of COVID work from anywhere, you know, hey, I'm four paces from my study to get started the work right here. So the day has no beginning. The day has no end, I can be, you know, in Europe in the morning and in Asia in the evening. I get you know, it's pretty easy to have very long days that way. And it's super important that, you know, you just develop the habits that allow you to disconnect, you know, become digitally naked, right? Turn off the devices, get them out of it so that you're not in that immediate distraction mode. You know, listen, on purpose, go off and Linda will come back as as you really weren't listen to me when I said I told you that yesterday. Yeah. Those should prick your soul when your spouse says things like that to you because you're really not interested in their lives and priorities. Also say that particularly for entrepreneurs that might have kids at home, you know, they don't care what time you get up in the morning. They don't care what you do before breakfast. But they care an awful lot what you do between five and 8 p.m.. Yeah, yeah. Those are the Golden Family hours. And I'd say as a parent, you want to just like build fences around those, right? And really give those to your kids. And if you go back and work after 9 p.m., okay, that's okay. But you know, really build fences around those evening hours, show up to their events, their sporting events, be all there. You know, sometimes I would take red eye flights just so I'd be home for, you know, a soccer game where my kid only got to play 5 minutes. Okay, but I'm going to be there. Yeah, right. That matters. Show up. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: You mentioned mentorship as one of the things that you mentioned, of course, in the juggling act. And last time I saw you a couple of years ago, right before COVID, you're talking about the fact that you're still involved in mentorship. You know, I would imagine that the line of people want to be mentored by Pat Gelsinger, thousands long. But you still practice that. And do you still talk to a mentor?
Pat Gelsinger: I just spoke to Steve this morning. And, you know, last year was a very hard year on this subject for me because I had really five significant male influences that really influenced my life. You know, one was my dad. He passed away September 4th of last year. One was Andy Grove. You know, we just passed the sixth year of his passing. One was Luis Palau. Right. And, you know, he passed away just over a year ago. Another was Bryce Jessup from Texas.
Henry Kaestner: Of course.
Pat Gelsinger: He was another and he passed away a little bit over a year ago. So all of a sudden, you know, except for Steve, all of my yeah, he feels like I'm the old guy all of a sudden. And that was a rather startling experience. So my dad passed away last year and Steve was going through a major heart surgery and at the time, somewhat like yours and yours, all that's happening, it's sort of like, Wow, I've lost my mentors, but thank God, Steve still healthy and may I have to add one to my mentor list, but it's really important, you know, and he'll ask me hard questions regularly, you know, like, how is Linda doing? You know, how are you in her life? And are you continuing to be that person that is working with God to make her all that she was meant to be? And so holding me accountable to that, in addition to being a good advisor on some of my work trade offs. And, you know, that trusted voice, that speaking into your life. So, you know, I would be saying to all of the listeners here, if you don't have good mentors, then you're not serious about being everything that God intended you to be.
Henry Kaestner: So if I remember from our past conversation, it's not just that you have these older people in your life that you occasionally talk to. There's a discipline, a regimented discipline. Do it to How often do you speak to Steve and what would you recommend to folks that are establishing that relationship either with a mentee or with a mentor?
Pat Gelsinger: Yeah, Steve and I speak every Friday morning, 6 a.m. and obviously schedule and stuff like that. So we probably end up about twice a month, but we've been doing that for over 20 years.
Henry Kaestner: Wow. That's awesome. Okay. You mentioned Bryce Jessop, and I want to switch conversation a little bit to philanthropy and giving and being actively involved in your community. So you're CEO of Intel, you've got four kids, you've got eight grandkids. You get a lot of stuff going on. You would be forgiven if you just decided to just kind of write checks and be, you know, they're going to get somebody else to do that. And yet you've gotten really, really involved in the community. So talk to us about TBC. Talk to us about this calling to an area and the leadership you provide not just to Intel, what you do so well, but the vision that you've provided to other Christian leaders in the Bay Area. Yeah.
Pat Gelsinger: Your overall backing up just slightly handling know Linda and I made a commitment very early in our marriage that we were going to give an increasing percentage of our gross income to philanthropy every year. Right. So that started with the tithe that 10%. And well, now we're at about 50%, so about 50% of our gross income. So it started about 10% of nothing know now it's 50% of a lot. Right, that we're giving every year to charity. So, you know, first, I would challenge all the entrepreneurs, you know, build a lifestyle of generosity. Right. And hey, I am really excited about the cool things that we're doing at Intel. But if you really want to hear me get passionate, let me talk to you about what's going on at my philanthropies. Yeah, because those are really eternally life changing. And like one of them, Linda's on the board of now. She's going to Africa, to Kenya to invest in that. We have, you know, now the largest church planting organization that we helped start. So we're the largest in the world with stadia. You know, we helped to start that, you know, been super involved with the Palau also forever. Yeah. We just had dinner with John Jackson, the president of William Jessup, this week with them. And, you know, these philanthropy investments can be the most fulfilling aspects of your life, and particularly as entrepreneurs, how you want to create success, you want to create wealth, but what do you want to do with that wealth? Right. If you start pouring it into ministries that truly become eternally shaping for humanity, okay. That can really release a lot of enthusiasm, energy, you know, passion. And ultimately, that's what God would call us to do with our wealth and capabilities. Now with TBC, obviously, when we came back to the Bay area.
Henry Kaestner: Tell us about what TBC is.
Pat Gelsinger: Yeah. TBC transforming the bay with Christ and Melinda and I moved back to the bay. It was funny because she was not excited about coming back to the Bay Area. I say, you know, we're living in Boston, enjoying ourself there with the [...]. And she sort of scratched her claws across the nation. She came back to the Bay Area is like, I want to go back to the bay. Right. You know, there's sort of crazy there. And then it was we came back, God brought one, two, three of our kids to the Bay Area and all eight of the grandkids, so were like, okay, he bless her decision to come back here. She's thrilled now with that. But I also felt like when I became CEO of VMware that God was calling me to use this position of leadership in a much more influential way. And out of that came bringing together of business leaders that were Christians with the key faith leaders of the Bay Area to start a movement to truly transform the Bay Area with Christ. TBC And that now has been in operation for eight years now and really is about networking the churches of the Bay Area. It's about, you know, helping them to be engaged in ministry in the Bay Area and ultimately multiplying the churches of the Bay Area. So we call it Unify, Amplify and multiply, right? The impact of Christ in the Bay Area and the Bay Area know, as I've said, it's the richest area on earth, one of the most influential areas on Earth. It's also one of the least philanthropic. Areas on earth and one of the least faith areas on Earth. Wow. That's pretty hard soil. That's my mission field. Right. You know, I get excited that, hey, you know, Christ shows up in the Bay Area. Yeah. He can show up anywhere physical, show up here in a powerful way, particularly coming off of COVID. I think the role of TBC in the Bay Area is maybe the most unique and impactful that it's been since we started the effort eight years ago. The church is looking for, Hey, how do I get my footing again on the other side of COVID? So truly thrilling to see the momentum of it. It's alive and well and the church in the Bay Area is alive and very well.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed it is. I can attest to that. So and encouragement that we'd have to all of you that are listening to this is what does it look like for you to be thoughtful and how God might have you love on folks where you're planning, wherever the town, the village, the city, the region is, as it would, I think, encourage and challenge you as that. If you can do something like that in a kind of a bigger area like this with 54 different towns, you can think about doing it in your backyard as well as you bring together people in this network and say it again. It's unify, amplify and multiply in your town. I'm so grateful for a time I can't let you go before I just kind of throw out this kind of a grab bag one for you and you can answer any way you want to an audience of Faith driven entrepreneurs they're trying to understand How do I know God more fully through my work? How do I do my work with excellence, how to lead my family? But gosh, how do I just make sure that I don't lose my faith in the midst of this? All the things that are going on, anything that you have as an encouragement or a warning admonition, anything.
Pat Gelsinger: And you're clearly your work can become so consuming. You're, you know, in particularly you're a couple of years into this entrepreneurial journey, you know, maybe you're succeeding, maybe not, you know, you're just pouring yourself into it because you've given so much of your life and passion to it. And I ask you all the question, are you still putting God on the throne every day? And, you know, if the answer to that is no, then what are you going to do to put God on the throne every single day? Every single morning? You know, where you in devotion, right? You know, are you really honoring him with the day? And, you know, some days, hey, he might stay on the throne till about 8:02. Okay, well, tomorrow we're working on keeping God in the throne till 8:03, right? Yeah. I mean, stuff happens here, but are you putting him on the throne daily? Are you in fellowship with him or are you in regular worship in church? Do you have mentors who are keeping you accountable to the relationship and position that you would want God to have in your life? You know that iron sharpening iron. Okay, how is your devotion time going? However, you know people who are really to challenge, do each one of you have those kind of people that are challenging you and you're going to screw up, you're going to fail and so on. But then also seeing that the most important thing you do as a leader is to be a great leader, right? You know, make your company successful. You know, that is the most God honoring thing that you can do, right? You're not doing work instead of faith. You're doing faith through your work, right. In the workplace. And the most God honoring thing you can do is do that with excellence. And every day that you show up into the workplace, do it with absolute excellence. And then finally, it would be that as a leader and particularly now as a public company leader as well, I mean, I am thrilled that I get to speak through today 121,000 people at Intel. Right. You know, I get to make their lives better every day. You know, I get to help them create wealth for their families, improve the communities that they're in, you know, demonstrate through, you know, our benefits, through our foundation and philanthropies that we do as a company, that I want to unleash their passions into their communities and to what's most important to them. I want to create a workplace that they truly are thrilled with so I can be my full self when I show up at Intel and as a leader, as a CEO, that's what you get to do each day. You know what could be more thrilling than to say I'm positively impacting 121,000 lives on a daily basis? Wow. You know, but then I also get to say through what we do at Intel, you know that we are here improving the lives of every human on the planet through the power of technology.
Henry Kaestner: I was going to suggest that if you didn't. Yes.
Pat Gelsinger: You know, it's just so cool. It's just you know, and I you know, I helped to create USB, I helped to create wi fi. I helped to create the personal computer. I helped to create the cloud. Okay. You know, we're now at 60% of humans are connected to the Internet. By 2030, that'll be 90%. Wow. Yeah. I'm going to touch the lives of every human on the planet and make their lives better. Right. You know, we're going to educate, right? And education, the best way to lift people out of extreme poverty is. Yeah, that's the stuff we got to do because technology. And you're impacting the world. And what can be more thrilling than a Christian to say, that's right, I'm improving the lives of every human on the planet.
Henry Kaestner: It's really awesome. It's really awesome. Pat, I'm so grateful for your time, for your leadership, for your friendship, for your encouragement in the Bay Area and beyond. On behalf of our audience. Thank you very much.
Pat Gelsinger: Thank you, Henry.