Table Stakes

Hosted by Marcy Twete

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Oct 2026

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About the show

In today's business landscape, responsibility and sustainability are no longer optional or "nice to have." Modern stakeholders don't just expect an environmental, social and governance (ESG) focus, they demand it. Being a good corporate citizen today is "table stakes." Simultaneously, many of the corporate social responsibility departments companies launched in the last 30 years aren't thinking enough about innovation, growth, business-focused results and resilience. Table Stakes discusses the issues of sustainability with forward-thinking leaders to forecast the future of responsible business. Being ethical, human and sustainable is no longer optional – it's table stakes.

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45 recent

October 14, 202628 min

43. Don’t Be Evil: 5 Takeaways from Our Fall Book Club

We're sharing five takeaways from Claire Stapleton's "Don't Be Evil," a memoir of thirteen years inside Google and the 2018 Google Walkout, and the first pick for Veerless's new Read Responsibly book club. Marcy explains why the book club moved to Chatham House rules, then digs into why accountability should flow up, what a walkout says about a company's internal channels, why "nothing major" is the most dangerous phrase in workplace harassment, how support for employees has to outlast the condolence flowers, and why corporate values only matter if someone can hold you to them.

July 15, 202622 min

42. Six Episodes, Five Books, One Book Club

Six episodes into the Read Responsibly series, Marcy takes a solo lap: five things that have stuck with her from the first six author conversations, including why every single guest has admitted their own book is a little bit wrong now, and why the language problem in this field turns out to be everyone's problem. Then five books from the first half of 2026 already locked for this year's list. And finally, an announcement: Veerless and Table Stakes are starting a book club. One book, read together, discussed on the show. Marcy isn't picking it. You are. The poll is on LinkedIn!

July 8, 202635 min

41. Read Responsibly with Compliance Expert Lisa Beth Lentini Walker

Lisa Beth Lentini Walker is the first guest to return to Table Stakes for the Read Responsibly series, and she's here to talk about the book that reframed how I think about getting people to do the right thing: Raise Your Game, Not Your Voice , written with co-author Stef Tschida. Lisa Beth is the CEO and Founder of Lumen Worldwide Endeavors and a compliance leader whose career runs from the SEC to the C-suite. We get into why compliance fails on communication rather than rules, the near-miss stories every ethics leader collects (gold bars, hunting knives, Beyoncé tickets), and the language problem that haunts both our fields — why "ethics," "integrity," "sustainability," and "compliance" all keep buckling under the weight of what we actually mean. Plus: risk as a floor versus a ceiling, and why the future of this work is more human, not less.

July 1, 202645 min

40. Read Responsibly with Trista Harris, FutureGood. Are We 5 years from Utopia?

Philanthropic futurist Trista Harris believes we're five years from utopia — and she's serious. The founder of Future Good and author of the book by the same name joins Marcy to explain what it really means to be a futurist, how the 2008 financial crisis turned her into one, and why the systems collapsing around us right now are also a once-in-a-generation chance to build something better. Along the way: the honest, scrappy truth about self- and hybrid-publishing, a grounded take on AI's impact on work and the social sector, and why rest and human connection are survival skills in a time of exponential change. A conversation for anyone trying to stay in the work — and stay hopeful while they do it.

June 24, 2026Episode 3951 min

39. Read Responsibly with Christopher Marquis - The Profiteers

When a company pollutes a river, cuts wages, or buys its way out of accountability, who actually pays the bill? According to Christopher Marquis, the answer is almost always the rest of us. In this episode of the Read Responsibly Book Series, host Marcy Twete sits down with Chris — Sinyi Professor at Cambridge Judge Business School and author of The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs — to talk about the structural forces that make corporate accountability so hard, what corporate gaslighting and astroturfing actually look like in practice, and why the B Corp movement might be one of the most important experiments in capitalism happening right now. A wide-ranging, honest conversation about the system, the language we use to describe it, and whether business can still be reformed from within.

June 17, 202653 min

38. Read Responsibly with Christine Bader - The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist

What does it mean to be a corporate idealist when the company you believed in becomes the company behind one of the worst environmental disasters in American history? Christine Bader spent years doing innovative work on human rights inside BP — and then Deepwater Horizon happened. In this episode of the Read Responsibly Book Series, host Marcy Twete sits down with Christine, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil , to talk about what the book still gets right twelve years later, what she'd write differently now, and what it looks like when a hyper-global career gives way to a hyper-local life as a school board member, business school faculty, and head coach of a high school girls rugby team in McMinnville, Oregon. A deeply honest conversation about idealism, accountability, and where impact actually comes from.

June 10, 202656 min

37. Pride Month Read Responsibly Books and Authors Series with Ellie Roscher

What does it mean for a body to belong — in sports, in the workplace, in the world? In this Pride Month episode of Table Stakes, host Marcy Twete sits down with Minneapolis author, educator, and former two-sport college athlete Ellie Roscher to discuss Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports , co-authored with Dr. Anna Baeth. They dig into the myths driving anti-trans sports legislation, the stories of the 20 trans athletes interviewed for the book, and why the fight over who gets to play is really a fight over who gets to belong — in locker rooms, in boardrooms, and everywhere in between. Plus: what embodied leadership looks like, why psychological safety is a structural problem before it's a personal one, and the book Ellie is working through with a group of women in commercial real estate right now.

June 2, 202629 min

36. Read Responsibly Book Series Conversation 1: 21st Century Corporate Citizenship

What does it actually take to build a responsible company? Mot just a company with a sustainability department, but one where corporate citizenship is woven into strategy, operations, and culture? That's the question Dave Stangis and Katherine Valvoda Smith set out to answer nearly a decade ago, and it's the question at the heart of this conversation. Dave and Katherine join Marcy for the first episode of Table Stakes' "Read Responsibly" book series to talk about 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business — what inspired it, how it's held up across a decade of political and cultural turbulence, and what they'd add if they wrote it today. They also dig into the war over ESG terminology, the quiet disappearance of the word "ethics" from corporate vocabulary, and why the money in publishing a book is never actually in the book.

May 27, 20264 min

Trailer: The Table Stakes Books and Authors Series

Host Marcy Twete, CEO of Veerless and author of the annual Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Book List, returns to announce a season unlike anything the podcast has done before. In the second half of 2026, Table Stakes is dedicating itself entirely to the authors behind some of the most important books in corporate responsibility and sustainability — books that have appeared on Marcy's list over the past seven years and shaped how thousands of leaders think about their work. In this trailer, Marcy shares why this moment feels different: she's approaching her 10th annual book list, she's writing her own book, and she has a question she can't stop thinking about — what does it actually take for a book to change how someone leads? Subscribe now so you don't miss a single conversation.

December 1, 202343 min

25. The Intersection of AI and ESG in Today's Regulatory and Ratings Environment

The buzz on AI and specifically Generative AI has reached an all time high in today's technology zeitgeist. Sustainability and ESG leaders are experiencing the AI wave first hand as they see more investors, ratings agencies and even consumer and employee readers using AI to evaluate their reports and progress. In today's episode, Veerless CEO and technology expert Charlie Beck joins us to talk nuts and bolts of AI, how AI is already at use in sustainability and ESG ratings and regulations, and what considerations we should all make in tailoring our reports to an ever-changing AI landscape.