In the March 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, one of the first big public policy decisions by elected officials was shutting down in-class learning at public schools. One of the early voices opposing the idea of closing schools indefinitely and shifting to “distance learning” was the chief marketing officer at Levi Strauss & Co., the famous denim blue jeans clothing company.
In Spring of 2020, Jennifer Sey started using social media to push back on the school shutdowns. Then her peers and co-workers started to push back on her viewpoint. Sey tells KVI’s John Carlson it eventually cost her her job and a chance to be the CEO of Levi’s.
Click the play button underneath this sentence to her Carlson’s interview with Sey.
“I knew in my mind what was going on with these kids (school students). It wasn’t hard to imagine the circumstances that many of these children were finding themselves in and it wasn’t hard to imagine that they would disengage from school and that there would be tremendous learning loss. And there would be mental health impacts because of the isolation. You didn’t need to be a genius to understand this. You certainly didn’t need to be a doctor. So it just felt too important to me. It felt like we were harming a generation which is exactly what happened. And you know, when I started, I didn’t really think I was putting my job at risk but I would say about a year in I knew and I made the decision to keep going (advocating for in-class learning).”
Sey is speaking in Ocean Shores, Wash. at the Roanoke Conference January 26th, 2024. For more information on The Roanoke Conference and to register to attend, click here.
