“I can't live my life creating the illusion of meaningfulness when deep in my heart I know that every five seconds a child is dying.” So says Tex Gunning, president of Unilever Bestfoods Asia and one of today's most innovative corporate executives. The Dutch-born Gunning has backed up his heartfelt conviction with bold initiatives centered on lofty social goals–initiatives that have been conceived and implemented from within the profit driven framework of a large multinational company. His story has become the stuff of corporate legend and is chronicled in the book, To the Desert and Back: the Story of One of the Most Dramatic Business Transformations on Record.

In part two of this Unbound interview, Gunning and WIE' s Elizabeth Debold speak about the spiritual experiences and principles that have informed and guided Gunnings work, in particular the power and significance of authentic leadership, the need to create unity while preserving diversity, and how best to deal with the complex challenges of addressing the individual ego within the context of organizational transformation. Gunning also directly addresses what he sees as the blatant failure of free market capitalism to address the economic needs of the worlds poor, yet insists that Socialism is not the answer. In order to really change the way things are, Gunning insists that first and foremost all parties must be willing to sit at the table together. Then, be it through cooperation or competition, in unity as well as diversity, with lofty goals or bottom-line pragmatism, new and higher forms of social structure might be created.

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