My name is Seth Cohen. I'm the chief impact officer at Forbes,

and I'm here today at the NASDAQ market site in New York City,

joined by my friend Brian Grimm, the president and founder of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation.

Brian, thanks for joining me today.

Oh, great to be with you, Seth. So we're here to have a conversation about the intersection of faith, of business, and the way people really are showing up in their lives and in their workplaces as people of faith.

Tell me about your foundation and what work you're doing to address these kind of needs and these trends in society right now.

Yeah, well, religious freedom and business foundation.

Usually you don't hear those two words put together.

And it really came out of data. I was at the Pew Research Center for eight years,

looking at measuring

restrictions on religion around the world.

And I found that when you have more restrictions on religion coming from either governments or

societies, that that's a damper on economics.

And then as I dug in more, I found that when you're in a business and there's a restriction

on religion, meaning you have to hide your, you know, most important self for many people,

not everyone, but many people, that's also a damper on morale and productivity.

So tell me what you mean by restrictions, because there's legal rules and requirements that

obviously allow people to kind of be open about their faith and freedom of

religion but in the workplace that's can be somewhat different right well so

there by law companies have to accommodate people's deeply held beliefs as long as it doesn't

cause an undue burden, and they can't discriminate on the basis of religion or belief.

But as you've heard, there's a lot of unconscious things that go on.

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