In these volatile times, how do we navigate the intersection between values and commerce? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert and Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya join New York Times reporter David Gelles onstage at the Masters of Scale Summit to reveal their different strategies for dealing with an activist White House, the pressure for what moderator Gelles calls “anticipatory compliance,” and how they grow their businesses while also prioritizing causes like environmental conservation and immigration.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
Gelles: Ryan, Patagonia is a very different sort of company. This company has been meddling in politics, sometimes quite loudly, for more than 50 years now.
Gellert: Meddling is a strong word.
Meddling . . . oh, that’s a gentle word. [Patagonia founder] Yvon Chouinard has been donating to grassroots environmental activist campaigns for more than 50 years. In 2017, Patagonia sued President Trump and his cabinet during the first . . .
Gellert: Yeah, that’s meddling.
That’s meddling. And you still, even at a moment when most CEOs are afraid to say anything about this administration, you’re still out there raising the alarm almost every single week, it seems. When your business is selling clothes, why do you spend so much time talking about politics and policy?
Gellert: Well, first of all, it’s super interesting being on the stage with you, Hamdi, and with you, David. I think you made reference to it. You wrote a book that’s just come out in the last month about our founder and our 52-year history. You and I have gotten to know each other quite well over recent years, and I think there’s a lot that we have spiritually in common as companies.
And then I think, to the nature of your question, to each of us, there’s a lot that’s actually quite different in how we navigate that. I think for us to now answer your question, we are focused on protecting the natural world. Period. That’s why we exist. It’s not about making money. It’s not about being the biggest player in outdoor apparel and equipment. It’s about protecting the natural world.
And so that’s what we do, and we exist in a world right now, here in America, where the threats are absolutely unprecedented. And I think that what you might describe as speaking out, I just think is telling the [expletive] truth about what’s going on in the world right now.
Okay, so the climate’s at risk, pollution and polluters, the regulations are coming off, and conservation, particularly public lands here in America. I mean, it is one goddamn threat after another, every single day. And so what are we speaking up on? Those things that matter. Same things we’ve spoken up on for 52 years.
As the CEO of a company and as an individual, do you ever worry about the fact that this is a moment and an administration that has shown a willingness to be retributive?
Gellert: Yeah, of course.
And how do you navigate that? Is there any, I mean, the word is anticipatory compliance? Are you holding back at all?
I think we have to be very strategic. I think we have to be very considered. I think what we talk a lot about is, where do we have authenticity to offer an opinion on something, and where can we be truly additive? If it’s performative and we’re just offering an opinion to offer an opinion, that’s not a space we’re going to play in right now. I don’t think the times benefit from that. I think where we can be truly authentic is in one or two places.
One is we’re a business, and so we can speak from the business sector. And the other is on environmental and climate issues. We’ve got a 52-year history. We work our asses off to minimize our footprint. As you made reference to, we’ve supported grassroots activism for 40 years and counting. And so that’s who we are, what we do, and I think we’ve earned the right to offer opinions on that.
You get a sense of the different approaches to really a very similar and consequential set of issues. We’re going to talk about more than politics, I promise, but I do want to come back to this issue of, Hamdi, how you navigate a moment like this, and when you decide to work with Ivanka Trump, even when you decide to work with the White House. It can seem like a no-win situation. You work with someone, you piss one side off. You say something, you piss the other side off. How do you think about engaging in these partnerships where you are trying to find common ground without alienating any of your consumer base?
Ulukaya: Yeah, look, what I do and what we do at Chobani is really, we have the known instinct or reflex that we react regardless of what the world thinks and all that kind of stuff. Ivanka actually did not start now. I worked with her in Idaho after President Biden got into the White House, actually. And what we did is, we made boxes of food from the farmers, and we delivered to people in need in communities at that time.
And later on, even before the election, she and her partner, they created this organization called Planet Harvest, and she says: “Do you realize that in California, 40% of all the fruits and vegetables are wasted and left in the land because they don’t look good and there’s no buyer?” And I couldn’t believe it. I am aware of these things, but I didn’t even realize. And I went to the land and I saw, and partnered with her and her partners who had studied quite knowledgeably.
Absolutely, we’ll do it. Absolutely, we’ll do it. I’ll invest with it, and I’ll lead it and improve the concept. So to me this . . . and when I said we are going to hire refugees during the first, I don’t know how many years ago, we got death threats and boycotts—all kinds of stuff like that.
The first time I wrote about your company.
Ulukaya: You wrote it in The New York Times, and we got death threats. We all have to react as human beings, who we are. And businesses are a combination of people. You’ve got to do the right thing regardless of what lawyers and communication experts will say.
On the advisor council stuff right now.
Ulukaya: I want to invite everybody to—we have some serious, serious issues that we have to bring everybody to the table to. Look, we really do. I do see some egocentric reaction . . . just anger because of the other person. Okay, they are enormous about the differences. I don’t know. I was invited to the White House because I’m announcing a huge investment in Idaho and another one in Rome in New York, and being part of Invest in America.
I don’t have any working relationship with the White House, but my view on immigration and refugees is the same. I have an organization called Tent. I just came from Mexico. I’m meeting all those people who are encouraging people to hire refugees and train refugees. These are timeless truths. People are going to move, and we have to make a system that works for every single person.
And we proved it in our factories, in our communities. And today, you will not have farmworkers, or you will not have functioning farms and agriculture, without immigration. Everybody knows that. Everybody.
