Capitalism under pressure: Why CEOs rethink corporate purpose

When Susan McPherson first came to New York in 2003, she never dreamed she’d be at the vanguard of a movement to reshape the core principles of American capitalism.

In her “nine lives” as a communications executive in various fields, she says, she’d always valued the importance of “giving back” to her community over the years. Her mother worked in public broadcasting and her father was a professor of history at a women’s college, and she says both had instilled in her the value of a career with a wider...