Molly Moon CEO meets with Biden to discuss new vaccine requirements

Seattle-based CEO Molly Neitzel joined a group of executives in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to discuss President Joe Biden’s employer vaccine requirements.

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Biden announced the sweeping new vaccine mandates last week, requiring millions of private-sector employees, health care workers, and federal workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The new rules cover employees working at companies with more than 100 workers, mandating that they either be fully vaccinated, or get tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.

While the exact logistics have yet to be worked out, CEOs from Columbia Sportswear, Disney, Kaiser Permanente, and more met with the president in a closed-door meeting to have a larger discussion about the path forward.

Neitzel — the founder of Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream — was one of two Puget Sound region executives in attendance, joined by Microsoft President Brad Smith. Despite pushback against the mandates from prominent Republicans across the United States, Neitzel noted that Wednesday’s meeting centered on the CEOs in attendance voicing support for the requirements.

“At Molly Moon’s, we make the world better one scoop at a time — vaccines do the same,” she wrote on Twitter. “We can all protect each other one shot at a time.”

Several others at the meeting echoed those sentiments, including Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, who classified the requirements as “a good thing for leveling the playing field.”

“Companies like ourselves that want to have employees encouraged to the highest degree to get vaccinated,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “This is going to give us the ability to do that and not put our business at risk.”

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Gov. Jay Inslee was similarly effusive last week shortly after Biden announced the mandate.

“The federal government has now joined the state of Washington in an effort to end this pandemic,” he said during a press conference. “This is not a time for little tiny baby steps to attack something that’s killing our people.”

Inslee intimated that additional state-level vaccine requirements for indoor businesses are also “under active consideration.”

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