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John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by the Marketing Masters. The Marketing Masters is a boutique marketing agency offering website development and digital marketing services to small and medium businesses across America. For more information on how they can help you grow your business online, please visit TheMarketingMasters.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I am John Shegerian, and I am so honored to have with us today, Tom Fox. He is the Compliance Evangelist and the voice of Compliance. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Tom.

Tom Fox: John, it is really my pleasure to be here.

John: You know, Tom this is fun for me. I got to tell you, you were so kind to have me on two different podcasts on the in Compliance Podcast Network before which you are the founder of and you run. And you are doing very important work, but now I get to interview you today and I get to turn the tables and turn the mic so to speak, so it is fun for me but you are doing great work. Before we get going, I want you first to share a little bit of the Tom Fox journey and experience. Like share with our listeners your biography and how you even got to become the Principal of the Advanced Compliance Solutions and the founder of the Compliance Podcast Network.

Tom: Sure, John. I am a Recovering Trial Lawyer. From that work, I went into the corporate world and I learned about a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that law prevents US companies from engaging in bribery and corruption outside the United States. It was my introduction to compliance inside of a corporation. I came on board after the company had violated that law. I came on board and was part of the original or the new team to implement the new Compliance Solution. I did that for a couple of years. The company was sold and I went out on my own or rather what I really wanted to do with my life at that point was race bicycles. I went on this great journey of bicycle racing. I was over 50 I could ride in the Senior Division. Until one day, I was taken out by a Hummer on a training ride, pet into my cycling career.

Tom: At that point, I was going to have to go back to work and I decided when I convalesced enough, and I could get on my walker and topple into my office to focus on what I learned in my last corporate position, which was the design, creation, and implementation of best practices compliance programs. I was laid up and the only time I could leave my house was to go to physical therapy. So I created this entire International Consulting Corporation literally out of my house, in front of a computer. I could not go meet anyone. I could not go to dinner, could not go to a conference, could not go to a meeting, could not really do anything, so I learned how to do compliance virtually. I started blogging as a marketing exercise, try to get my name out, and that led the podcasting and the podcasting led to the founding of the Compliance Podcast Network about 3 years ago. And now, I have a 40 show network which 28 are mine and you have been gracious enough to join me for a couple of shows.

John: Well, it has been absolutely my pleasure. It has been really important, what you are doing in the platform, you are giving. For our listeners out there that want to find Tom’s great work, you can first go to fcpacompliancereport.com or compliancepodcastnetwork.net. You know, they call you the Compliance Evangelist because to have a platform of 40 different podcasts on the compliance and the complexities of compliance issues and the importance of compliance. Can you share a little bit about what your shows are covering and why they call you the Compliance Evangelist?

Tom: Sure. In ancient Greek, an Evangelist was to bringer of good news. And I certainly believe that for the business professional, for the business executive compliance is the good news. And compliance is the good news because you can look at compliance as a way to avoid regulatory fine and penalty, would potentially violent in a criminal law. Well, I say effective compliance programs equate to more efficient business processes which actually make companies more profitable. So I evangelize that better compliance will make your company not only better but it will make your company more profitable. And if we can move the conversation of compliance being a cost center to a profit center, that is where I think companies are really going to understand the true value, but more importantly the power, the compliance.

John: You know, you got your podcasts out there and you have all different specialists come on these podcasts with you to cover topics that are current you know. We are going through a very, very weird time now during COVID-19. We are also in an election year. Can you share some of the hot topics that you have covered recently and you are going to be covering the future during these very strange times, let just say.

Tom: Sure. So when we all sort of went into lock downs in early to mid-March, I decided my role in this was to start yet another podcast. So I started Compliance and Coronavirus, and that you have been on that podcast–

John: Yeah.

Tom: And that podcast was designed to bring clear and saying business information to the business professional. It was not sort of a health-related Compliance Podcasts on the Coronavirus and COVID-19. It was how does this impact your business? What are the regulators saying? How can you do business when your workforce is now remote? What is the mental health of your workforce? How are you as the business owner, can help your employees who may be feeling lonely, maybe feeling isolated, what can you do? All of these things and everything in between, obviously that is significant. And as we move now towards the reopening, how do we do business going forward? Can we get together in a conference in Q3 or Q4 of 2020? How can you do business in different ways? So that one is pretty popular and certainly timely, I do a daily Compliance News Podcast, which is a four-minute wrap-up of the four top stories and lastly, I do a weekly compliance wrap-up.

Tom: And then, I try to bring detailed information to the compliance practitioner from a wide variety of sources, from other compliance practitioners, from lawyers, from people who may touch the compliance world, but they have a little bit different focus. You came on one of my favorite podcast called Innovation and Compliance and although the word Compliance is in the title, it is really about innovation and you certainly fit the bill for innovation. And there when I am trying to bring these new and different ideas to the law of legally trained Compliance Practitioner to think about, “Hey, maybe there is a different way to do this that is actually more efficient.” And that is certainly one of the things you talked about when you joined that podcast.

John: Wow, you know besides your podcast which are just incredible, your network and I really enjoyed appearing on two of your podcast because you really know how to get to the heart of the matter. You have written 17 books. I mean I have friends that have been talking to me 10 years about ever writing their first book. First of all, I do not understand how one human being is that prolific. That is incredible unto itself Tom, but I know how really smart you are trust me. But one of your books became a best-seller called the Compliance Handbook. Talk a little bit about what caught the eye of the readership out there that that became a number one. And then talk a little bit about becoming a successful author because obviously you have done it, you have done it 17 times over. And I would love for our listeners who are dreaming of writing a book, to get some best tips from you on how to go out and actually do it.

Tom: So let me start with the second one first because that is by far the easiest. When my daughter was seven, she wrote her first book and I said, “Honey, how did you do that?” She said, “Dad, it is easy to write a book, you just sit down and do it.” And that is what writing a book is, just sit down and do it. Write something every day, and write one page a day, in one year, you will have 365 pages. Just sit down and write, do not wait for inspiration to hit the lightning bolt. It can hit you. I am not that kind of writer. I write every day and I keep at it and at the end of the year, I have something. In terms of the Compliance Handbook, it is a single volume, a detailed summary of the design, creation, and implementation of a best practice compliance program. The Department of Justice released in 2012, 10 Hallmarks of an effective Compliance Program. So there are 10 chapters, one for each hallmark, there is a beginning chapter on best practices or rather, how do you create a compliance program in 30 days. And there is an ending chapter on operationalizing compliance.

Tom: So it is very biblical, 12 chapters, it is designed to read one page a day and give you three key takeaways that you can do at little or no cost that day from your compliance program. So I try to write very practical things that people can use today. I am editing that that handbook, I am updating it this year. And I was going along great. I was of nine chapters into it. I was going to deliver it early and then Monday, the Department of Justice released updated guides. Now, I got go back and rewrite everything where I used the 18 guides. And I have got to update it to the 2020 guide. So that is just a little bump in the road, but I try to write practical stuff that people can really use–

John: So your book, that is fascinating, so it is actionable items, bite-sized reading and it is not all above their head, it is stuff that they can really roll up their sleeves in there. You are giving action steps for them to take, so they are going to really get something out of the book that makes total sense–

Tom: Right.

John: That makes total sense. Wow. So wait a second, now that you brought it up, so when your seven-year-old daughter gave you that advice, what is she doing now, where is she, and what career to path did she take?

Tom: Well, she is a senior in college, I think. It is quite clear to me but–

John: It never is when you are a parent, believe me everything you got mother, you know our whole thing of going through in four years and being on very tight timeline that kind of sort of blurred when we became parents and our children went through college, so now I do not know how that got blurred.

Tom: But I will say she has a flexible format, but given the hiring situation for new graduate, I am kind of inclined to think she is right about maybe wanting to extend it out. Nevertheless, she is at Portland State. She is in Graphic Design. She is very artistically-inclined and she has done podcast, she has done artwork. Now, she is doing graphic design, so she has always had that sort of band and that is kind of what let her write a book when she was seven. And it has just been a ton of fun to watch. I do not think there is anything more enjoyable than life than watching your child grow up.

John: I think you are right. I will tell you, I am a brand-new grandfather for the first time and I am going to just tell you, that also becomes also a great, blessed experience also. Both the children and the grandchildren part of life is really the fun part of the journey, really the fun part of the journey. I cannot agree with you more, but boy she gave you good advice and you followed up on that 17 books and a best-seller. And again Tom is doing as he said he is doing a reboot of the book, The Compliance Handbook, so if you are interested, I am sure you can buy it on when it comes out on amazon.com and other great places those books are available nowadays.

John: Talk a little bit about where you are going to take this, with 17 books and 40 shows on your Podcast Network; you are doing a lot, Tom. You are a busy human being and I also know that you are also happened to be a lawyer by profession, which you humbly do not even mention in your biography. You are really, really an accomplish human being as people go in any society and you are young. So what is the next step, since we are all working now into our late 60s and 70s and 80s, what is your vision for the years ahead for your network and your writing?

John: So I really want to grow this network and try to create something of value with this network. I really firmly believe in the podcast. I believe in the podcast format. I love doing it. And so, I think I am going to continue to grow that and see where I can take that and at this point, I do not really have any idea how far I could take it, but I am going to. I am going to experiment with different forms of story-telling for the corporate world, from corporate communications. You are right as a lawyer, it is death by PowerPoint, I have been in presentations with 300 PowerPoint’s. And you look around you can tell the lawyers and you tell a business guys because the business guys have their eyes rolled inside their head at PowerPoint number 4. And so and the lawyers are wrapped because we are talking to my case citations–

John: Right.

Tom: So those sorts of communications, how can you and I communicate, how can you communicate the compliance obligations that you have and your customers have and your third parties and your supply chain has in a manner that people are going to remember. So I try to create stories, there are always stories in the anti-corruption compliance world that if I told you those stories, this is how this case went down, this is how this enforcement action went down. You would look at me and say you made that up, nobody is that stupid, nobody would be that brazen. And those are the kinds of real life events that people want to hear about and they want to hear about them to help learn lessons so they can incorporate them into their own compliance programs.

John: You know if someone thinks they have important compliance information to present to your listenership, how do they apply to come on one of your podcasts?

Tom: So with 28 shows, one thing I am always looking for is content. So if you are listening to this podcast and you want to come on show, just email me at [email protected], I would love to talk to you.

John: Any last thoughts before we say goodbye just for today?

Tom: So John, I really appreciate the opportunity to visit with you. And the one thing that I would, just whatever you do if you are thinking if you got had laid off, if you are in economic dislocation, look inside your heart and just do what your heart says you want to do. You and I have both done that, we are doing that now. We live a lifestyle that really facilitates that and it took me a long time to learn that but I finally did and I take it one day at a time and I love what I am doing.

John: You know Tom, you not only love what you are doing, but you are great at what you do and it shows. It shows in your work and your work is important, that is why you are always invited on the Impact Podcast because you are making an important impact in society and you are making the world a better place. For our listeners, again who want to find the Compliance Evangelist, Tom Fox, please go to www.fcpacompliancereport.com or www.compliancepodcastnetwork.net and Tom has said if you want to come on his show and you have a great compliance story or important information to get out and you want to apply to come on one of his podcast [email protected]. He is the Compliance Evangelist, you are Tom Fox. I am so grateful for your time today, Tom. It is an honor to have you on and thank you again.

John Shegerian: This edition of The Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With hundreds of athletes, entrepreneurs, speakers and business leaders Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information, please visit letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian and I am so excited today to have my friend, Kabira Stokes, on with us. Hi, Kabira!

Kabira Stokes: Hi, John!

John: Welcome from the beautiful, friendly city of Philadelphia.

Kabira: That is right, where I am quarantining.

John: Where you are quarantined and you are doing a good job of it, I hear. You told me.

Kabira: We are.

John: All right, good. And everybody is healthy.

Kabira: Thank God everyone is healthy.

John: Thank God. Kabira has been a longtime friend of mine, but for our listeners out there, Kabira, I would love you to share a little bit of your journey before we go into all the cool things you have done in your life. Share a little bit about your journey, where you grew up, got educated, and then how you evolved eventually into the impact and recycling industry.

Kabira: Yes, sure. First, thanks for having me on. It is great to chat with you, I always enjoy our conversations as you know. Here I am quarantining in the suburbs of Philadelphia, which is where I grew up. I was born outside Philadelphia, went to high school here, met a guy named Peter, we will talk about him later.

Kabira: Then I went off to Vassar College, I studied Sociology and Spanish at Vassar, and then moved out to Los Angeles. Went through many life and career there, and eventually really became an activist, and that is what shifted my life. I thought I want to be a fashion designer when I grew up and then after 9/11, that was something that was really activated in me around wanting to better my community, and started activism, focused one on gangs and gang life and mass incarceration around Los Angeles. And also really about voting local in L.A. After the ’04 election, I really had this epiphany that as much as I wanted to vote for who was president, I actually did not know who was running my city. I did not know who the mayor was, really. I did not really know what the city councilperson did.

Kabira: In my twenties, me and a bunch of other young folks got together and decided to get educated about who is really running our city and how that affected our lives. Through that work, I ended up meeting a guy named Eric Garcetti, who is currently the mayor of L.A. doing an amazing job with COVID out there. It is awesome to watch him. But at the time he was a young city council president, and funny, he is younger than I am now, for sure. He was cool, and he was progressive, and he played the piano. He hired me and I became a field deputy in his office and it was really… I loved it. I thought it was such a cool job because it really was where the government met the road. This is unsexy stuff like, “Is the streetlight working? Do you need a speed ramp on your street?”

John: Politics.

Kabira: Yes, exactly.

John: I love it.

Kabira: But then it was also this super real stuff of, “Oh, there are kids getting killed in gang violence who start[?] streets over. What is going on there?” That really… It opened my eye. A girl from the suburbs of Philadelphia, I lived a very comfortable young life.

John: Right.

Kabira: And then suddenly my eyes are opened to a very different reality for young people and people who grew up in poverty and have many less opportunities than I was afforded[?]. Just the differences of how that shapes your life. So many folks ending up incarcerated and then coming out of incarceration, and having very few opportunities to make a living after that or ever be forgiven for whatever it was that they did. That is a little bit of a mishmash of everything. And that guy Peter that I mentioned, who I met in high school, we reconnected in our thirties. I was in L.A. and he was in New York, and we got married and had a baby.

John: Is that not crazy? You guys were childhood friends and you became husband and wife.

Kabira: We did indeed, so weird. Hilariously, him and I are here quarantined together in this neighborhood we grew up in.

John: That is just so awesome. That is just a great story. That is a great love story besides a fun journey, I will tell you that. Is not that interesting?

Kabira: Someday over a glass of something stronger, I will tell you that whole story.

John: Yes, I want to do that. It will not be on the air though, but we will do that in person. It is so funny you said growing up comfortably in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I grew up comfortable in the suburbs of Queens, New York and it is interesting when you are a kid. Even if you think you are worldly and well-read, that until you move somewhere else physically, geographically, you will really think as a kid that the perspective is everywhere else is going to be like this.

Kabira: Yes.

John: And you end up in the city of L.A. that has some really stark reminders that the world can be a very dangerous and sad place, all wrapped up in one, such as like you said. The issues that go on with gang violence and otherwise. That was sort of my stark awakening also some years before yours. But again, it is just incredible how people can get comforted and lulled into a feeling of safety and think everywhere else is like wherever they are at.

Kabira: A really big eye-opener for me was in my first. I moved to L.A. in the year 2000, and I think sometime that year I was still planning doing some fashion design and so I would go down to the Fashion District in Downtown LA, and I took a wrong turn one day and ended up on Skid Row, which was just lines and lines of tents on the street. In my little twenty-three-year-old brain, I literally thought, “Oh, my God! Does the city know about this?” I thought that they have not been informed, that maybe they did not know. Literally, that is what I thought. Yes, they knew. They knew.

John: They knew, but it is just not interesting. Like you said, the mayor that you met, before he was the mayor, and what a job he is doing, Eric is doing in the city of L.A. now. Before we get into– Well, talk a little bit about you are in the mayor’s office, and then you evolved into an activist-entrepreneur. How did that evolution go from, “I am here in the mayor’s office and I am making a difference. I am making an impact?” and how did you evolve out into something more entrepreneurial?

Kabira: Yes. Well, he was not the mayor yet, still over at the city council office.

John: Okay, got it.

Kabira: The issues around gang violence and the solutions around them, really offering opportunities to people, sort of took me over. It was all I became interested in. I had enough people, including Eric, say to me, “Now, if this is something you are really interested in…” He has [inaudible] my name is Arabic, but I am a white woman, and I think for someone “like me” to be interested in this subject, everyone, “Well, you should go become an expert. If this is something that you actually want to make a difference in, go become an expert.” So I ended up applying to USC and I went to graduate school there. I got a master’s in public policy. The cool thing I was going back to grad school as an adult because I was thirty, was I knew exactly what I wanted to study. I wanted to study the criminal justice system. I wanted to study solutions.

Kabira: To me, really, what became interesting was how do we get people back to work once they have been incarcerated, or once they have overcome real barriers to employment addiction or mental health issues. So for me, I was able to almost laser focus on how do you employ folks once they have been in the criminal justice system. It cannot be impossible. There has got to be ways to do this. For me, [inaudible], but I was raised by conservationists, environmentalism was always something that mirrored my heart. It is what made sense.

Kabira: And so for me, if I was going to look at employing folks who was going to be in some sort of sustainable way. So I did my practicum, which is a grad school thesis, around public policy. I looked specifically at who is training folks coming out of the criminal justice system to work in sustainable enterprises, and what are those even. When this was in 2009, 2010, I was cool, I got with that lacking of the infrastructure of USC in their library and their reach. I was able to really look at what people were doing around the country that was real, that was really training and employing people, and what feels were right for them. There a lot of barriers that people still face when they have criminal records to what was right for them.

Kabira: Around that time, I had a friend introduced me, pretty randomly over email to a guy named Van Jones. I do not know if you know Van. Van is a CNN commentator and author, and he, for a while, worked with the Obama administration. I believe he was in the room when the term “green jobs” was basically coined. In grad school, I was also working with his organization, Green for All, a non-profit up in Oakland.

Kabira: Everything I was doing was focused on this idea of how do we create a new green economy that does not leave out people who were left out of the gray economy, out of the dirty economy. Between all of that work, I ended up meeting an electronics recycler.

Kabira: You probably know Gregg Keesling at RecycleForce in Indiana, this awesome, kooky guy. I had never in my life thought about recycling electronics, never had that crossed my mind. This was, I guess, in 2009, 2010. And he was hiring folks coming out of the criminal justice system. He was doing it like, “Three days out. We will take you. Make sure you have wrap-around services so that you can stay employed.” I met him and did some work writing about him. When I graduated, I did not quite know what I wanted to do. Maybe I want to go back and work for Eric or go back to work for the government, but I could not get what he was doing out of my mind. And I called him one day and I said, “Hey, Gregg. I do not know if you remember me, but I think I might want to do what you do.” And he was like, “Sure. You want to come to Indiana?” And I was like, “Sure.” It was like in August [inaudible] not the time to go to Indiana. [inaudible] I got on a plane and I went to Indiana, and I spent a week in his warehouse seeing what he did. As you know, when you are an entrepreneur, that screw goes loose in your head that makes you think, “I could do this, obviously. I should do this.” And so, I went home and I said, “I am going to do this. I am going to do this in L.A.” We raised a bit of money, a bit of friends and family around, and went into it knowing literally nothing about starting a business, but with that awesome blind optimism of like… I do not know, I feel like if I ask people for their electronics, maybe they will give them to me, and they started to.

John: All that blind optimism is so great. It is so great for all of us entrepreneurs. The original name of the company you were starting was…?

Kabira: Was Isidore Recycling. Gregg had told me that the patron saint, the literal patron saint as per the Catholic Church for computers and the internet was St. Isidore of Spain, and I like that name. I do not know, I was thinking about names, and I was like it can be like California E-Waste or whatever. I liked that it was different and I had a great uncle, Isidore, and so I thought, “Isidore Recycling. Let us do it.”

John: I love it.

Kabira: So that was Isidore.

John: That was great. So talk a little bit about now evolving from being on the public side of the world, working for a city councilperson, and then going to get your degree at SC or your higher education degree. Talk a little bit about now. Now, you are in business and you are a CEO. No matter how big or small, it is all on you. The bucket starts and stops on your desk. How was that experience for you both as a person but also as someone that has a passion for making a difference, making an impact, and making the world a better place?

Kabira: It was all the things, right? It was super hard and super scary, and your identity is all wrapped up in the business. It was like, “Oh, God. If this fails, am I a failure?” and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, I was very well suited for it. I worked a lot, but the main thing is I found a team and an advisory team that was there for me and helped me build it. I had no business getting into business. Looking back on it, I really did not know what I was doing at all. But the passion that I had is that I want to provide work for people who have been really left out of the economy. That is what kept me going. That is the power of social enterprises. I might have given up many, many times if it was not for… but this is actually is not about me. This is about something bigger.

Kabira: We had warehouse fire in a year and a half after we started. It was bad. No one was hurt, thank God, but my business burned down, basically. There was this moment of like, “You know, girl. If you want to quit right now, no one is going to judge you. You are allowed to walk away.” And I was like, “No! I do not want to. I still think this is a good idea.” And my team, all except for one, and that was the right thing for him to leave, the rest of the team was like, “No, we are in too.” We doubled down. That kind of passion and dedication to a business, you cannot buy that and you cannot manufacture that. The heart of that sort of social enterprise is just what kept us all going. I am an Aquarian, I am an ideas person, and I found the people who could ground me and figure out, know the operations and the execution while I run around town and try to get E-Waste from folks. You know that game.

John: I know the game and I am still doing it. Let me ask you this then. From the ashes of the fire, as you said, you had the perfect out. “My business burned down and I did my best. Act of God and I am now going to go work for whatever.” Either go on to your next part of your journey. That was a real out without any shame. So how did you, literally like a phoenix rise from the ashes to eventually be named the sustainable social entrepreneur of the year by the L.A.’s Sustainable Business Council? What kicked in? What part of your DNA or never-give-up part of your soul had to kick in that made the difference from ashes to big award?

Kabira: I think it is just that sense of purpose. I wanted to see that business exists. It did not exist, and I was like, “I think I am the person to make this business exist. If we give up, it is not going to exist.” We did not want that. I did not want that, and the team did not want that. It was a different landscape back then. [inaudible] I started the company in 2011. People talk about criminal justice reform now. I think in many ways, with bipartisan support, it is an accepted sort of business social justice issue around like this is a race issue, this is a class issue, this is something that is the next part of the civil rights movement in America. That was not true in 2011. That was not how it was thought off, and things changed. Suddenly, you have a sitting president who [inaudible], and things have just very quickly moved. But it was not like that in 2013 when the fire happened. I have so many emotions about the way the system was and so badly wanted to have some sort of a fact and help with the change that that what it was. It was just that rose up in me. I also drank a lot of whiskey and I went dancing a lot. So that also happened.

John: What you are saying is really, it was much bigger than you. It was more than you just wanting to succeed as an entrepreneur. You really had a bigger mission at stake here that you were not going to let fail.

Kabira: Right.

John: Talk about the people that you interacted with, that were your colleagues, that were your employees, that you were exposed to over the years running Homeboy, eventually what became Homeboy Recycling. I want you to share a little bit about how that evolution happened. From Isidore to Homeboy, you are working with people, that as you said, were typically marginalized by society. Let us just say that.

Kabira: Yes.

John: Second chance people. What did you learn, or things that shocked you, or other takeaways about those folks as both employees in the workforce, and for those out there that are on the fence of hiring those people? What can you share with our listeners?

Kabira: Well, the first thing we learn and I did have to learn about it in a few ways was that in the world of re-entry and hiring folks that do face barriers of employment, there is transitional jobs that those people who– there is nonprofit who will hire people and give them a transition job. It is a six months job and you are really learning how to have a job again. You are learning how to put your paycheck in your bank account and that if you get angry at your boss, you cannot yell at them, and sort of the soft skills that go long. I think a lot of us take for granted, but that you really need to keep a job. Also, making sure your sobriety is supported and your housing is stable. I learned that lesson that we can only hire from those organizations and that we really were the next step in an ecosystem of re-entry that once folks had completed and really were “job-ready,” then they could come work for us because we were a permanent job, and none of us were social workers or were in a social service agency. We realized that we needed those relationships with those nonprofits, really to be successful in hiring people. The people needed that priming, that really job-readiness, and some of them needed that support even when they were still with us.

Kabira: All that being said, not everyone who is with us was successful, but a lot were and a lot are still. I think something that hit me really quickly was that… So when you interview someone for a job who has been in the system, there is a gap in their resume, right? It might be a six months gap, maybe it is a twenty-seven-year gap, but there is a gap.

John: Right.

Kabira: It is amazing when you bring them in, it is always such an amazing feeling as they come into a job interview just ready for that question of like, “What is this gap about? Where were you?” and we do not ask that question because we know where they were.

John: Right.

Kabira: When you skip that question, it is such a cool experience, again and again, to watch someone just relax into being a person at a job interview. They are not an ex-con who have to suddenly explain away what happened and apologize. They are just a person and to see people melt into that is such a cool thing. And when you let somebody do that, and you trust them and you give them a room, not always but often, the loyalty that they will show you as an employee because they know the chance that you gave them and they want to step up to that, is a beautiful, powerful thing. We saw that again and again.

John: That is awesome.

Kabira: It really is awesome.

John: The net net for those who are considering hiring those folks at their company, wherever they sit in this great country, is that when it works, it is magical.

Kabira: Yes.

John: And when it does not work, what I was always asked and I want to know if you were asked this, people always worry that if it does not work out, is there some bad experience that comes of it? I never saw that side of it, did you? When people just decided to self-terminate or not work out and take advantage of that opportunity, I had never saw a downside. Did you see ever downsides to that in terms of people worried about hiring those kind of people to work for you?

Kabira: Are you asking is it worse when it does not work out with someone with record than when it does not work out with just a regular person? Because I think that is what we found. It was like lots of people do not work out in jobs.

John: Correct.

[crosstalk]

Kabira: Right? Regular person just also does not work out sometimes.

John: Of course. What I really meant to say–

Kabira: That is what we found. Sure, there is a couple of things that it was not pleasant.

John: Right. When regular people do not work out, it is not ever pleasant.

Kabira: Exactly.

John: So to me, is the net takeaway is the magic greatly outweighs any worries that people have about bringing those folks into their facilities?

Kabira: Well, the company would not still be around after eight years. If that was–

John: Correct. Yes, okay. I just wanted to understand. We have had that experience as well, and I agree with you. People come in and when they take advantage of this opportunity, it is just such a great experience. It is just so great to see them just make their life really matter as opposed to being incarcerated. Tell us a little bit about the switch over from Isidore Recycling to Homeboy. How did that evolution happen and why did it happen?

Kabira: We have always known Homeboy, and we had hired folks from their program that generate as a nonprofit in L.A. Around, I guess, four or five years into the company, we needed to growth capital and we hit the streets and relocated, impact investors and angel investors, and just trying to find what the right fit was. And somebody suggested talking to Homeboy and I said, “Why would I do that?” They said, “Well, they have a new CEO. He is thinking about things differently and he might… there might be a conversation there.” I was like, “Oh, okay. I do not know what that would be, but sure. Why not.”

Kabira: So, I sat down with Tom, by now who you know. Tom had been at Aramark for 20 years as the CEO there for many years. He was thinking about things differently and he saw what I saw, which was that you have people graduating from their program, but then where do they go? Yes, some people will hire folks with record, but there is only so many companies still that are going to hire someone with a tattoo on their face and that gap in their employment history. He wanted to have more companies in their ecosystem that would be that next step for folks. So, that was [inaudible] and so he did a strange thing. The lawyers had to figure out how does a nonprofit acquire a California social purpose corporation, but we did it. It was a better partnership than we could have dreamed of, actually, because of the alignment of the mission. Again, you cannot make that magic up. For us, we got more financial resources which we can get to grow.

Kabira: The other real [inaudible] beauty is that our employees had access to so many more resources for them in terms of social service support or parenting classes and things like that that they really have taken advantage of. That was awesome because that was always something that has felt like we were not totally complete on that. Like we were not– A few more things we want to offer people and suddenly they have it and just to be part of the community that Father Boyle began.

John: Years ago.

Kabira: Such an amazing man. Like, come on, Saint Boyle next.

John: Probably. What year did that transition happen?

Kabira: That was 2016.

John: 2016. So talk a little bit about 2016 to 2019 where you became the first-ever woman to grace the cover of Recycling Today Magazine. Let me tell you something. Let us be really frank here, waste and recycling is a dude’s industry, and for you to get on the cover, that is no small feat. Hear it from me. For our listeners out there, that is no small feat. Not only are you a sustainability leader, an impact leader, but you are considered a leader in this next generation of a woman activist, woman entrepreneurs. How did that happen and how did you feel? What kind of feeling did that give you?

Kabira: I guess, somebody had to break that feeling. Sure, I will do it. It felt great. that means It was good. It was obviously high time for that to happen. The hilarious for the very personal part of that is that I had a baby, three and a half months before being shot for that cover, which by the way is not every woman’s dream to be shot for the cover of a magazine, three and a half months of having a baby. So that was a very funny thing of like, “Hi, this is also part of being a woman CEO.” On the inside, I am holding my little boy, Nico, just so everybody knows what was going on, but it was cool. I was like, “This is where we are at. This is what is happening. I am a breastfeeding mother on the cover of your magazine.” It was cool. It was awesome. It was a great honor, and probably the only magazine I will ever be on the cover of, so I will take it.

John: Well, I would not say that. You are very young still, so let us not go that far. When did you then decide your Isidore to Homeboy, to the cover of Recycling Today Magazine, which again is really one of the preeminent recycling periodicals in the world, not in just the United States, in the world? Your coverage and your personality and your success is world known. When did you sort of now as a new mom and a successful entrepreneur making the world a better place, decide that “It is time for a new chapter.” When did that all come together and how did you come to that conclusion?

Kabira: Well, part of it– I mean, eight years of the company in a long time. I am very happy with the success of the company and where it had gotten to and the leadership team in place. Peter comes back into the story when we settled back in Brooklyn. He was in New York as we moved to Brooklyn. So I was going back and forth all the time, many, many miles on Delta, back and forth to L.A. But then when I got pregnant, everything had to slow down, and it really was this realization that the company did not actually need me anymore, that their leadership was in a place that I could step back. I have been waiting for that day, and the day came. So, I did. I stepped back and I am more into motherhood and took a break for a little while, which is very needed.

Kabira: Then our mutual friend, Ron Gonen, who I had known for a little while. When I started to have that feeling as you do after you have a baby, “I think I would like to get back into work.” I called Ron because he has told me about seeing this company and what they are up to up close with partner which is so awesome, and everything that needs to happen in the economy and the world. I called him just to pick his brain and say, “What is going on out there? Do you have any thoughts for me?” And he was like, “Yeah, my company Retrievr, we need you. Could you start Monday?” I was like, “Oh, okay, yes.”

John: Glad you asked that question, right? He was so happy that you called him. But wait a second, Kabira. For someone like you who is so uber-talented, you could have done anything. Sometimes, what I have found is having too many options is almost worse than having too few options. Was that really the response you were excited about and looking forward to? What other things were on your vista before Ron basically opened and closed the deal in one conversation?

Kabira: I really wanted to take some time and write a book. So I started working on a book, and it is a memoir. It is about the journey of, I guess, yes, a lot of what we just discussed —

John: Great.

Kabira: – in terms of being an activist and finding my way into social enterprise, working with the folks who I have worked with over the years, and those amazing experiences. To a certain extent, being a woman in a man’s industry. That is interesting. I think, in general, I got married and had a baby when I was 40 years old, and that is not a tale you hear very often. I started a company and that was my baby for many years, but then I tried to start a family and have that life. I never had those models that you do not hear stories like that really ever. It is like either you figure it out or you fail, or all that nonsense that the people about the way your life is supposed to be. I really have desired to write a book that is just a different story for folks of like, “You are the different model.” It is really weird, but it is what I did. Hopefully, that could help other folks.

Kabira: And I think, too, in a lot of ways, my activism was really spurred by what was going on politically in the [inaudible] and the war on terror and how I felt about that, and I am very strongly against it. That, in many ways, I do not think I ever would have started a company if that activism bug had not been turned on in me. The world is very strange right now, and there is a lot of people who feel very strongly[?] about what is going on. And I also want to offer the story of that fury and that sadness, and that rage that you have that can be channeled into something and to create because, at this point, it is all hands on deck. The building is on fire, and whatever that is that really gets you and keeping you up at night, go for it and try to do something about it because that is what is up right now. We need everybody off the bench.

John: No more spectators. Everybody should be a participant.

Kabira: [inaudible]

John: For our listeners who have just joined us, I have got my friend on today, Kabira Stokes. Kabira is, as we shared earlier, a much-celebrated success story in the recycling industry. You could look at her original brand at www.homeboyrecycling.com. We are going now get into a little bit of it. When is that book coming up, by the way? When is your book coming out?

Kabira: Next year, that is 2021.

John: Okay. Well, you are coming back on and we are going to do a whole podcast about the book, but let us step back now. Let us go back to Ron Gonen says, “Hey, I need you. Monday is your day.” and that is where the company called for our listeners out there to find Kabira. Now, you can go to www.retrievr, R-E-T-R-I-E-V-R dot com, retrievr.com. Talk a little bit about what the game plan was when Ron hired you at Retrievr and where you intend to go with it for the remainder of, just like say this year.

Kabira: The reason Retrievr wooed me is, electronics is not going in that industry. Most of it is be to be. This is an enterprise. You are helping companies figure out how to responsibly dispose of their IT assets. We would get dropping maybe ten percent of our streams, which from people dropping it off at our warehouse residence.

But I always said, there is an untapped market there in terms of how do you get electronics out of people’s homes. There is like collection events, you could drop it off, but for the most part, and this is I think in part why recycling rates of electronics are so stagnant, is that, there is no convenient, really convenient way to recycle those stuff. So what Retrievr and Ron have done, this is unsexy stuff but I love it, is doorstep collection of electronics and actually Retrievr also collects clothing.

And to me, in this moment in time, I am like, “This is a simple solution that can actually move the need on recycling rate that we can scale. We can do this around the country.” So, I do not know when this part has it coming out but later in May, there will be a major announcement of a major municipality in America is launching with Retrievr to do this citywide. We already served a million households on the east coast and this will double it to two million.

John: And how does it work? For our listeners who go to your website, explain how it works, actually. For someone goes to retrievr.com, how does it work?

Kabira: You take out your phone and you text the Retrievr, “I would like a pickup.” And Retrievr says, “Great. What do you want to recycle? We will be there on whatever day you choose.” That is really what it is. You text in and the truck comes by, and we are making sure that all of your data is wiped, and we are figuring out the most responsible way to recycle those clothes and those electronics. And again, this is the stuff, it is the least sexy stuff in the world. It is the stuff that gets me so excited because these are real solutions to real problems, and this is the way you increase recycling rates.

John: And you are going to be able to touch, potentially, as you see, you already have a million clients. This is something that can scale quickly, and you could be impacting millions of clients in the very near future.

Kabira: Yes. It is so needed. Especially now, everybody is at home, spring cleaning, got the piling up, maybe you do not want to bring it somewhere and you do not know where to bring it. So we have our protocols in place to make a contact list, and we will come grab it from your house.

John: How does the financial model work? Do people pay or how does that work? Who pays? How does it work?

Kabira: Great question. It is primarily free, but there is fees for things like televisions or your old air conditioner. So there are some fees, but for the most part, it is free.

John: It is free, wow, and it is convenient. It is right on your cell phone, just like an Uber.

Kabira: Beep-boop, exactly.

John: I love it. Now, you are the CEO of Retrievr?

Kabira: No, no. I am actually consulting with them for the moment.

John: Okay.

Kabira: I am stepping down from this view for a moment, taking a breath.

John: Okay. So near term goals, it is hard for anybody, for the smartest of business people, people are not giving guidance for a long periods of time now given the crisis and tragedy that we are living through. What do you foresee, just gently speaking, for the rest of this year with Retrievr? What would be just some of your goals that you and Ron are planning on for the rest of this year?

Kabira: We want to expand into six cities.

John: Wonderful.

Kabira: That is the goal and just be able to increase the amount of people that have access to this service. We are looking at certain cities around the country and potential partnerships.

John: People can go to retrievr.com and email you directly —

Kabira: Sure.

John: – if a listener works for a city or a municipality that wants to talk to you about…

Kabira: Absolutely.

John: Okay, got it. So they could just go find you right on retrievr.com. Kabira, we are nearing the end of the show, do you have any other thoughts or last thoughts for– There is a lot of young people that listen to this podcast, not only in the United States, around the world, and they just do not want to get out of high school or college or grad school and just make money, now we are just go make another widget. They want to make an impact. They want to be an activist like you. You were early. You are a part of a very, very early wave of activist entrepreneurs and public servants, but this a lot more of you behind you. Any advice you want to give them as they now look for their next step of their own journeys.

Kabira: I think something that is giving me a lot of hope right now is looking around. Today is May 7th, and we are still deep in COVID-19. Just this week, we have had this up-tech internationally of business leaders, the government stepping up and saying the economic recovery from COVID-19 is going to go hand-in-hand with climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation, and what we need to do to transform our economy in this world to deal with climate change. To me, that is the most helpful thing I have seen in a minute.

Kabira: I think all around the world, here in America, I do not know if you know the Sunrise Movement, like those kids, the Sunrise kids who are trying to impact policy around climate change. The first thing they did when COVID happened and all the city shutdowns happened, is that they got together and they started an online school specifically looking, “How did the original New Deal path? Let us study that history. How did that policy go? What had to happen? Who had to come together?” They are not kidding around. They are going to pass the New Green Deal. And that is the way the world is going right now. That to me is the most helpful thing, and however people can get involved with that, I think do not despair, that is the first thing. These are weird, weird times, but I do think that is the way the world is moving. If there is any positivity, and there is a lot of little positive moments for this, but overall, the positivity around us all having to pause, is that I think that we have been able to hopefully steer the ship in the direction it needed to go in, and we actually had to have a reset to make that happen.

Kabira: A few things are going to be happening super locally, too, I think so, we do not have to look to the federal government to lead us on everything. We can look to what is happening in our cities and in our communities to keep that tide going forward. The other piece of advice that I always give people is that when you are starting a business, buy all the insurance. You do not think you are going to need it, but I am going to tell you right now, you probably will.

John: That is great advice. That is great advice. That is really, really great advice that most people never even hear. That is the last thing–

Kabira: Buy the insurance.

John: Yes that is great. Well, Kabira, thank you for your time today. Thank you for your thoughts. Thank you for sharing your journey with our listeners. Obviously, we are going to have you back on more to talk about the success and ongoing growth of Retrievr. For our listeners out there that want to reach Kabira or bring Retrievr to their city or city near you, you could go to www.retrievr, R-E-T-R-I-E-V-R.com.

John: Kabira Stokes, you are making a difference. You are making the world a better place. You are making a great impact. Thank you for being my friend, and thank you for being who you are.

Kabira: Thank you for having me. It is always great to talk to you.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy and is the largest fully integrated IT and Electronics Asset Disposition Provider and Cybersecurity-focused Hardware Destruction Company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. We’re so honored to have with us today Rebecca Metz. She’s an actress on the show, Better Things, and also on Disney Channel’s Coop & Cami. Welcome to the Impact Show, Rebecca.

Rebecca Metz: Thank you so much for having me.

John: Rebecca, first of all, before we get going here before we talk about all the great things you’re doing to make the world a better place, I just first have to welcome a true-to-life Jersey girl. Being that I’m a Jersey boy, it’s so exciting to have a kindred spirit with me here on the air today.

Rebecca: Yep. We tend to gravitate towards each other, I find.

John: We do. How’s that happened? I mean, and it’s also so neat.

Rebecca: Yeah. You can just see it in the eyes.

John: Especially when we all end up in California. And when we all end up in California, we sort of need that kind of bonding to go on all the time. We sort of take it for granted when we are all in Jersey, but when we’re out of Jersey, it’s always nice to reconnect.

Rebecca: Yeah.

John: All kidding aside, I am a huge huge fan of both your work and the work that you’ve done with your cast and ensemble on Better Things. So, I just wanted to say thank you for the great art you’ve put out there. For our listeners out there, if you haven’t seen Better Things, please take a look. It is just one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my whole fifty-seven years on this planet, so I want to say thank you for that great work.

Rebecca: It is truly, truly my pleasure. I love that show. It’s like I manifested the perfect show for me. It’s like a little kiss from the universe telling me I’ve been on the right track this whole time because it’s just a joy and like totally consistent with everything that I love doing.

John: Rebecca, I just have to say this. People in Hollywood are lucky because if I was a person in Hollywood, I’d want you to be my manager. And actually I thought about it even more before we did this show, I’m like, how come, entrepreneurs who have found some level of success, how come we don’t just get managers like Tressa. I mean, that’s what we need. I need a Tressa in my life just managing my career.

Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, I’ve had good ones and bad ones. So it’s a little bit of a dice roll. But if you get a good one, it can be sort of a lifelong, wonderful, relationship and like we see in the show one that served transcends business and becomes also personal.

John: Rebecca, share a little bit before we get into talking about making the world a better place, sustainability, and all those kind of very current and important issues, share a little bit about a young girl growing up in Freehold, New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen, and how you made it actually all the way from Freehold to Hollywood.

Rebecca: Well, this sounds ridiculous but it’s true that my sort of love of acting and discovery that that’s the world I wanted to be in, comes in part because my parents are classically trained singers and so the idea of performance and the arts was a big part of my life. But also I grew up watching, The Muppet Show in the 70s and I remember, I would sit down on my parents’ green plush carpet every Sunday at 7:30 and pretty early on, I was like, “That’s where I want to be. That’s where I belong.” The craziness backstage and that world of a theater and the chaos that turns into a beautiful performance or sometimes in not so beautiful performance. Like it just woke something up and me that I was like, “That’s where I’m supposed to be with those crazy muppets.”

John: That’s truly an epiphany because it doesn’t matter what age people have epiphanies at all different ages but how does that then translate to putting one foot in front of the other and making the journey literally from Freehold to Los Angeles?

Rebecca: Well, again, I think it’s helpful that I had parents who valued and understood the arts and never tried to talk me out of it. Although I don’t like it would have worked if they had. I took music classes and one of my parents’ chorus needed kids for something that they were doing, I would do it and I took piano lessons and so, my sort of creative side was always working and always a focus. I went to a high school that had a bunch of really wonderful magnet programs including a Performing Arts Magnet program that I got involved in. So I started and I always did, you know High School theater and drama camps and stuff in the summer. So, you know, a lot of that has to do with having supportive parents. It’s hugely important and so I was learning and sort of moving in that direction. In eighth grade, I made several trips to our local library and I embarked on this research project to find the best drama schools in the country that I could go to after high school and my parents actually took me to Carnegie Mellon where I ultimately went because I decided that in eighth grade, that’s where I wanted to go and we met with the Associate Dean and I think my parents were just thrilled that I was excited about college.

John: Wow. At a very young age.

Rebecca: Yeah. My dad is, professionally, a music and math guy. He was a music teacher. He is also a computer scientist and an engineer and so, Carnegie is very much an Arts and Science school so he loved it for that. And that’s ultimately where I went. Once I get an idea in my head, it’s pretty difficult to talk me out of it. So I think I was just hell-bent on pursuing it and pursuing it as serious away as I could. And then after college, we do showcases in New York and LA and being from New York and feeling comfortable there, and knowing that I wasn’t super inspired by what was happening on Broadway at that time, we came to LA and I’d never spent much time here before and after four Pittsburgh winters, the weather was very appealing. And I figured now is the time to make a big leap if I’m ever going to do it, I may as well do it now. I could always go back home and I haven’t ever wanted to.

John: So you’re out in Hollywood, first of all, let me just ask this – when you were growing up and knew that you wanted to go in the Arts, what was your favorite Broadway show you’ve ever seen as a young lady and favorite movie?

Rebecca: Oh, okay. My favorite Broadway show, I mean, one of the great things is, you know about growing up in New Jersey is we’re so close to New York. It kind of ruins you for other cities, I think, in some ways. So I got to see the original run of Angels in America on Broadway in High School, which is like life-changing. And also there was a production of Guys and Dolls with Faith Prince and Nathan Lane and Peter Gallagher like it was just– I am very snobby about my musicals and I love old classic American musicals. I’m not up for these newfangled jukebox musicals and movie adaptations. I don’t want it. But that production of Guys and Dolls is my favorite musical I’ve ever seen. My favorite movie? The Muppet Movie? I don’t know. I wasn’t a huge movie kid.

John: All right. Favorite actress?

Rebecca: I think, you know, I watched a lot of TVs so that’s why I ended up working in TV.

John: Talk about your favorite actress. Like who do you see and say, “I’m going to be her.” But it’s one thing to say, I’m going to be part of that industry when you’re watching The Muppets, but now you see who is up on the screen or on TV that you said, “I’m going to be her.”

Rebecca: I think the first person I saw, again, probably on The Muppet Show, who I was like, “I understand that,” was Madeline Kahn.

John: I love Madeline Kahn. That’s such a great person too.

Rebecca: Yeah, cause she was funny and theatrical. She was funny but she wasn’t a comedian. She was an actor and she sang a little bit and she’s the first person I really sort of latched onto as like, “Yeah, I could do that.”

John: That’s awesome. So now you’re in Hollywood, talk about the first job that you called home about like, “Mom, Dad–” the first job that was enough of a job that you said, “I’m going to call and tell Mom and Dad that I just got this.”

Rebecca: I think it was, do you remember the show, Politically Incorrect?

John: Yeah, of course.

Rebecca: So I had met a casting director through a workshop or something and I got a call that was like you have an audition to be part of a sketch on Politically Incorrect and you’re going to book it. It was pitched to me as, “You already have this role.” So I called my parents and the way that show work because it was so topical is you shot it that day and it aired that night like there was no turnaround. So as soon as I got that phone call, I called my parents and I was like, “I’m gonna be on TV tonight. Tell everybody. Politically Incorrect at whatever time it is.” And then I get there and it was an audition. I was like, “Oh, no. I have to get this part.” And it was a very strange audition because of the way the show, how quickly it goes through the whole process. They sort of said, “Okay, you’re going to go in one by one don’t leave when you’re done. Everybody stay here. We’re going to come out and tell you right away who got it and that person is going to go right into hair and makeup.” Which is not a thing that happens in any other project.

John: Right. Real-time audition, real-time job.

Rebecca: Yeah. So, we went in one by one. The casting director was there and then they came out and said, “Thank you so much for coming, everybody. Rebecca, would you please stay?” And I was like, “Whew! I didn’t lie to my parents.”

John: Oh, my God, and they even named who wins right in front of everyone.

Rebecca: Yeah, brutal.

John: That’s brutal, wow.

Rebecca: And I was playing Linda Tripp in a sketch about the Clinton Scandal and it was like we were all in High School, so Ken Starr was the hall monitor and I showed up at the end and I was recording everyone in my locker. It was silly, it took probably five minutes, but it was my first real TV job.

John: And actually, let’s be frank, Politically Incorrect was big-time TV.

Rebecca: Oh, yeah.

John: Big time.

Rebecca: And they didn’t usually do sketches. So like I have this credit on my IMDb that people will sometimes say like, were you a panelist? Why were you on that show? And I have to explain, “They decided to do this– it wasn’t a sketch show but you know this one time or once in a while they did a thing and then that was my first job,” but it’s very much like theater, it’s live audience. You don’t have much– it’s just kind of, “Here’s what you’re going to do, go up there and do it.”

John: And who did you watch it with that night?

Rebecca: I’m sure I watched it by myself because I was living by myself in Sherman Oaks.

John: Okay. And how did you feel like after you watch it? Like was it just electric? Could you sleep? Was it just beyond or even more?

Rebecca: I think what I thought was, “We’re going to do something more interesting next time.”

John: Okay, but that’s great.

Rebecca: You know, I was in a goofy wig. It wasn’t acting, exactly. So it was like, “Okay, this is one baby step on the ladder.” The first step on the ladder, let’s keep going.

John: That’s awesome. Then, okay, so that’s your break, then talk about as Hollywood calls it whatever, why ever they call a big break. What was then the big break? When did it go from small roles, recurring roles, honing your craft to like, “Ah, this might be it.”

Rebecca: I don’t think I ever really had that. It’s been a bunch of little baby breaks that you only realized were breaks in hindsight. I’ve never had a moment where I was like, “Here it is. It’s all happening.” I did a role on Nip/Tuck that was a big deal for the show and very memorable and very dark and a big challenge for me as an actor and the casting director at the time said, “This is going to really change things for you,” and it did but it’s not like I could quit my day job. I started going out for roles and the big thing that changed was that people started expecting something of me.

John: Got it, got it.

Rebecca: And I could deliver and people would be like, “Oh, she really knows what she’s doing.” And after Nip/Tuck, I would walk into an audition where people would go, “This is Rebecca. She’s amazing.” And I would be like, “Well, I’m not about to be amazing because this material is not amazing,” and it took me a while to adjust to having expectations because I was very comfortable being kind of an underdog. So that change things but again, it took a while for me to get a sense of how it changed things. Shameless Change Things, that was my first significantly recurring role.

John: Great show.

Rebecca: Yeah, amazing show. The showrunner, John Wells is a legend in the business and I think it’s the kind of show where people go, “Okay. If she can hack it there over three seasons maybe she might know what she’s doing.” It’s a process of constantly reinforcing and reassuring people that you know what you’re doing and that you can be trusted and that you’re someone they want to spend long stretches of time with. So, Shameless was another one.

John: Talk about auditioning and then getting the job for Better Things.

Rebecca: That was a project that I was watching because I love Pamela Adlon. I loved her work before that. And so when I saw that show get announced in the trades, I emailed my agent, my manager and was like, “We’re watching this one. I want in on this one,” which does not always work by a long shot. But the casting director who’s now a producer is someone that I had been going in for, for years and is now a friend and so I did get called in for it. And she had cast me in Californication.

John: Which I was just going to bring up. So was Pamela a friend before you join the show?

Rebecca: Not of mine.

John: Oh, okay.

Rebecca: But the same casting director. They had worked together on Californication.

John: Got it.

Rebecca: Part of I think what happens in a career as you start to find the people who share your sensibility – casting directors, who like what you do, producers, and directors who like how you work. And so, it’s this narrowing of like figuring out where you fit and finding the people who love to do what you love to do and so through Californication and some other things, Felicia Fasano is her name and I had kind of found each other and so by the time better things came around she was like, I think Pam would really like Rebecca. She’s bringing in people that she thinks Pam will like in that same way. And so I went in for that audition. They had everyone read the same material and you didn’t get it ahead of time. It was just like, “Show up fifteen minutes early. Look at the sides. You’re all going to read the same stuff,” which is unusual. And then a few days to a week later, we got a call and they said, “She’s going to be in the show, we don’t know who she’s going to be but she’s going to be in the show,” which is also unusual. Usually, you’re reading for a specific role and then they booked me for one episode which was the fourth episode in Season 1 where we meet Tressa as Sam’s manager and Sam’s up for a pilot and Tressa doesn’t give her all the information because she knows it’s not going to happen that she’s trying to spare her the disappointment.

John: I remember that episode.

Rebecca: I just have to tell the story because it was so–

John: I want you to tell it because I love this because I’m so geeking out because I’ve seen all of your episodes at least twice. I’m so excited as a fan just to hear it. Go ahead.

Rebecca: So that episode, all my stuff was phone calls with the character Sam on the other line. So, I’m by myself. Usually, you have a scene with another actor or something. There was a kid named Caleb who plays my son, Murray, in the show. He was there but you know, we didn’t have extensive discussions, Caleb and I, he was probably four at that time so I was by myself. And Pam, she wasn’t officially the director at that time but she was essentially the director. And she was on the other line doing the phone calls. And so we would do a take and I’m there by myself and she’s in the other room and they’d yell, “Cut.” And I would hear for the other room Pam’s voice going, “Rebecca Metz is the greatest actress in the world.”

John: Oh, my god.

Rebecca: I was like, “Oh, my god, what is going on?” And we would do another one and she would say, “Rebecca Metz is playing all of the parts in my show.” Like, to say positive feedback–

John: Were you levitating at this point? Did you start to just rise off your chair?

Rebecca: Honestly, it kind of freaked me out. I was like, “This isn’t normal. Is she making fun of me?” It was just heaps of praise and appreciation which is how Pam is, but like I didn’t know that and so the whole day was totally surreal. It was just the strangest, most wonderful day. And that was the only episode and the only day that I was booked for so I went home and I was like, “Well, I guess it’s back to the drawing board, I’m not going to have one like that again for a while.” And then a week or two later, I got a text from Felicia on a Sunday saying, “What are you doing tomorrow?” And I said, “Nothing.” She said, “Do you want to come, do a scene?” And I said, “Of course.” And sort of, from then on I was folded into the circle of Sam’s friends and extended family that’s become the ensemble for four seasons now.

John: Yeah, what a show. And all of you are just wonderful and you’re just amazing. And like I’ve said before I ever had this conversation with you today – if I could ever have a manager, Tressa would be the manager.

Rebecca: That makes me and Tressa very happy. I think Tressa Fields chronically under-appreciated. So that would make Tressa feel very good.

John: For our listeners who have just joined us, we’ve got Jersey girl and Hollywood star, Rebecca Metz on with us today. You could find Rebecca on Twitter @therebeccametz or on Instagram @therebeccametz. Rebecca, talk a little bit about using the success that you’ve earned and the platform that you have now to make the world a better place in just where you come from and the things that are important for you and the things that you and your husband could actually make changes in.

Rebecca: You know, I think people have a lot of feelings about actors or public figures being outspoken about political and social issues, but for me, I was a citizen and a voter before anybody knew who I was for acting. I come from a family with a long history of sort of being outspoken progressives and so being a loudmouth about things that I care about predates being an actor. So I think it has only changed in so far as you use what you have at your disposal like we didn’t have social media when I was growing up. So we had to find other ways to be outspoken and now we have social media and now, you know, I have whatever visibility I have and whatever is at my disposal is a tool for speaking up for the things that I care about, the things that I believe in. I feel, especially, if someone in a pretty who’s gotten to a pretty privileged place professionally, I feel an obligation to use that for the greater good and especially on behalf of people who don’t have that voice. That’s just sort of the ethics I was raised with.

John: Let’s unpack that a little bit. First of all, we’ll go back to Rebecca, your ethnic background, grew up–

Rebecca: Eastern European Jew.

John: Okay. So, was your family where they genocide survivors? Your grandparents?

Rebecca: I don’t know because I think with a lot of Jewish families, we don’t talk about that part of our history that much. I know we came over from Poland and Russia. I think my great-grandparents were the first generations to be born here. I think that’s accurate.

John: It’s interesting. I’m Armenian and we came out of the genocide. Both my grandparents were survivors of the genocide as were my wife and her grandparents as well. I think there’s something, almost an obligation for us being from members of an ethnic group that have gone through a holocaust and tragedy and genocide like that to speak up for the little people that have been marginalized historically.

Rebecca: Absolutely. And I think for me anyway, because, with any big ethnic or religious community, you can’t speak for everyone. There are lots of differences even in our own family. There are lots of different ways of being Jewish. But for me anyway, there’s a rabbi follow on Twitter who talks about American Jews, American White presenting Jews being White with an asterisk because we enjoy White privilege, enjoy benefits from White Privilege, we get all those benefits but it’s conditional, it can be revoked at any time and we are always aware of that because we’re all aware of our history of that happening. So I think while I don’t feel the same kind of threat from, say, the police in the ways that we’re talking about right now in the Black Lives Matter Movement of that kind of thing, there’s a part of me that feels not so far from it, feels that people who look like me have been there within my family’s lifetimes and could be there. And so, who am I to say that I don’t care about it.

John: I agree. One of my favorite posts that you made using social media was, unfortunately, a little bit too much of a foreshadowing but it was a powerful message that you put out on Instagram on April 3rd where you wore a t-shirt which I had never seen before or some sort of top which had on it a message – Hate is a Virus. And wow, I mean this was before anything had transpired that we’ve just lived through the tragedies that we’ve seen and the divisions that it’s caused across this country. So, wow. Hate is a Virus is really true and in so many ways whether it’s speech hate, action hate, there is so much of that going on, unfortunately, in our country right now. I am old enough. I’m much older than you and I live through the Rodney King riots when I lived in LA with a young family at that time and I’ll tell you what, that was very very– you don’t forget that. And I hope permanent change is gotten out of this period and I hope people don’t forget what’s going on right now.

Rebecca: Yeah, and I hope people realize you know that shirt came out of actually of movement that someone alerted me to in the early days of COVID-19 when there was a lot of hate being directed at Asian Americans because some people were blaming the virus on China and that message became relevant as George Floyd and Brianna Taylor’s murders became national news. It’s not before any of that happened. It’s been happening for years, of course, but it took on a national level of attention that it deserves and I think we can all think of so many examples of that message being relevant, which is kind of the point. None of us is immune from it and so all of us have a responsibility to fight it especially those of us who enjoy some privilege. I keep saying enjoy, who benefit from some racial privilege because we’re the ones who have the sort of power and social capital and the responsibility to change things.

John: Rebecca, as we shared before we went on the air, I grew up in New Jersey as well and I was very lucky to have a horse farm in Toms River not far away from where you grew up and so I fell in love with horses and the environment and the ecosystem at a young age. What was a tipping point in your life to think beyond just ourselves and our daily actions that impact us and understand that our actions, albeit small on a one-by-one basis, make an impact on a larger scale both when someone has a celebrity platform like you do but also just for the regular man or woman on the street who the more appropriately they act, environmental behavior is borderless, whether it’s us as a country acting appropriately and responsibly or irresponsibly and affecting all the other countries around the world or acting responsibly has a benefit to all, when did you start? What was that evolution from a child on or as an adult? Some folks, friends of yours turned you really on to environmental and sustainable practices? Where did that come from?

Rebecca: I think it was incremental. I think growing up in New Jersey, I grew up, we grew up in beautiful parts of New Jersey like you said horse farms and green but you heard people talk about New Jersey like this industrial dump. And so, you know, you sort of go, “What are they talking about? That’s not what it looks like where I live.” But then you kind of learn what they’re talking about and then I went to college in Pittsburgh, which was a steel town and you could see the soot, the remnants of that industry, they were starting to clean it up and make some changes, but you could see and my aunt actually went to Carnegie Mellon and my grandparents talked about taking her to school and that you could see smoke, black smoke from the exit on the Pennsylvania turnpike. You could see it. And then in college, between my Junior and Senior year, I got a job in Glacier National Park in Montana working in the gift shop and singing in the country-western Cabaret, and I had never really spent much time that far west. I think it’s a big part of why I moved to LA because I just fell in love with the landscape and the space and just everything about it and became I think more aware of the impact, the way that park, it’s called Glacier, it’s right in the name and there won’t be any glaciers there within our lifetimes because of what’s happening to the climate. It’s happening in front of our eyes. And so I think just over the course of my life, I’ve been slowly, piece by piece, experience by experience, waking up to how vitally important that is.

John: So what do you and your husband on a regular basis do to consciously live more sustainably, live more with environmental thought process towards your actions and how you get through every day?

Rebecca: I mean, I was an early adopter of hybrid car technology. I had an early Prius.

John: Which are great cars, by the way.

Rebecca: Great cars. I love that car. And then I switched when that car died like drove it into the ground.

John: Two hundred thousand plus miles later.

Rebecca: That’s not true. The Prius, I was going to get rid of it, but a friend took it and I switch to leasing an electric car. I’m on my second electric car now. I love it. I’m never going back. My husband drives a hybrid. So we’re trying to, first and foremost, minimize as much as possible our dependence on oil and carbon fuels.

John: So, when we talk about electric cars when you guys come home, you plug it.

Rebecca: Yeah.

John: Oh, cool. Great.

Rebecca: It’s awesome. When we’re in normal time when I leave the house regularly. I leave the house with a full tank every day.

John: Wow. That’s awesome.

Rebecca: It’s so great. There are so many great things about it. My parents’ house in New Jersey, they converted to solar a number of years ago.

John: They’re living the environmental life, good.

Rebecca: We would love to do that here but we don’t have whatever kind of access you need to have on your roof. We’re working on it. We’re about to get a compost bin. We really try to minimize food waste. I keep a bag in the freezer for like veggie scraps and bones and anything left over, this goes back to my grandmother and to cooking, I made soup with it. One of my earliest cooking memories is watching my grandmother, my father’s mother, Grandma Fanny making chicken soup.

John: Right. That generation didn’t like to waste a lot by the way.

Rebecca: No, no, no. So, yeah, so I do that. We plant native plants. We had a little patch of grass in our yard that we converted to native plants which minimize water dependency, it encourages local wildlife. We have some beehives in the back on our property to support bees and pollination.

John: And I’ve read that you use a unique produce delivery service or something of that nature?

Rebecca: Oh, yeah. There’s this amazing service that we’ve been using for a long time. It’s coming in very handy now. It was called imperfect produce, now, it’s called imperfect foods that they take previously produce and now other kinds of food that aren’t going to be sold through traditional venues, grocery stores and that kind of thing because they don’t look right, they are too big, they’re too small, they have some scarring, whatever the rules are that make them not beautiful enough for people to want to buy but that are perfectly good and would otherwise be wasted.

John: That’s awesome.

Rebecca: And delivered them or their surplus or any number of reasons that so much food gets wasted and it comes to our house every other week, which means we don’t have to go to the grocery store as much. We’re helping to cut down on food waste, and we have fresh produce all the time. It’s really wonderful.

John: Is this a service that’s national now? Are they big enough or is it just local in major cities? Do we know?

Rebecca: I’m not sure. It was pretty small in the West when we started but I think they’ve expanded. So, it’s worth checking and there are lots of services like this. So, look into services that do produce delivery, food waste delivery. Even, there are some farms and farmer’s markets that are doing delivery now. So, wherever you are, I would absolutely encourage people to look into how you can support local growers which cuts down on fuel cost, transportation, and food waste.

John: And good produce is really important to a Jersey girl who grew up in what is really called the Garden State.

Rebecca: I mean, my father still grows tomatoes and all kinds of stuff in the yard and is very jealous of our year-long growing season in California.

John: I also heard and I’ve read that you had a unique wedding. Talk about why your wedding was so unique as to other weddings.

Rebecca: Because I’m crazy. When we got engaged, I was never the kind of girl who dreamed of my wedding my whole life. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married.

John: Okay.

Rebecca: So I didn’t have a wedding all mapped out in my head. And when we got engaged I was immediately flooded with all the things I didn’t want. I was like, “I’m not doing it in a country club. I’m not doing it in a hotel ballroom. We’re not doing this. We’re not doing this.” And so–

John: So you had the list of we’re not doing. There has to be a list somewhere of what we can do.

Rebecca: I went to the internet and I looked on some wedding planning website. There’s just like a list of venues and I saw the Santa Barbara Zoo. I was like, “You can get married in a zoo?” And I’ll never forget it, there was a picture on the website that was this smiling beautiful bride, smiling beautiful groom and a giraffe between them smiling and I was like, “That’s what I want. That’s the wedding that I want.”

John: That’s the best. Did it turn out the way you wanted it? In reality, was it as great as you wanted it to be?

Rebecca: Oh, plus a million times more. It was the best wedding I’ve ever been to, which I think everyone’s wedding should be.

John: I never even heard that. That’s the best.

Rebecca: We had the little train running so everybody could go look at the animals after the ceremony. We fed the giraffes, my husband and I, in our wedding attire before everyone showed up. And it was just like a cocktail, heavy tray pass hors d’oeuvres, so people were standing and dancing and talking to each other. There was no seating plan. It was a party which is what we wanted.

John: Which was so nice, but also it was a form of inspiration because instead of being in just a sterile ballroom somewhere, USA, you actually put them with living beautiful animals. That makes us all appreciate just this great world in the environment more than just a sterile ballroom. So what a wonderful idea.

Rebecca: And there were mountains on one side and the ocean on the other side. It’s a beautiful location and a beautiful organization. And so it was really special and memorable. I’m not gonna gush forever about my wedding, but it was good.

John: I see in your social media a lot of cats. How many animals do you have at home? I just need to know this.

Rebecca: Just the three. Yeah, we have three cats.

John: Okay, no dogs?

Rebecca: No dogs. I’m not opposed to dogs, but I’ve never been a dog person. I’ve never had a dog. So I speak cat language. I understand cat.

John: Yeah, it’s so interesting. It’s like people are dog-people or cat-people. If you don’t mind me asking, what does your husband do?

Rebecca: He is a writer. Not a scriptwriter, but he’s a journalist. He mostly writes about music and now he’s writing podcast for a podcasting company called Wondery, so he’s upstairs working on that right now.

John: I’ve heard Wondery, of course, they’re very well-known. It’s always fascinating to me, to creatives balance themselves out with somebody else, a different type of personality or do to creatives get together and it’s always, the same thing in business. I’m a business person through and through, so is my wife. She’s the CEO of our company and we work together forever and a day and it works. It is just always fascinating to understand how relationships work and two creatives together. That makes sense especially that he’s into music given that you have a huge musical background, vis a vis your parents.

Rebecca: And he studied playwriting and dramaturgy. So he speaks the language but a lot of actors, their partners are other actors and I always knew I didn’t want that. I didn’t want another actor and so like we’re both creative but different. We speak each other’s languages, we understand the processes, but we’re not in the same business which for us is very healthy.

John: That’s great. That is just awesome. Rebecca, any last thoughts before we say goodbye for today?

Rebecca: I mean, this has been such a lovely wonderful conversation. I just want to thank you for the work that you’re doing and the focus that you’re putting on not just the projects and plugging projects that creative people are working on but on turning that into something that benefits everyone. I think that’s great.

John: This was just started as a mission. It’s still a mission. It’s a non-profit deal that I do as part of my career and it’s just a delight and it also gives me so much inspiration and hopes to have successful people like you that although you used the word earlier you’ve gotten to that position. I’ve used the other word, you’ve earned your success, you’ve earned everything you’ve gotten. Hollywood is not an easy place, I know that. You’ve given some great examples of how easy it really is not and you’re a true celebrity that you’ve earned in the fact that you use the platform to make an impact to make the world a better place is exactly why I have this show and it’s to have great people like you who are special on, to just share your journey and inspire others to come on that journey, to help do their part wherever they are, whatever they’ve got. You don’t need to be the creator of Tesla or some new solar firm, you could just make small adjustments in the household as you’ve done and literally that’s not only inspirational to others but it also does make the world a better place and for that, I’m very grateful, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Well, thank you. It’s been a wonderful way to spend however long we’ve been talking. Talking about these things.

John: For our listeners out there, again, you can find Rebecca Metz and her great work on the Disney Channel’s Coop & Cami Ask the world, and of course, on one of my favorite shows, Better Things. Rebecca Metz, you’re always welcome back on the Impact Podcast. I’m grateful for you, I’m very grateful for your time today. Thank you for making the world a better place.

Rebecca: My pleasure. Thank you.

John Shegerian: This edition of the impact podcast is brought to you by the Marketing Masters. The Marketing Masters is a boutique marketing agency offering website development and digital marketing services to small and medium businesses across America. For more information on how they can help you grow your business online, please visit the marketingmasters.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. I am so honored today to have my good friend, Samvel Movsisyan and he is from Armenia. He is calling in from Yerevan. Welcome to the impact podcast, Samvel.

Samvel Movsisyan: Thank you very much, Mr. Shegerian for this great opportunity. It is a great honor for me to join this conversation.

John: Hey, before we get chatting too much, I just want to also say hello to all of our wonderful friends and family members in Armenia. [foreign language]. I love Armenia and you were one of the main reasons I had such a wonderful first experience there. You were so kind enough and generous enough to ask me to share some of my experiences with your Leadership School and you are the founder of the Leadership School. Can you please before we get talking about all the great things you are doing with the Leadership School, can you share your journey a little bit, Samvel? How you got and where you are today? Growing up in Armenia, how you eventually created the Leadership School?

Samvel: Yes. Sure. Thank you very much for your question. First of all, I hate the idea of helping needy children in Armenia. With our student group, we visit to Gyumri and that time we had an orphanage in Cambridge called House of Hope. We visited there and we saw that there are more than hundred children who are living in that orphanage. We take with us some clothes, sweets, and different souvenirs as a gift for them. But later we understand that these children they need some communication. They need some love. They need some opportunity to interact. I asked the director if we can just have one hour, not official communication and he say, “Okay, your time started.” At that time, I just went to the second floor to see in which condition these children are sleeping. When I opened the door, I saw that in the corner there was an eleven years old boy sitting and crying. When I came to this guy and said, “Why are you crying?” And he told me that “Do you know I want to be like you.” This, “I want to be like you,” changed all my life. That moment I understand what is God’s gift to have family, friends, and opportunity just to live by yourself. That moment in our brief conversation with this eleven years old boy, we came to the point that he wants to be shoe maker and to be an orphanage director maximum. I told him, “Imagine that if you can be the president of Armenia after thirty or forty years,” and he smiled. He changed his face. He changed his attitude. Then I told him, “If you work hard and educate well, just do that that you can do. Impossible is nothing.”

Samvel: I took his hand and we went to the room where my other student colleagues playing with children and I told them, “Guys, from this day we have a promise and our promise, is to help children not with these gifts or souvenirs. We do help children through education.” Since 2004, I am keeping my promise and still we continue to do our projects. Why I told this brief story to you because it is very important. It is very fundamental for the Leadership School story. Because Leadership School is born from these opportunities and interactions with the children. Mainly, in 2006, our research shows that these children want to leave the country. They do not see their future in Armenia. We came to the point that we need more servant leaders in Armenia. With my friends, we decided to find Leadership School and we did a lot of research. We did a lot of conversations with different professionals. We came to the idea that we are going to find a Leadership School where we are going to educate as future servant leaders in our country. Step by step, we large our branches in our region. I am really very proud that now we are moving forward and we have this dream to be one of the best institution as a Leadership School in our region, South Caucasus region.

John: How many years ago was this that you founded it?

Samvel: It is already more than ten years.

John: Ten years? Wow. For our listeners out there, we have got Samvel Movsisyan and he is on the line with me direct from Yerevan, Armenia. He is the founder of the Leadership School foundation. For people who want to find it, they could go to www.leadershipschool.am. Where else can they find you, Samvel on LinkedIn, Facebook, and where else?

Samvel: Yes. I am very open to communicate and discuss possible collaboration with the people who see some partnership. Through Linkedin and Facebook, I am available to communicate and to discuss future opportunities. And of course, also in our website, we have also email addresses that they can reach and we are very actively replying to the emails.

John: Perfect. You know, Samvel, Armenia under this new leadership is truly becoming a nation with so much innovation going on. Can you talk about the importance of what you are doing with the Leadership School foundation and how you are driving more innovation in Armenia at a time where innovation is critical?

Samvel: Yes, sure. Thank you for your question. In Leadership School, we believe that theory plus practice you success because only theory is not enough. Only practice is not enough. Therefore, we try to combine these two directions that we can encourage young generation to do innovation. I am really very happy to see that they have a lot of professional alumna students who are running different businesses starting from Dental Clinic to IT companies, from Design companies to Finance Audit companies. These students are very hardworking and very innovative. Also, they have the spirit of giving back to society because we always teach this in our school that whoever you will be in your life starting from the top level of businessman or the country president, always remember you should give back to society. As I already mentioned in my story, Leadership School story also created on that example that we started to work with orphaned children, and then we started to develop, to work, and to educate more servant leaders. Regarding to innovation, we always try to connect different abroad professionals with the local students. For example, we had a project that we did with our alumna. We invited from New York the Medical Tourism Association president and she came to Armenia with her staff, three of them. Here, we had a discussion with the government and also with some of our students. For example, at this moment, after this visit, one of our students developing Dental tourism in Armenia project initiative. I mean different such opportunities that they are trying to connect. Also, for example, we did a project with UNDP, we invited the Sophia Humanoid Robot for Armenia and we tried to inspire young generation that they can think about artificial intelligence. That they can think about robotics and different opportunities of technology how they can create and innovate and make Armenia and South Caucasus bleak in the world map.

John: Understood, we are now living still, Samvel during this COVID-19 crisis, how have you adjusted your Leadership School Foundation teaching opportunities and learning opportunities during COVID-19?

Samvel: Frankly speaking, let us say I will divide your question in two directions.

John: Okay.

Samvel: First, difficulties. Of course, the current human interaction and communication. The second part, I want to mention that this is really a great opportunity because in Leadership School we teach our students that whenever you see a problem, see or find their opportunity and solution. In this sense, we also did as an institution in Leadership School, for example, when this COVID-19 came for life. What we did, in a very quick way, we change our model and from offline, we became an online institution. What is interesting that more than two hundred professionals around the globe and what is so interesting, most of them are not Armenians. They agreed to join to the program and to share their knowledge in the topics that we have in our curriculum. This is really very, very inspiring because there are a lot professionals who are involved in this way to our platform. Their hours are really very, very high and expensive. If you will think about covered expenses, we cannot. But these people understood the idea of Leadership School and also our initiatives to empower and develop young leaders in our region. They are giving their time and opportunities. I want to say a big thank you to those people because I think that I will also share this conversation with them. These people, professional people, who are sharing the knowledge with our students. These people makes Leadership School happen.

John: Yes. Do you believe in the future even once things get more normal after we get to the other side of the COVID-19 crisis? Will you integrate the online with the offline as a future opportunity to continue learning for and teaching at the Leadership School?

Samvel: Yes, absolutely, we will do that. Because, for example, at this stage, we have more than four times classes in a week with our students. When these difficult days that will pass, we will keep this online opportunities to share knowledge to our students. But of course, we also have the offline opportunities because we have also a lot of professionals in Armenia and also in our region, also different cases that we should do in practice. We should take students to that platforms. We should, for example, we have a project for our students that we called business dinner etiquette. What we do, we do a dinner for them and we serve food. Professionals are sharing or introducing the way how they should behave or communicate near the table. And this, everything we do in practice. We have a case of communication, how a leader should give an interview to media. Again, we are doing practice in different such opportunities or directions that we have in our curriculum, we do this in practice. Also because as I mentioned in the beginning, I believe our team thinks the same way on the same path that theory plus practice is success and the same with education.

John: Understood, I know that you are working on the Leadership School Regional Campus Project, can you share with our listeners what the Leadership School Regional Campus Project is, and how it is evolving?

Samvel: Yes, thank you very much for this question because this is really very, very important for Armenia and also for our region. Even this COVID-19 somehow change our plans, but it will never change our vision and dreams because we are passionate to create this campus in Armenia. We are passionate to make this one of the best institution in our region. Regarding to this platform before the COVID, we already made whole plan how we are going to do the fundraising, how the platform will go because the fundamental point of this campus is that all people around the globe in Armenia, they should participate, they should be involved in the process. Because we do not want that this will be, for example, let us say supported by PU or USAID rather institutions only. We want that this will be supported by ordinary people like me who believe in education, who believe in innovation and development and they want to take a part in this campaign. It is a process. Therefore, what we did, we already change our model of campaign and soon will come to public. The first direction will be that we are going to have thought to volunteers around the globe. People who want to give their time to join to our team and to support us to raise money to create the curriculum, to create the directions of the education that we are open to have.

Samvel: The second is very important also that we have the initiative until the end of this year that we want to raise one million dollars. How do we want to raise? The idea is one person just donating one dollar and it will be one million dollars. It means we need one million people. Each of them will donate one dollar and we are going to raise one million dollars. Next year, we will start our construction, especially the three buildings on the campus that they can already open the area and start to work and then move forward the other buildings and other opportunities that we want to bring to the campus and to develop young leaders in the region.

John: Wonderful. I hope that happens because I know everything that you touch is good and only creates a better Armenia and a better future. You are always making an impact and everything you do. Talk a little bit about the future, besides the Leadership School Regional Campus Project, what future trends do you think will happen in technology and how all the technology play a role in that in Armenia?

Samvel: John, before I will come to this question, please let me divide your question in three parts.

John: Okay.

Samvel: The first part that always inspired me is the idea to help children in need.

John: Okay.

Samvel: I believe that we should stand by to children who has a dream. Who has a dream and we can support them to achieve because there are a lot of moments that I am thinking that maybe I am a child in an orphanage, that I am a child in far villages, border villages of Armenia. If there would be an opportunity that someone will give me an opportunity or some [inaudible] will empower me and inspire me, I will really make an impact in the world and in the country. Therefore, we believe in this first and important point that through our CSR direction to continue to help children in need through education– this is the first part. The second part is to make the Leadership School one of the best institution in South Caucasus region because we believe that in this concept of theory plus practice is success, we really have a lot of opportunities. We have a lot of dreams and ideas to make it happen. To educate not only Armenians but also Georgians, also Iranians. Lots of people who are hungry to learn and to innovate. Coming to your question to the third part, as I mentioned already that as we are trying to bring different people who are professional in technological theory. For example, we invited last year two years ago, Dr. Stephen Pemberton, by the way, he is the first internet user in Europe. Mr. Pemberton came to Armenia. He came to Armenia free of charge. He came to Armenia to teach the young generation here. He came to Armenia and he loved Armenia and he promised me after the COVID, he wants to be back with his family. People like Dr. Pemberton and you, Mr. Shagerian, people like you inspire us to continue to do more. Therefore, for technological development, we see, of course, Armenian people are talented. They have a lot of engineering skills that they can innovate. Also, very important that we do not want to be an outsourcing country. We want to be a country where we create innovative products that we are making worlds to bleak as a country, as a people who are creating innovative products. They are trying to use these resources of internet and to involve a lot of people around the block and to promote and to have a lot of opportunities to share our knowledge and know-how with [inaudible].

Samvel: They have such a different examples in our Leadership School community, for example, like Picsart. Picsart co-founder, for example, Artavazd. He is giving a lecture every year to our students. Also, he is hosting our students in their office. All the time, whenever we visit to that place, he is opening the doors and trying to inspire students that they can also not to think only about just leadership but to think about leadership plus technology, which will create and bring innovation. Therefore, a lot of such professionals, not only in Armenia but also Armenian [inaudible] that we are really very proud and thankful that these people are supporting different initiatives. Also, a very important point that Leadership School is not a business. Leadership School is an idea and we never ever ask any money from anyone around the globe. We are bringing ideas and people are coming. They are bringing that opportunities and we are trying to develop that together. Not only we are saying we can do everything and we know everything. No. Let us develop ideas. Let us work together. Because these unite platforms are successful. In the unite platforms that we are being inspired and also that opportunities we can create for our young generation as future leaders that they can think about leadership and that they can think about technology. They can combine and have opportunities of innovative ideas to make Armenia and our region blinking the world map.

John: I love it. For our listeners who just joined us, I am so excited today to have Samvel Movsisyan. He is the founder of the Leadership School Foundation. To find Samvel and his great foundation, you could go to www.leadershipschool.am. You could also find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook. I am on his website now and it is a beautiful website. Lots of information and lots of further reading and ways to interact with the Leadership School. Samvel, I know you are expanding your efforts in the Southern Region, and specifically, Georgia and Iran in the South Caucasus area, can you share with our listeners more of the work you are doing towards that area as well?

Samvel: Yes, of course. As I mentioned, for example, we started projects from 2013 in Georgia. We are doing a lot of classes in Georgia. We are doing a lot of exchange programs. We are also doing not only exchange programs for students but also exchange programs for professionals. For example, we already have a very, very good friendship with the American Chamber of Commerce president of Georgia, Mr. Michael Cowgill. It is already more than three years. Every year he is visiting Armenia and not only he is just visiting by himself. No, he always invites different professions around the globe and bringing them, inviting them to Armenia and trying to activate the relationship between our countries. People like, Mr. Cowgill, they are really very supportive because they are helping us to see the opportunities and to be in touch. Today’s world networking is very important.

If you have connections, if you have opportunities that you can try to create and collaboration between, it really will bring success. Regarding to Iran and same we did with Iran, in 2017, we invited more than fifteen Iranian startups to Armenia. It was really very inspiring to see a lot of interest between Iranian and Armenian youth to communicate and to work together. It is also very inspiring because we should work together in our region. Otherwise, Armenia or Georgia, we are too small. We should be united and to be an interesting and unique destination for different country people that they will be interested to visit or to collaborate with our market. My vision besides, as I mentioned in the beginning that this regional collaboration is very important. In the beginning, maybe I do not remember if I mentioned, we are not a political and not religious institutions. For us, it is very important just to educate young generation as the future business leaders.

Samvel: I really want to highlight this point because this is very important. For us, it does not matter who are these people, their religion, their beliefs their interest, we really want to communicate with the human who believes that hope for the idea that we can develop our region. Therefore, we continue our work with our Georgian, Iranians, and different other countries professionals. We believe that this partnership, not for five or ten years results, but we are looking forward to see twenty, thirty, forty years results that we believe in.

John: I know you are going to see the results because I met your students. You kindly asked me to come to share some of my experiences with your students at your school. It was one of the most impressive groups of young people I have ever met in my life. I know the quality of work you are doing and I will tell you what, I cannot wait to come back to Armenia and meet the next group of students at your school. Samvel, we are running short on time. I just want to ask you, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners out there before we have to sign off for today?

Samvel: As you mentioned that after your revisit, you had also this inspiration been interacting with Leadership School students. I just want to mention a point that all professionals around the globe that at this moment they are sharing their knowledge with our students. After every lecture, I received an email about this context that they are mentioning that they are proud and honored to give a talk to this Armenian students because they are very active. They are very talented and they are hungry to learn and to use this knowledge for the development of their country and region. In this context, I want to say a big thank you to the people who are supporting us with their knowledge, who are supporting with their connections and contacts because as I mentioned we do not ask for money. We asked to know-how, we ask network that together we can empower the future leaders in this region. Also, together, we can create an opportunity that these young generations will innovate and will empower the next generations that they [inaudible].

John: I love it. Samvel, I cannot wait to have you back on the impact podcast because you have so many great updates and you are constantly evolving. You are constantly innovating and collaborating. I am proud to know you and I am proud to be Armenian because of you and great people like you and great leaders like you. You are making such a great impact on Armenia. I just want to say thank you again. For our leaders out there and our listeners out there that want to find Samvel and the Leadership School, please go to www.leadershipschool.am. Or find him also on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Samvel Movsisyan, you are making an impact in Armenia and you are important to me. Thank you for joining us today on the impact podcast.

Samvel: Mr. Shegerian, thank you very much for this unique opportunity because we already had your support and it is very inspiring because I remember after your lecture when you give and met with our students, we already saw that news in world-class information newspapers. It was really a great honor for us because we Armenians being inspired by the Armenians who are professionals, who are respectful like you. I am really very honored and proud of you. Thank you very much that you are being a source of inspiration for young people like me. Please keep your spirit. Keep your attitude and always remember that there are people who are hungry to change and to make one of the best place or country. Thank you very much.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry with hundreds of athletes, entrepreneurs, speakers, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information, please visit www.letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian, and I am so honored and privileged today to have Jeanmarie Papelian. She is the executive director of Armenia tree. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Jeanmarie.

Jeanmarie Papelian: Thank you. I am so happy to be here to talk about Armenia Tree Project.

John: Well before we get into all the great things you are doing at the Armenia Tree Project. Can you please share a little bit of your biography and your background leading up to becoming the Executive Director of the Armenia Tree Project?

Jeanmarie: Well, sure. I grew up in Massachusetts and was connected to the Armenian Community growing up. When I was in law school in 1988, this earthquake happened in Armenia, and it was a terrible tragedy, and ever since then I started volunteering with organizations that were providing social and humanitarian assistance in Armenia and simultaneously, I developed a legal career in private practice, and I got to a point that I realized I was having more fun doing my volunteer work than I was doing my day-to-day law practice. Eventually I heard that Armenia Tree Project’s original executive director was retiring and this opportunity opened up; it was local, and I have always admired Armenia Tree Project, and here I am.

John: I just love always understanding the nuances, when you were practicing law as a sole practitioner, were you practicing litigation law or environmental law? Were you already a greeny and a tree hugger before this or was this something that was just born out of the crisis that existed in using the need?

Jeanmarie: Oh God. No, I was actually with a large firm and I was a trial lawyer. I did a lot of family law and so I was in my day-to-day work seeing people at their absolute worst. So you might imagine that the opportunity in my volunteer work to do something to help people who were going through genuinely hard times was very attractive.

John: Now, I see why you are here. Okay that makes total sense. So for our listeners out there who would like to find the Armenia Tree Project. Please go to www.armeniatree.org. So just as a little bit of background is– throughout the past 25 years Armenia Tree Project has mastered the art of growing and planting healthy trees in Armenia. Just for our listeners who do not really understand. Can you share a little bit about why your organization’s unique? The history over the last 25 years? What is your vision on where it should go, especially in these very unique times post-COVID.

Jeanmarie: Absolutely. So the way we got started was in the early 90s. People who are familiar with Armenia will recall that those are very dark times. Armenia had been a Soviet Republic, it suffered this terrible earthquake in December 1988. Then it got involved in a war with its neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan. Then the Soviet Union broke up. Those were really really dark times and Armenia was being blockaded by two of its neighbors. So in the early 90s, there was no heat, there was no water, there was no light. Carolyn Mugar who is an Armenian-American activist from the Boston area was in Armenia during those days and something that she saw that really struck her, was that people were cutting down the trees even in the city parks to burn them and heat their homes, and what Carolyn saw was that if Armenia survived all these other crises Armenia would be suffering from an environmental crisis. And so she started Armenia Tree Project which started on a very small scale in 1994. Just giving some trees to villagers– fruit trees and nut trees and what it has grown into is a big operation. Our mission is to use trees to help improve the standard of living for Armenians. We do that in a variety of ways. We still give trees to villagers– fruit and nut trees. We do community tree plantings where you might green a school yard or a churchyard something like that. We do environmental education. We run four nurseries and two environmental education centers. We are providing jobs. Year-round employees in Armenia– we have about 80, and then we hire seasonal workers during the Spring and Fall planting seasons– usually about a hundred and fifty to two hundred people each season. So it is a big operation and we are really making a difference on the ground.

John: There are so many questions I want to ask you. So being that you are a native of Massachusetts, how often do you go over to Armenia yourself?

Jeanmarie: Usually I go two or three times a year. Unfortunately this year, I have not been [laughter]. Nobody is traveling.

John: [Laughter] Everybody understands why so I understand that. So usually two or three times a year, that is fascinating. Armenia Tree project was doing this really important work, before sustainability became a thing here in America, before “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award and Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize, before the circular economy became a big deal here as well. Now that we are living through a fascinating time where our children are really sustainability-minded and green-minded and environmentally-minded, and young activists and legacy activists. Jane Fonda is still fighting the good fight and Greta Thunberg has brought in a whole another generation. Wow, this whole issue of climate change… How does that play a role in your mission and in your work?

Jeanmarie: Well, it is interesting. In Armenia, climate change is not a subject of debate. It is simply a fact. The farmers report their observations that they have seen, about how things have changed over the years. In the United States, it has become political. Many of our donors are in the United States. So when we teach environmental education to the children of the diaspora, this question comes up, about–is climate change real, and we can teach and give examples of how that works. But what we find…Let me talk for a second of our environmental education program. We have two environmental education centers in Armenia, and we invite children to come there and to learn and to do hands-on activities and even to plant trees and we also visit schools. We visit schools in the diaspora too, mostly in North America. Although we are expanding that and so we reach thousands of children every year. It is really important for us to do that because the next generation of Armenians, whether they are in Armenia or here, must be better stewards of the environment than their parents and grandparents were because if they are not, we are all in trouble. Now what we found is that children are very interested to know how they can be better stewards of the environment. They want to go home and teach their parents how to be better stewards of the environment. I have an amusing anecdote about a school that we were working with in Yerevan where we gave them a module on the water conservation for example, and the school then got some complaints from parents saying “What are you teaching my kid, they have become like the water police at home?”

John: [Laughter] That is a good thing. That is a good call that you get when you get some of those kind of complaints, that means, wow, the message is really getting through starting from the bottom, from the from the little ones, it is going in the reverse direction.

Jeanmarie: I love it. I love it. Yes…

John: That is awesome.

Jeanmarie: It is awesome. And so, you know, we go into the schools and we do that here and in Armenia. In Armenia, we started several dozen Eco clubs, which is sort of an after-school activity and the kids get together and decide what they want to do. In some instances, they have made benches out of reclaimed items for their school yard, that type of thing. Bunch of schools last year did this fun project where they made alternative Christmas trees rather than cutting down a live tree. They created trees out of found items and they were very creative, they were very artsy, they were very beautiful, and it was just a lot of fun for everybody.

John: That is wonderful and so beyond just trees, talk about the other environmental impacts that your organization makes.

Jeanmarie: Well, sure. Trees have environmental impact in so many ways. The work that we do is very important. So trees…We know that they clean the air, they reduce dust, forests create their own humidity. We have planted over a thousand hectares of new forest in Armenia. Forests create their own humidity, so they combat global warming. In Armenia, there are regions which are slowly undergoing a process of desertification. That is the groundwater is slowly drying up and we do not have good data post-soviet era, but there was data during the 20th century, during the Soviet era that was kept. And what we saw during the 20th century is that the rate at which the groundwater in the Ararat Valley was decreasing, was accelerating as we got towards the end of the 20th century. So maybe it is a leap to say that that was caused by human activity, but it was happening. And if you think about the Ararat Valley, any Armenian-American knows that that has been the breadbasket of that region for hundreds or thousands of years. So what would happen to the region if the Ararat valley became a desert? What would happen to Armenia, if it became dependent on its neighbors for water? Armenia is not in a great neighborhood. We do not have very friendly neighbors. So we want to strategically plant trees to preserve the groundwater, to preserve animal habitats, and to create food sources. So I have a couple of things to add to that. First, with respect to the animal habitats. I do not know if you followed this, but I would like people who are interested in Armenia to go on to Facebook and to follow WWF Armenia– World Wildlife Federation Armenia. There was a conservation project that happened in a forest reserve called the Khosrov Forest Preserve, named for an ancient king of Armenia called King Khosrov. King Khosrov liked to plant forests and one of the reasons he liked to plant forest was because he was a hunter, so he wanted to preserve the habitat of the animals that he liked to hunt. It had been twenty years since they had seen this leopard which is native to the region. It is called either a Caucasian leopard or a Persian leopard, depending on who you ask. Twenty years since they had seen a leopard in Armenia and two years ago he showed up in the Khosrov Nature Preserve, thanks to the conservation efforts.

John: Wow…

Jeanmarie: And so now they think there may be as many as a dozen leopards living there, and one was actually seen as far north as Yenokavan, which is up near Ijevan, you could see them very far north from there. It is a great conservation success story. So that is just one example, but preserving and planting forests help to preserve the habitats of animals that are native to the region. Armenia in 2016, I believe signed on to the Paris Accords and what Armenia committed to do as a country, was to double its forest cover by the year 2050.

John: Okay.

Jeanmarie: So that is a big undertaking. Right now, depending on who you ask, the forest cover in Armenia is somewhere around 10 percent. So to double the forest cover over the next thirty years, you would have to get to about 20 percent.

John: Right.

Jeanmarie: So it is… I do not know… 800 million trees. Let us call it a billion trees and–

John: So let me ask you this question. That is a brilliant point you just bring up. During your great work at the Armenia Tree Project and their history over the last 25 years, how has technology improved to the point where you could actually accomplish that goal? How is technology going to help you accomplish that goal now?

Jeanmarie: Well, so there is a lot of technology that Armenia does not have yet, but there is technology that is available. In fact, we were co-sponsor with the American University of our Armenia’s Acopian Center for the Environment last Fall of an International Forest Summit which was held in Armenia, and we brought in experts –regional and international experts– to talk about how do we tackle this problem of [inaudible] doubling Armenia’s forest cover over the next thirty years. One of the issues that came up was technology because you need to figure out where you are going to plant those trees. Are you going to plant the trees in a place where there used to be a forest, but now is farmland? Or you are going to plant a tree in a place where it has never been forest? And, what are the considerations you need to take into doing each of those things. What are the water sources? Where are you going to put irrigation? Where are you going to get the water? There are all sorts of mapping technology that exist now that did not exist when we started and also people… Every time somebody sees us on the internet–they forward it to me– people are talking about planting trees by using drones. So you have the drone drop a little package with the seed and it hits the ground. The truth is most of Armenia is so rocky that it would not work.

John: Ah, right.

Jeanmarie: But if, you know, the technology might develop to a point where it could work in certain parts of Armenia. I mean, those are things that we have to explore, and so there is technology and, I think over the next thirty years there will be greater technological advances which can help. When we first started doing what we were doing, for example, nobody was using drip irrigation, and one of our nursery managers went on a trip to Israel where he observed what JNF has done in reforesting Israel or creating forest in the desert. He came back with some ideas and we have been using drip irrigation, and it is a great tool and it is very simple. You can have a very high-tech system, but you can also have a very low-tech system which works really well to grow healthy trees. Growing healthy trees is no easy task, you know, sometimes they see these articles about–“this country is going to plant 30 million trees next year” and I always say that is great, but how many trees will there be three years after that? You can plant the trees but who is going to take care of them?

John: Great point. I always read the headline and think “Wow. How are they pulling that off? Can we pull that off at Armenia?” I am so glad you clarified that. You are saying if not done the right way and then cared for the right way. All of them do not survive, in fact a large percentage could die.

Jeanmarie: They could and in fact, I think Turkey had a big disaster where they had made some public pronouncement about planting millions of trees. A couple years later, most of those trees are dead. One of the reasons we have been successful, and of course, it has been through trial and error over twenty-five years. We were always successful.

John: Right

Jeanmarie: We have learned how to choose the site where you are going to plant trees. Is the soil suitable? Is there a sufficient source of water? Then we plant the trees and we take care of them. We have monitors who come and check them, at least monthly, sometimes more often than that. When we are doing a community tree planting which is in the school yard or the park or the churchyard in the community–the first thing we do is look not only at the soil and the water, but meet the members of the community and make sure they are bought into the concept. Are they going to help us care for these trees because we can not be there every day? Are they going to let us know if there is a breach in the fence or are they going to let their livestock munch on our baby tree? Right?

John: Right.

Jeanmarie: What we do is the first season we will only plant 30 percent of the trees and then see how they do, and if it goes well then we will plant the rest of the trees in the subsequent season. These community tree planting sites, and we have over 1,300 community tree planting sites all over Armenia and Artsakh. It is a very popular program. Just one example, there is a village in Armavir region called Aknashen and in Aknashen we have planted by the town hall, and so now there is a nice cool green space where you can come and sit. We planted in a couple other public places. We have given every household in the village which is over two hundred households– fruit and nut trees so that they can grow their own fruit and nuts and either use them to feed their family or to sell them. We have done environmental education for the kids in the local school. So it is a holistic approach and our goal is community revitalization.

John: I love that. For our listeners who just joined us. We have Jeanmarie Papelian. She is the executive director of the Armenia Tree Project. You could find her and her great organization, and get involved at www.armeniatree.org. For our listeners in Armenia [foreign word]. I am so glad to have you listening today. I love my homeland and I am so glad I was there last October and all of you treated me like a brother that I have missed for all these years. So thank you for listening to the Impact podcast. Jeanmarie, talk a little bit about your backyard nursery program. I read about a little bit but I would love you to share with our listeners what it means to you, what it means to Armenia Tree Project?

Jeanmarie: Sure. This is one of our most popular programs with our supporters and you will understand why when I describe it. So what we do with the backyard nursery is we give seeds to a household in a village. We teach them how to plant and care for the seeds and when the seedlings are ready to be transplanted to one of our planting sites, we purchase the seedlings from that family.

John: That is so nice.

Jeanmarie: So the majority of these families are located in remote villages where there are not a lot of income opportunities and so they are able to earn some extra money and stay in their home village. A couple of years ago, around this time of year, I went to the Village of Hovhannavank [?] which is where many of our backyard nursery families are located. This is a village…It is remote, it is hard to get to and there are not a lot of job opportunities and we have got a couple dozen of these families there, and I met some of them. Just some of the things that people said to me “Well, I used to grow potatoes in my yard and then I would sell the potatoes, and this is easier and I make more money and now I can buy potatoes.” Well, it does not exactly look easy to me. Right? I mean you have to take care of the trees and also, it is more than a year before your seedlings are ready and you will earn any money on it. But once they get going, they love it. Another lady told me “Well this year when I get the money, I am going to use it to get my children and grandchildren dental care”, and “Last year, I used it for their school fees.” and then there is a couple of older ladies who I just adore who say “My kids want me to give up this place in the village and move with them to Yerevan or to Russia and I want to stay here, and earning this money helps me stay here.” Well, I love that right? It is just a great great program.

John: That is so nice… That is so nice.

Jeanmarie: We have been expanding it a little bit. We are in two other villages besides Margahovit now. It needs careful management and support, so we are cautious in how we expand it, but it is a great program and really helpful for the people who live in these remote areas where there is not a lot of income opportunity.

John: Jeanmarie, share with our listeners any of the other key initiatives that Armenia Tree Project’s working on that you already have not well described in. You have already blown me away with everything that you are doing over there in Armenia, and actually around the world in diaspora. What else are you working on that is important to you and the key missions that you are working on?

Jeanmarie: Sure. I will tell you some of the things were working on. I described the community tree planting program already, and I described backyard nursery. We have a forestry program, which has planted, to date, over 28 hectares of new mill[?]. Over a thousand hectares of new forest at 28 different sites, in Armenia. We are working on expanding that program so that we can support Armenia’s initiative to double its forest cover over the next thirty years. We know how to grow the healthy trees with the highest survival rate. We have a nursery in a village called Margahovit in Lori region, which is supported by the Mirak family out of the Boston area, that is the nursery that supports our forest tree plantings. We are expanding some of the operations and adding new technologies. We have got a new state-of-the-art greenhouse there, which was funded by the Bilezikian family from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and we have got seed testing capacity there, so some new technology which will help us do even better as we provide, hopefully, hundreds of thousands of seedlings to the government for the new forest. There is the Forestry Department which is… It is just amazing. You plant a forest, you think, I think, you know the forests in New England [?]. Well, our baby forests do not really look like that, but they will.

John: Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Jeanmarie: They will, they will. We also have the community planting program, I talked about that. One of the things we are doing within community tree planting is intensifying our production of fruit trees. The reason that we are doing that is so that we can help more farmers become self-sufficient, to have more healthy fruit trees and what we have done is we have been grafting the native fruit varieties onto dwarf rootstock and I get in trouble when I talk about the technology because my knowledge of it is superficial, but what happens is a dwarf tree will produce fruit in a shorter time than a regular tree. So, if it would take the regular apple tree five years before it produced fruit, it might take the dwarf tree three years. But it will produce the native fruit. So we are doing this grafting project where we are producing fruit trees that are grafted onto dwarf rootstock so we can distribute them in large quantities to farmers and villagers who can produce fruit and they can sell the fruit, they can consume the fruit, you know, Armenians loves their fruit [laughter].

John: [Laughter] That is for sure.

Jeanmarie: Yeah, that is for sure. So we have got several varieties of apples, pears, plums, cherries, quince, you name it. Lots of local fruits–apricots. Everybody always asks about the apricots. Yes, we have apricots. The fruit tree production is something that we are very proud of and we also acquired some new technology at our nursery in Kajaran Village, which is a cold room[?] which allows us to work year-round and grafting the the fruit trees so that we can ramp up the production. At our nursery in Kajaran and in Margahovit Village near where we have the Mirak forestry nursery. We have two environmental education centers and I mentioned before that is where the students come and they visit and they get to do a hands-on activity, something really fun that we have been doing is when schools from the diaspora have a trip to Armenia, often times [crosstalk] high school trip. We invite them to come and spend a day with us. They will come and have a tour of the nursery, we will pair them up with students their age from a local school that we are working with, and they will do some icebreaker activities to get to know each other, and then we will all plant trees together. It is a great bonding [crosstalk].

John: That is awesome. That is wonderful. They could take that experience back to wherever they came from in the diaspora. That is wonderful.

Jeanmarie: Yeah, it is really great and kids feel like they have done something meaningful when they plant the tree in their ancestral homeland.

John: That is great. Then we feel like we own a piece of the homeland. We feel really part of the soil. It is really fascinating what you are saying. I really felt that way when I was there as well. That is important, to give everybody that connection. You know, I heard the Prime Minister speak two or three times while I was there in very small groups and one of his messages that resonated the most and he kept making a call for action to, was for no longer to have an Armenia and to have a diaspora; for us to become one, and I have never heard. I am fifty-seven years old now and I always grew up in New York and New Jersey and now in California, knowing the diaspora, an Armenia and a homeland– and to think about a unified Armenian group of us, and we are all home, and to be unified like that. I loved his call to action to say let us not be separate anymore. Let us just consider us as one, and come here as much as you can and encourage others to come here as much as you can as well. I thought that was just a real wonderful spirit of unification and feeling of togetherness that I never felt before.

Jeanmarie: Well, it is a great message and that is where he came up with the number when he announced last year that in October 2020 that Armenia was going to plant ten million trees. There are ten million Armenians in the world, three million of them live in the Republic of Armenia, seven million of them live in the diaspora. His idea was that each Armenian can plant a tree or there will be a tree planted to represent each Armenian in the world. That is how they came up with the number. Those of us on the ground doing the work say, how are we going to do that? But we will figure it out. Because of COVID-19, it got postponed for another year, but everybody is going to figure it out somehow. That is a lot of trees. But Armenia does not have ten million seedlings. We have some concerns about importing seedlings, but we are working on it. I am sure between the ministry of the environment and organizations like ATP, we will figure something out.

John: You know, one of my most important questions that I ask great leaders like you, Jeanmarie, is action points. It is one thing to learn and to listen from great leadership like you, people who are doing great things and making important impacts in the world, making the world a better place. But there are a lot of people out there that are on the sidelines that want to know from where they sit, how they could be involved. Can you share with our listeners how they can help your very important efforts if they are so moved to be involved after listening today’s episode of Impact podcast.

Jeanmarie: Well, absolutely. I think I mentioned that most of our support comes from Individual donors in North America. And so, the easiest way to help is to make a donation, to go to our website and click on donate and make a donation. We also have lots of volunteers who always want to help us, and we love that. We are a small team here in the US. We can not be in all the communities talking about Armenia Tree Project’s Mission, so people who approach us and say “I want to help”–we enlist as ambassadors. Go out in the community and talk about what Armenia Tree Project is doing yourself, to the people that you know. We do what we can to make it easy for people to do that. If you look on our website, you will actually see, we list some of the ambassadors and give examples of some of the things that they have done. There was a kid I met in Armenia last summer. He was there with his family, with his parents and his grandmother. He was thirteen years old and he had spent a day visiting our Kajaran nursery with his family and planted a tree. He said “I want to do something to help Armenia Tree Project”, and I spoke to him a little bit about what he could do. He went home and he approached his Parish priest and he asked if he could speak at the church picnic, and he spoke at the church picnic and he told the people there about the backyard nursery program that Armenia Tree Project has. He raised the funds at that church picnic to sponsor three backyard nursery families for a year [laughter].

John: Come on. I think he is aiming to be the next in line after you to take over as executive director. That is our kind of kid.

Jeanmarie: He is my kind of kid. I love this kid.

John: I love this kid.

Jeanmarie: Right? Then some other kid he knows who wants to be an eagle scout contacted them and said “Well I like to do something” “Well, I would love you to, I would love to have you do something”. We love people like that, who can help us spread the word. Honestly, we are doing this in Armenia because we love Armenia and we are…

John: Right.

Jeanmarie: …That is our heritage. But whenever you plant a tree anywhere in the world, we all benefit.

John: That is so important.

Jeanmarie: We were planting trees before planting trees was cool.

John: Right, right.

Jeanmarie: We all need to do this. It needs to happen. We have to preserve and protect the environment for future generations. So anyway that you can help, if you want us to come and talk to your community about the environmental impact and things that you can do in your own community. We would be happy to come and talk about it. We would be happy to talk come and talk to the kids. We have some great activities with children and lessons and hands-on things. So yeah, that is how people can help.

John: For our listeners out there, how can they find you beside your website on social? What is the best social places for them to find you, since so many people are on social media now.

Jeanmarie: We have a very active Facebook page, Armenia Tree Project. And if you are looking for up-to-date information or photos of what we are up to, following us on Facebook is a great way to do it, and we have great photos. Armenia is a beautiful place and we are planting these beautiful trees and beautiful places and we have always got great photos. So follow us for the photos if not for anything else.

[Laughter]

Jeanmarie: We also have an Instagram account. You can follow us on Instagram. Those are probably the two best places. We are not very active on Twitter, but we are working on that. So… [laughter].

John: For our listeners out there, get involved, help out any way you can, wherever you are. Every little bit counts now, whether it is money, whether it is being an ambassador, whether it is in diaspora or back in the homeland in Armenia. Get involved with the Armenia Tree Project and to find the Armenia Tree Project again, go to www.armeniatree.org. Jeanmarie Papelian. You are making an amazing impact both in Armenia and around the world. You are also making the world a better place, and I am so grateful for who you are and what you are doing. Thank you for being a guest today on the Impact podcast.

Jeanmarie: Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure.

John Shegerian: This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by the Marketing Masters. The Marketing Masters is a boutique marketing agency offering website development and digital marketing services to small and medium businesses across America. For more information on how they can help you grow your business online, please visit themarketingmasters.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast, I’m John Shegerian and today, I’m so excited to have a friend of mine, an old friend of mine, even though she’s much younger than me. I’ve got Genelle Taylor Kumpe with me today. Genelle, we’ve been friends twenty-one years, I met you when you were what? Fourteen? Fifteen? I don’t even know anymore. What was going on?

Genelle Taylor Kumpe: Maybe thirteen, maybe, you know, I was a baby. No, I was a baby, that’s for sure but just starting out in my career. But thanks so much for having me, John. I really appreciate it.

John: It’s an honor. You’ve been, oh, there are so many things that we’re going to talk about today. But, A, we met twenty-one years ago through our common friend, Tim Stearns.

Genelle: Oh, yeah, love him.

John: ‘The’ Dr. Tim Stearns, right?

Genelle: Dr. Stearns.

John: Dr. Stearns and ironically, we were talking off-air earlier, he showed us and asked us to come to his neighborhood and Genelle, you and I literally lived two houses away from each other and we live in Tim’s neighborhood.

Genelle: Exactly. I mean, how influential can a person be, right?

John: Not much more. Except, choosing our spouses. I mean, he’s just amazing. So, you know, you’re a very, very important and influential leader here in the San Joaquin Valley besides being a mom and a wife and having two beautiful children who are teenagers who again, I see around the neighborhood all the time. You are the Executive Director of the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance. And the COO of the Fresno Business Council and I want to go into those two organizations, all the important work you do there and the work that they do in the valley here. But before we do that, I would just love you to share with our listeners a little bit of your personal journey – where you were born and raised and how you evolved as a young lady and now as one of the leading women professionals here in the Central Valley of California.

Genelle: Great. Thanks. Thanks so much for allowing me to go through that. It’s been quite a journey and I really really enjoyed it and would never guess that I end up where I am currently but it all makes sense looking back. I was born and raised in another Valley here in California, the Salinas Valley, and went to school there. After High School, I knew while it was during High School, I knew that I wanted to go and study business and just always had a passion for that. So I ended up coming here to Fresno and studying at the Craig School of Business was super involved on campus with student leadership. I worked there, you know, I was there for all my classes and everything in the School of Business and just really got to know all of the professors and everyone and that’s how I came to know Dr. Tim Stearns and shortly after college, I started working with a community organization that offered a program that trained and taught people how to start their own businesses so I loved that. And it was a collaborative project with Fresno State and I transitioned over and started working back at my Alma Mater with Dr. Stearns. He hired me there and during my tenure, I was an integral part with Tim Stearns on creating the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship that it resides on campus.

John: That’s such an important place. For our listeners who have no exposure to it, it is literally the Genesis of Entrepreneurship here in the Central Valley now. All thanks to Dr. Stearns and you and your hard work. It’s such a great, great, great place.

Genelle: It is. And it was formulated back when people didn’t even know what the word entrepreneurship was.

John: True.

Genelle: Let alone how to spell it. So, it was really hard in developing that and those programs that were led there were teaching people from kindergarten to adulthood about the importance of innovation and creativity and that was the right tools that they can be in control of their own destiny. And so my favorite part of even working there was working with young people and being able to physically see the light switch flip in a student who went from even having super low self-esteem to discovering their passion and believing in themselves and that they can do anything they set their mind to. So, while at Fresno State, I definitely was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, I got partnered in three different business endeavors myself and it ran the gamut from a Chinese restaurant and after school program for elementary schools and then bringing an ever so popular now, blowout services to the Fresno Market. And I was always just busy and really really thrive in that environment.

So, I was living my best life being intrigued by starting new things. I took part in starting a different kind of rotary club for young professionals. And that’s where I met my husband of fifteen years now almost, Matt Kumpe and now we have our two beautiful children so just really love that. During my whole journey, you know, I lost my dad to cancer in 2011 and my belief is that we have one life and we never want to know what tomorrow’s going to bring so that became a really really stark reality after losing my dad. So, I just have this drive to create change in the community. During that time, I really delve deeper and saw another opportunity to serve, and after fourteen years at Fresno State, I left behind that secure job and had a really kind of a higher calling to become the Executive Director for Marjaree Mason Center, which is the Fresno County dedicated shelter and support services for those who are affected by domestic violence here. So that’s in Fresno County.

John: That’s a great place, too. What a great place.

Genelle: It is a wonderful place and it sees too many people and too many families that are affected by domestic abuse, unfortunately. So I worked there for three years and just really enjoyed being able to serve the community. So that really opened my eyes to things and changed my life forever. I mean, you cannot turn back once you are made aware of the trauma that people endure in their lives. But the ability to make a dramatic difference in a person’s life is so real but you have to be able to meet people where they are and not blame them for not knowing. But definitely teach them skills, give them tools to be able to have choices for a better life. After Marjaree Mason Center, I kind of took a step back and wanted to slow down a bit because that’s a 24-hour/seven-day-a-week job and it just took a lot, you know. I went on to teach at Fresno City College for a little while and taught soft skills and employability skills.

John: That’s great.

Genelle: Yeah, I mean it was great and it’s something that employers always say that is needed in employees and in the workforce. So, after working part-time, sitting still is not my strong suit, so I always presented yet with such a wonderful opportunity that I can’t pass up and that’s my current role here with the Business Council as COO and leading their manufacturing initiative, The San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance. And I am just so blessed to be here, yeah.

John: And for our listeners out there to find the Fresno Business Council, you could go to www.fresnobc.org and the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance, go to www.sjvma.org, which one came first? The Business Council? Did you work with the Business Council before the SJVMA?

Genelle: Yeah. So the funny thing is when I was at Fresno State and working with the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we worked a ton with the Fresno Business Council, of course, and so I’m finding myself in full-circle around the table with the same people that I worked with twenty-five years ago. But we all have so much more wisdom but more and better skills and so The Business Council did come first and then the Manufacturing Alliance about in 2014 was founded by The Business Council and incubated underneath them. So the Business Council did come first.

John: So, tell our listeners, what is the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance for those who have not been exposed to it yet.

Genelle: Right. The Manufacturing Alliance is an organization of The Valleys Manufacturing leaders that they just really wanted to advance their industry. And one of the main focuses is to create a world-class workforce at the local level. So, we aim to really strengthen regional manufacturing and we take part in designing curriculum and training programs for students and individuals that are looking to upskill or re-skill. We provide jobs to interns for hands-on experience because that is so important for people and especially students with no experience. We really take pride in educating the public on the benefits of manufacturing careers. We also address legislative issues and we bringing together businesses and industry innovators for an annual event, which is a valley-made manufacturing summit.

John: And, Genelle, was the valley considered for you from Bakersfield all the way to Modesto. Is that your Valley that you’re working with?

Genelle: Yeah. So the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance has our eight-county footprint, but, of course, we’re concentrated in Fresno and just the surrounding areas first because we want to develop a really strong presence here, get it right, and then be able to work outwards. So, most manufacturers that we work with reside in Fresno County or just right outside.

John: Approximately how many members have you built up over the years?

Genelle: So we have a membership of over a thousand members and it is really incredible. That includes not only manufacturing companies but the entire ecosystem of manufacturing. So that includes even government, nonprofits, the industry suppliers to manufacturing and education. So, there’s more than just manufacturers that are involved in the alliance and it takes all of them to make it a successful alliance.

John: That is so interesting. And so with regards to this tragic crisis that we’re all living through, we’re all faced with as just friends, Genelle, as human beings here in the Central Valley and as people who are very deeply involved in the business community, when you listen to the news, they say that the manufacturing sector is being greatly affected by COVID-19, the supply chain and other things. Can you share some lessons that you’ve already learned during these last 75 or 80 days or so with how manufacturing has been affected and how you think we’re going to overcome as a manufacturing sector the COVID-19 tragedy that we’re all living through?

Genelle: Yeah, it definitely is a tragedy and it’s so uncertain and it gets frustrating sometimes that we’re all just having to take it day by day because sometimes the news is changing day by day and when you hear about manufacturing, you bet it’s important. We have heard a ton about manufacturing, we’ve heard President Trump talk about it. In California, we’ve heard Governor Newsom and they all know the importance of the industry, that manufacturing industry provides good and opportunity jobs and it’s the industry that is going to bring back the middle class. And to see these businesses having to be shut down and people all over the place losing their jobs, it’s a tragedy for sure. But if you think about manufacturing from the moment we get out of bed in the morning to the moment we reach higher in the evening, we depend and rely on nearly everything that is manufactured.

The alarm that wakes us up in the morning, the bed we sleep in, the pillow we lay our head-on, the coffee we drink, the car we drive, the phones we’re talking on right now, everything – the food we eat even. We rely on manufactures because they’re the makers. They are incredible and this pandemic has shown such a spotlight on the industry. Just what I have seen, you would be amazed at how many companies have really pivoted during this pandemic to provide the PPE, personal protective equipment for the Health Care industry. We have several here in the Fresno region that are re-tooling from where they used to provide printing programs and posters and everything and now they’re making face shield, they’ve completely pivoted. They had to lay off their employees because they no longer had events and programs for and all the signage and everything but they scrambled and figured it out that, “Hey, we could be providing these face shields for the healthcare industry and I can employ my people, I could bring them back.” So we see things like that.

We have a charter school here in town that’s been created as strictly Career, Technical Education School with two tracks and one of them is manufacturing and while schools and campuses have been closed down, the teachers came to campus. They were working with their students on the campus and using the equipment to make these face shields for our local hospitals and more recently, they have even purchase extra equipment and the students are running the machines to make PPE from their own home.

John: Wow.

Genelle: Yeah, it’s incredible and the one thing that I have to say that I’ve seen from our members and the business owners, they genuinely care about their employees. They want to see them working and earning a paycheck to support their families. They’ve gone through extreme measures to make sure they’re operating under all the guidelines of our state and local officials and to really keep everyone safe and healthy and not spread the virus. But, I mean, there are so many things that they have to implement and you have to think that manufacturing floors and production lines, they’ve got equipment that’s basically stationary. So to move any of that, that’d be nearly impossible, but they have to figure out new ways of doing things so that their workers are far apart or there’s plexiglass in between them so that they’re protected. They just have to go through so much and I know a lot of businesses do, and business owners, they’re all suffering through this and it’s really really unfortunate and just can’t wait until things kind of smooth out and we figure out how this economy is going to reopen.

John: We want to all get to the other side, right? That’s just the whole goal now.

Genelle: Yeah, absolutely.

John: So what you’re saying if I’m hearing you right, you’re saying what you’ve seen in your membership and the folks that you come in contact with since you have such great visibility into the business community in the positions that you sit in is you you’ve seen a resilience of your membership, huh, to adapt?

Genelle: Absolutely. They adapt, they pivot, they retool, it is incredible how agile they are and the changes that they make at a drop of a bucket. It’s crazy. It’s really great to see.

John: For our listeners out there that are intrigued now what they’re learning and listening to you what they’re learning about the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance and they want to join, how does that work? How does that courtship work of education, what could benefit the company and vice versa in terms of a mutually beneficial relationship?

Genelle: Yeah. So, if anyone wanted to become a member, it is a free membership and they don’t have to pay anything out. It’s upfront, you just go onto our website like you said, sjvma.org and they can join right there and it’s just such a great network. You know, I usually have a conversation with manufacturers or the business bit that is interested and they’re going a tour of their plant and facilities or just come visit them and see what they’re doing and really we bring together the manufacturers so that they have a shorter learning curve, they can learn from each other, they learn what is in their region and who they can connect with, they learn best practices. If they have training that they want to try something, they want to train their employees on, we could bring them resources for that. We just kind of get to know them and really figure out what their needs are, where they could benefit, what’s really keeping them up at night, and how we can help them. And that’s what the alliance is really all about and then just tell them about opportunities, where they can give back especially in the realm of education because that’s really priming their workforce, their pipeline of workforce. So the more they can contribute back to education and the training programs that are available, the curriculum that’s available, and those programs, the better they’re going to have to choose for those employees or potential employees in the future.

John: For our listeners out there who’ve just joined, I’m so excited today to have, Genelle Taylor Kumpe with us. She’s a longtime friend of mine but she’s also in very important positions in the San Joaquin Valley here in California. She’s the COO of the Fresno Business Council, she’s also the Executive Director of the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance, which has over a thousand members. Genelle, with the visibility and relationships that you’ve built over your entire career, you really become the leader in many ways of the women’s empowerment movement whether you like it or not, you’re really leading that lean-in generation here in the Central Valley, talk a little bit about what it’s like being a woman leader in times were and in a community that is very in many ways conservative still and also in some ways male-oriented still? How is that, as you’ve broken through so many barriers or glass ceilings or whatever you want to call it, how has that been in terms of your journey and how is it today?

Genelle: Yeah, so, of course, being a young woman, a young professional woman at the beginning of your career, I definitely have to prove myself. But I think if you just stay at the course and do your work and prove that you’re capable, that you’re caring, and that you give a hundred percent, your work speaks for itself. Yeah, I used to think, oh gosh, I have to wear extra high heels so I’m taller than the men in the room. I’m a tall person anyway at 5’9″ but putting on three, four, five-inch heels makes a little bit better, but nowadays, I think I’ve seen quite a shift in our community and in the workforce itself, but we’ve got some wonderful, wonderful men that I work around and I work with and some of them even say that they don’t work on any projects unless they’re WIC projects, W-I-C. And I’m like, “WIC, I have nothing to do with WIC, you know, thinking what is this?” And he says, women-in-charge. So, you know, there’s a lot of strong women in this community and in this world, I think we’re seeing a lot of women leaders come to the forefront and they’re being a lot more respected now and there’s a lot of things than barriers that us, as women have had to bust through but I think if you just show that you can prove that you can do the job just as good or better than the men that are surrounding you, then, you know, I think it just takes us working together, you need both. It’s been great for me but I have been fortunate enough to work around very caring and responsible citizens and stewards in our community. So they value the opinion and the work of women. Yeah.

John: That’s awesome. And for our listeners out there that want to connect with Genelle or learn more about what she’s doing with the great organizations that she’s with, you could go to www.fresnobc.org or www.sjvma.org. Genelle, you’re working on a webinar series with the alliance right now, can you share a little bit with our listeners what’s in the pipeline? What does that webinar series is going to be about and why is that important to the important work that you’re already doing?

Genelle: Yeah, so we’ve had to pivot too and start putting some lessons online and really be a resource for our members and the business community. So, some of the webinars that we’ve done had to do with some of the cares act information and resources that are out there and just really kind of guiding people through that, business owners through that and what they can take advantage of, how it works. And beyond that, what we’re working on is putting together a sales series because right now, I think a lot of businesses are looking in every nook and cranny of how they could create more revenue and how they can strengthen their salesforce and get beyond this whole pandemic. So, how are we going to sell differently in this world today? Because it’s not going to be the same. We’re not going to be just popping in people’s place of work and it doesn’t work that way any longer. Some of the other things that we’re working on, putting together as far as webinars go, is also cybersecurity and doing a whole series on that because with things being put online even more so than they were in the past. You have to make sure that you’re going to be secure. So looking at doing some of that and then, COVID-19 and tax resources and R&D tax credits, those types of things. What can businesses take advantage of currently and how can we navigate through what we’re going through with this pandemic?

John: That makes so much sense. When do you think they’ll be available for your members and others that want to avail themselves of it?

Genelle: The accounting webinar will be on May 27th at 10 a.m. and about Pacific time and then the other series starts in June, the second week of June and those will be going on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 a.m. So we’ll have that up on our website and how to register and everything will be right on there very soon.

John: Wonderful. And will you be hosting these webinars? You’ll have various of your members on these webinars with you?

Genelle: Yeah. So we’re going to have our partners that will be on there with us. We are hosting it as the lead organization. We have sponsors and other organizations that are doing that. Our tax webinar as with our partner, Moss Adams and they’re just really smart when it comes to all the ins and outs and things that you can use as a business owner. And then with the cybersecurity, of course, we’ve got experts on there doing that as well as at their sales theories. We’ll bring experts in and we do that even with our membership meetings and everything. We like to bring in people that are experts in the subject matter and help us navigate through that.

John: That’s just wonderful. You know, Genelle, over the last 21 years, you’ve been exposed to a lot of commerce and business and enterprise here in the valley and you are one of the creators of the Lyles Center, which is literally still Ground Zero for Innovation and Entrepreneurship here in the Central Valley and we’re so lucky that you and Tim and all your hard work created that. You’ve seen a lot and met a lot of people and been involved with a lot of different programs, looking back now and although you’re very young still, what are some of the programs that you’re most proud of, that you’ve been involved with?

Genelle: I think when it comes to the Lyles Center and Entrepreneurship and really some of the programs that came out of there, I think these youth programs, and that’s what I’m really passionate about is prevention and intervention and youth and that’s a huge passion of mine. So I think, being able, you know when I saw like the high school programs and even elementary school programs to teach kids about going after their passion, discovering their passion, and creating a business out of that, being able to really look inside themselves and know that they’re worthy, that they have something to contribute to our society, become a productive member of society, these kinds of entrepreneurship programs that we brought to the schools and to be used, that’s what’s really important. They make people feel like, “Oh, I am important. You do see me. I can contribute.” And they’re not just invisible wallflowers or don’t think that they’re not good enough to do these things and build confidence in youth and that’s just so important for our society and I am most proud of that and just looking at that but you know going on through with the Business Council and the Manufacturing Alliance, I just think the work that we do is incredible. Really having people change their mindset and look beyond their single dot and their silo but just how can you contribute back to your community? And what is the legacy that you want to leave? Think of yourself as a citizen first, not as a boss or business owner, but how you can contribute to make the community a better place and how you’re going to leave this society better off than where you found it, I just love and just am so passionate about the work that I’m doing currently.

John: Speaking of working with young people, a lot of our listeners are up-and-coming or aspiring entrepreneurs and they want to not only make a paycheck but they want to make an impact and they’ve learned that a lot from the Lyles Center and what you and Tim worked on for a long time and they’ve just learned it in their readings and what’s going on in the world where their generation want to really make the world a better place. What advice do you have for up-and-coming entrepreneurs who want to make the world a better place, want to make an impact, but start a business and be their own boss?

Genelle: So I would definitely say, do your research and that is something that all people need to do if they want to go into their own business and make an impact or have some kind of transformational change. Definitely, if it’s something that you truly love and want to do, volunteer in something about that’s like it if there are other organizations that are like that, volunteer for them. See what’s out there, see how others are doing it. What works? What doesn’t work? Is it going to support your lifestyle or get you to the lifestyle that you want? This is about doing your research and talking to people and seeing how things are done. But, number one, I’d say that people need to go after something that they are passionate about. Something that doesn’t feel like it’s a job, something that’s fun for them, and I always say, when it stops being fun, that’s your cue to exit because life is too short. So definitely go after your passion.

John: Life is too short. And, Genelle, I just want to say thank you for coming on today. And for those who want to find Genelle or learn more about her great organizations, they can go to www.sjvma.org or www.fresnobc.org to find her new webinar series, to learn more about her great work, to join these great organizations, that’s how you do it. You just go to those websites. Genelle, you are welcome back on Impact anytime you want, to talk about business, to talk about what’s going on here in the central part of California with regards to manufacturing. You have just been a wonderful friend for twenty-one years. You are a tremendous leader in our community. You’ve made a huge impact already. You’re going to continue to make huge impacts in the future and thank you for joining us today.

Genelle: Thank you so much, John, for having me. It’s been such a pleasure on Impact and I look forward to coming back again. So thank you for the open invitation.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy; and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cyber security focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am John Shegarian and I am so excited and honored to have back again, Lisa Curtis. Welcome back to impact, Lisa.

Lisa Curtis: Thank you so much for having me, John.

John: You know, Lisa, last time you were here, it was green as good and you were cooking up and dreaming of creating a business you had… I think at that point written a business plan for a company that you would envision called Kuli Kuli and you are the founder and the CEO. And just truth in advertising for our listeners, I was so enamored and inspired by your great story, which you are going to tell. I am going to ask you to share again with our listeners today because there is a whole new generation of young and new entrepreneurs that want to be inspired by you. I became an early investor and I will tell you what, your journey has been inspiring, fascinating, and just wonderful to watch from afar all the success you have had. So Lisa, let us start from the beginning. Talk a little bit about` your background leading up to Kuli Kuli? And what did you do when you got out of college and how you even came up with this great idea?

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. So I first came to Kuli Kuli actually through the Peace Corps. So I joined the Peace Corps after college and went to Niger in West Africa and was placed in a very small rural village with no electricity, no running water, you know. A very simple life and I actually loved it. And the only thing I did not loved about it was that as a vegetarian, I had a really hard time getting enough nutrients in my diet. I was basically eating rice for every meal. And so at the time I was volunteering in my village’s Health Center and I turn to a couple of the women there and I said, “What can I eat that will make me feel better? I am just so exhausted all the time and clearly just not getting the right nutrients.” They literally pulled these leaves off a tree and mix them into this peanut snack that they call Kuli Kuli and said, “Eat this. It will make you feel better.”

And I had never thought to eat tree leaves before. I have never heard of Moringa. It seems a little strange but I trusted these women. At that point, I would do anything to feel more energized. I started eating it and it just really had a profound impact on me. Within the span of a week or two I was like, “Wow, I just feel so much more energized and better able to do all the things I want to do. What is this plant?” So I did a little research the next time I got into a capital city and I had some internet and I was just blown away by Moringa being this tree that grows all over the tropics. It actually thrives in the hot dry places like Niger. It is arguably one of the most nutrient-dense plants in the world. It is packed with protein, calcium, iron, vitamins, and it is great for vegetarians or just anyone who is looking to get more natural energy from a really nutritious plant. I got hooked. Originally, the idea was actually to just see how could I encourage more women in my village to be growing it and eating it locally and cooking it locally since women were the ones doing pretty much all the cooking in my village.

So I started talking to them about Moringa and the the big kind of response that I got back was, “Well hey, we are not gonna grow a crop that we cannot sell. We are really busy here, we are farmers, we are raising ten kids, we are doing all these things. So we are not going to grow this just because you think it is good for us. We will grow it if there is a market for it. Can you help us create a market for it?” At the time, I was twenty-two years old. I had no idea what I was signing up for. I had never worked in the food before and had no experience in business and I was like, “Sure. I will help you sell Moringa in the US.” And so long story short, that is really what the past ten years has been for me. It is fulfilling that promise and helping small farmers, predominantly African women, sell really high quality Moringa in the US. We are now in eleven thousand stores.

John: Unbelievable. So wait a second. Let us talk about where we left off. You had just about written and finished the business plan and started raising money. What year was that? Approximately?

Lisa: Yeah. I know. I am like trying to remember. Where did we left off? I believe that was two thousand fifteen, right? Sort of quick timeline, I got back from Peace Corps in two thousand ten. You know, I did not have any money because Corps paid me seventy-five dollars a month. So, you know, literally living at the poverty line in Niger. Everyone I talked to was like, “You should go work at a start-up before you start your own.” And those exact words that really resonated with me was, “Learn how to fail on someone else’s dime.”

John: Smart.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah, so I actually returned in two thousand eleven when I officially returned. Two thousand fourteen, I worked at another startup. Then the end of two thousand thirteen I said, “This is an idea that will not go away.” Like you said, I put together a business plan. I had started to test the farmer’s markets and other places and I was just like, “I need to do this.” So I decided to take the leap and quit my day job and I have not looked back since.

John: So for our listeners out there who just joined, we have got Lisa Curtis who is a friend of mine and a young woman entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli. To find Lisa and her great products at Kuli Kuli, you could go to www.kulikulifoods.com. That simple, kulikulioods.com. So from business plan to eleven thousand stores, there is a story there, Lisa. Can you share a little bit about that journey? Because that is not an easy journey for the most seasoned entrepreneurs. For someone like you in five short years to raise money, probably more than once, and to then go earn that many doors, please share a little bit about that part of the journey.

Lisa: Yeah. I am glad you double-clicked because I think sometimes people are like, “Well, I had this idea and then it turned into this business,” and as we both know, there is a lot of blood and sweat and tears that go into turning an idea into a reality. So, you know, the first thing was really figuring out whether people buy it. And so that was one of the things we validated at the farmers markets since that we were making these Moringa Bars by hand at a commercial kitchen. When I say we, I came back from Peace Corps and recruited some of my childhood best friends who had experience in food and tech and design. I brought them together to come come do this crazy idea with me. There were four of us and initially, everybody had day jobs and this was kind of a side hustle and then when I quit my day job, that was the point where I really had the very glamorous CEO job of driving around store to store begging the buyer at the store to put our product on the shelf and promising that if they put the product on the shelf, that I would stand there and pass out samples and sell through at least half the product. That was exactly how we got probably our first almost fifty stores. I did that for close to a year and it was not glamorous work. I can tell you that.

John: So are you here to tell me, Lisa, that being the founder and an entrepreneur and CEO is not always just bright lights, big city, and great cocktail parties and first class travel?

Lisa: If that is what it is like for you, I need your job.

John: No, it is not for sure. But it is so important to talk about that. You know, the great Michael Jordan, they are focusing on his final years of his career with the bulls. It is on HBO now and so many people who live through that period, and also who did not live through that period, are getting to revisit or for the first time get exposed to his greatness. In the last episode, the eighth episode of this series, it was the end of the eighth episode and he was being interviewed and he broke down and he said, “Winning has a price and Leadership has a price.” I would love to hear your thoughts around that as a woman leader, winner, CEO, and entrepreneur.

Lisa: Yeah, and I like that quote a lot. You know, a phrase that stuck with me from my village in Niger, it was in the local language, it means you drink pain. This is something that people in my village would literally yell at me at like seven in the morning when it was already 110F in Niger. I was running around the village, and they are like, “Why would you run in this heat? And why would you run at all?” They spend all their energy in the farms. In my mind, being an entrepreneur sort of goes to figuring out what you are willing to drink pain for and understanding what are the things that you are just so passionate about that you will sign up for what is often a decade or multiple decades of a lot of struggle. A lot of joy but also a lot of struggle.

John: There is a lot of struggle and you are right. That is a fascinating quote. I love that. You drink pain.

Lisa: It is very visceral, right?

John: It is very visceral. I mean, there is no misunderstanding that one. They want the communication to be very direct there. They do not want you to misunderstand their words. That is for sure, right?

Lisa: Yeah. Well, I got that one.

John: Wow. Okay. So let us step back a little bit. Moringa helped you recover when you were over there. It helped you feel stronger and better and you had an “Aha!” moment. You wrote the business plan, you raise some capital. For our listeners that have not yet been exposed to it, let us start with square one. Sell a listener that has not had the opportunity and the joy of enjoying some of your Moringa. What are the main benefits of Moringa? Anyway, just the main benefits for anyone who is going to want to buy it after the show from all the great outlets that you sell it from.

Lisa: Yeah. So in many ways, Moringa is the perfect food. It contains protein, it has a complete protein for all of your essential amino acids, which is great for vegetarians. Anyone trying to eat more plant-based. It has a lot of calcium, a lot of iron, a lot of vitamins, a lot of antioxidants, and a lot of really powerful phytochemicals that have been used in ancient medicine for a really long time. In western medicine, we are just starting to see some of the abilities of Moringa to help regulate blood sugar levels for diabetic patients. Also for a lot of new mothers to use it to help enhance lactation or milk production. So it is a really cool plant that is not new to a lot of the world. It is all over Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and I feel just lucky to be the one who can help bring it to the US and get more Americans to experience the magic of this plant.

John: Before you had this vision of your business Kuli Kuli… and again for our listeners who want to find you or find your great products, they could go to kulikulifoods.com. The Moringa really did not exist in an easy to access food yet before you envisioned this in the United States, is that correct?

Lisa: Yeah. So we are definitely the first brand to really bring it to the US. There are a couple other brands that sell Moringa powder or Moringa pills. But certainly, nobody is selling it in value-added products and nobody is selling the quality or quantity of Moringa that Kuli Kuli does. It is kind of cool. We are now at the point where we can confidently say that we are the largest Moringa company in the world.

John: That is amazing. And so you started with what product, and now how many Suite of products do you have? So how can our listeners and their family members and friends enjoy and access your great Moringa products?

Lisa: Yeah. So we started with our bar. It is actually the first product we launched, fruit and nut bars with Moringa. Then we launched the pure Moringa powder, which is great for smoothies. Even Savory dishes, like Pesto’s and curries. Then we launched the smoothie mixes. And more recently, we launched the wellness shots. So three different product lines, shots, bars, and powders, all available on Amazon. Also all available on our website, kulikulifoods.com.

John: Nice. There is a lot of wins here. When I talk about impact entrepreneurs, you are probably why I renamed green is good, which was focused more on sustainability and those that were just doing good and to those who are creating an impact. If there is ever an impact entrepreneur or business model, you are to me the aspirational person and brand. For our listeners out there, not only is Lisa a great woman entrepreneur and CEO and founder, but there is lots of benefits that come with her great brand. I want you to explain one of them. First, why is Moringa itself good for the planet?

Lisa: I am so glad you asked that because you know, I have been an environmental activist for a lot of my life and I still am. One of the things that I think is so cool is the fact that I am selling tree leaves because it does not hurt the tree. The tree keeps growing, you can harvest it through time through three to four times a year, and we have planted over twelve million trees through our supply chain. We plant them in ways that help reforest the soil where it is creating these living forests of Moringa trees plus other crops intercropping as much as we possibly can. We have found that there is just so many benefits of planting a tree and planting a crop that is naturally regenerative.

John: That is just wonderful. Let us talk about some of the other benefits. So when you started the business, how many women were harvesting this product in where it is from in Africa? And now, how many women do you have doing that? Why is it important to their lives? How does it emancipate them and make them more independent in their hometowns?

Lisa: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I would say that there were already thousands of women who are harvesting Moringa just for like personal use like a tree growing in their backyard or that kind of thing. But I think the big difference and what so many of the farmers we work with tell us is that having the ability to earn an income through selling this plant and harvesting this plant has been incredibly transformative. When we started, we were working with a co-op of twenty women in Northern Ghana. We are now working with over two thousand farmers. Primarily women, there is some men in there, too. We are not hating on the men, and all across eleven different countries. So largely in Africa and then some and South America and Southeast Asia as well.

John: That is amazing. I am not great at math, but that is like a hundred X. That is a hundred times up in in five short years.

Lisa: Yeah. Business went from one store to eleven thousand stores. That is a pretty big growth, too.

John: That is incredible. Let us just focus on the woman now back in Ghana. If they did not have a commercial business opportunity like this instead of just in their backyard type of harvesting, would their life be much different? Does it trend more negatively as opposed to them having the economic independence that this affords them?

Lisa: Yeah. I think one of the things that is really exciting for me to see is just the power of them having an income that is outside of the small things that they can sell on the in their local. Just other other smaller ways that they can earn income locally, which are just a lot of those opportunities are so limited for women in the places and communities that we source from. So for have them to have a year-round income that is so much greater than what they can get locally has been truly transformative. We have heard so many stories of women being able to send their kids to school and pay those school fees, being able to buy better food for their children. One woman who we have partnered with who has had five children and her husband passed away, she was basically kicked out on the street and she ended up starting this Moringa business. We have helped to support it. She now employs two hundred, mostly widowed or other disadvantaged, women in her community. It is stories like that and people like that that make me excited to drink the pain and get up and do this every day.

John: That is amazing. The impacts that your business enterprise have are not only the great example that we need more of in the United States and beyond of woman, founder, CEO, entrepreneur, but it is also planet. It is also people, other people, the woman that you employ, where Moringa is harvested, and their families and communities. It is also health. Everyone who comes in contact with this, their health improves. Their health improves. It is amazing. The impacts are just everlasting. Let us talk about one door to eleven thousand. I know that it is an incredible feat. This is just not numbers. You just do not make a few phone calls and take a few people to drinks. I mean, as you said, and I know you said it it somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it really is not because even at my age, I am much older than you, and our business has even evolved for a longer period over eighteen years. Begging is never out of the question. So as you said, I mean, whatever it takes. Talk a little bit about how do you achieve that much success? Eleven thousand doors in five years is a ton of success in the retail business because there is thousands of new skews every year fighting for precious retail space, even precious online space now. Talk a little bit about how you got there from one to eleven thousand.

Lisa: Well, it did not happen overnight. It has been been a journey. I think a lot of it was finding people who would believe in us and who could get behind what we are doing. I give a lot of credit to Whole Foods Market. The Whole Foods buyer in Northern California, we came to her with these handmade Moringa bars and like very clearly knew very little about the food industry. And she said, “Yeah. I want to bring it in.” I think that first yes helped prompt a distributor we could sign to work with us, and then we started to getting more yeses. I have a sort of skill I have been cultivating for a while that I call Charassment, charming harrasment, which is not really harassment. But I am just not afraid to get no for an answer, not afraid to ask. So I spend a lot of time making crazy asks of, “Hey, Walmart. How about Moringa? This super foods is amazing. You should put it in your set which maybe seems crazy as a product that most of America does not know about.” But it worked. We are now in two thousand five hundred Walmart stores. And you know, I think having the audacity to ask the questions, for me, it really is rooted in the fact that I just think this is an amazing plant that has an amazing impact on the world. I want everyone to have access to it. And so making that happen is a big driving force for what I do.

John: Charassment. I have lived fifty-seven years. I never heard that word, but I am going to use it and I am going to give you credit in the future because that is a great, great word in the combination of two words, charming harassment. I mean, that is just a new form of oxymoron that I have never heard of. But I mean, it is great.

Lisa: I am glad you liked it.

John: So, obviously when we are taping this podcast today, we are still living through this tragedy period in the world history of the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple thoughts that I like to just ask you about is how have your sales held up in your stores like in Whole Foods during this pandemic? Are more people reaching out and being thoughtful about their health? Is that a trend that you are seeing in terms of more use of your great product?

Lisa: Yes. That has been one of the cool things that we have seen. It is that there are so many people looking for products that can boost their immunity and boost their energy levels. I am not saying Moringa is a cure-all here in any sense, but it is highly nutritious. What we know is that it is a really good nutrition and has really amazing phytochemicals, medicinal components that play a really strong role in boosting the overall immune system. We have seen incredible growth. Our sales were up seventy percent in Whole Foods and up at a lot of other retailers as well. It has been really exciting to just see how much our product has been helpful.

John: That is a testimony to your great sales and it is also a testimony to your wonderful product that is just both delicious and very nutritious. And as I have shared earlier, not only am I an investor, but I am a consumer of your product. I have been a vegetarian for forty years. I believe in what you are doing. It just packs a lot of punch for what it is. It is just delicious. We are going to get to the other side. We were talking about this a little bit off the air, Lisa. We know we are going to get to this another side. What is your goals in terms of doors and growth in the United States for Kuli Kuli after we get to the other side of this pandemic?

Lisa: Yeah. I have got big goals that have certainly not been been crushed by the pandemic which has been delayed a little bit. One of the things and one of the reasons that I named the company Kuli Kuli, and not the Moringa company, was really had to do with this idea that there are so many other incredible super food plants like Moringa in the communities we source from and other communities. Those would be so beneficial to Americans and so beneficial to those communities if we could find ways to unlock or have access to the US market and bring those incredible plants here and informing sustainable supply chains that work for everyone. So that is where we see us continuing to grow and expand. We still focus a lot of Maria because we think it is the most powerful plan out there, but I think there is other plants. We have started to pair some of these amazing botanicals alongside Moringa. If you have seen our new green tea wellness shots, they have Kamu Kamu and Ashwagandha and all these herbs that are just like so powerful and really complement Miranda and different ways. I am super excited as our brand continues to grow so we can help more Americans discover the power of food as medicine and medicinal plants. You know, Aspirin comes from a plant. So much of the medicine we consume is plants and I think sometimes we forget that.

John: Obviously, you have had massive success and I could not continue to succeed here in the US. But since the pandemic has hit the entire our world and exposed us all to our breakdowns and healthcare deficiencies in our own health and wellness, is it foolish for me to ask you that about expansion abroad, do you have your eyes on Kuli Kuli going to Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia, eventually as well?

Lisa: It is a good question. We actually have a very small presence in Canada and a very small presence in Mexico and to other countries that we are selling to right now. I think there is so much opportunity in the US that I still feel like there is a lot of work for us to do here. But we do think that there is, as we continue to grow, we certainly want to give give everyone access to this incredible plant and these great products. It is on the roadmap, but I do not think it is number one.

John: I got it. Well, one of the trademarks of a great entrepreneur is focus. So focusing on the US, which is still as you said, a massive opportunity in the years to come, there is no shame in that and that strategy. I think that is brilliant on your behalf. Is there anything you would like to share with our listeners? We have a huge listener base, Lisa. Not only existing founders and CEOs, but a lot of aspiring young people in high schools and in universities that want to be the next Lisa Curtis. Is there any words of wisdom you would like to leave before we have to say goodbye for today?

Lisa: Yeah. One of the things that I often hear from people who are interested in starting businesses is kind of a litany of reasons as of why they cannot do it of, “Oh, I do not have an MBA” or you know, “I have no background in business. I am not good at finance. I have not worked in business before. Who am I to think of starting a business?” If I have learned anything through my own journey, I think that if you have enough passion for what you want to build and if you have enough grit to really see your idea through, then you can truly accomplish anything.

John: Well you have accomplished a lot for our listeners out there that want to access Lisa’s great products at Kuli Kuli. Please go to www.kulikulioods.com. You could buy her suite of products online there or on at Whole Foods or Amazon. Lisa, you are literally the reason I rename the podcast Impact podcast. The impact that you are having on the planet, on people, on women and their families, and on the health of America, is beyond inspirational. I am so thankful for all that you do and thanks again for joining us today. I look forward to you coming back again to share the continued journey of Kuli Kuli.

Lisa: Thank you so much for having us, John. And thanks for being one of our earliest believers.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage as a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry, with hundreds of athletes, entrepreneurs, speakers, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information, please visit letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am so excited and honored today to have with us, Ryan Harris, he is a Super Bowl champion, broadcaster, speaker, and best selling author. Welcome to Impact Ryan.

Ryan Harris: John, thanks for having me, my friend.

John: Hey, listen, I got a wonderful opportunity to meet you and being your company before and you are just a fascinating, amazing young man and it is just an honor to have you on today. I just want first start the show by before, we get into your whole journey, I am sitting at my desk here in my office and about two feet behind me is a signed Notre Dame helmet from Rudy Ruettiger.

Ryan: Oh I love it. [laughter]

Ryan: Yes, I just want you to know straight up, go to my first college football team that I fell in love with was a Notre Dame and I know you are a Notre Dame alum and proud Notre Dame alum and you are still very connected to that great institution. Now, I fell in love with Notre Dame because they had one of the iconic Armenian coaches at that time. He was really one of the few celebrities in the Armenian world. Coach Ara Parseghian. That is why I fell in love with it. But then once I saw the Rudy story, and then I got to meet Rudy, there was no going back. Talk a little bit about your journey growing up, how you got to Notre Dame, and your experience at Notre Dame, and then we will go on to all the other accomplishments you did post-Notre Dame.

Ryan: Yeah, man. A quick story on Rudy when I was at Notre Dame, Charlie Weis typically, in NFL training camps the first night you watch a movie or an inspirational speech or something like that. Coach Weis put on Rudy and afterward, he goes, “You know, you do not really get the whole story from the movie. Rudy, why do not you come on down and tell these guys what it is really like.” Rudy came down bounding down the step. I mean all of us had seen the movie. You do not go to Notre Dame and not see the greatest [inaudible] movie ever made. That was one of the many times I have met Rudy, but to answer your question from St. Paul, Minnesota, God’s country and grew up and my mother is in education, my father is a mechanical engineer. I did not start playing football till I was 14, and really saw an opportunity not to do something and be rich, but to be great at something. I had a talent that I wanted to maximize and. I did that and I did it from a young age I played at the same peewee league as Joe Mauer, who I later went to high school with and Terrell Suggs had some big names in the NFL, Michael Floyd as well. Then I got recruited in my junior year. I was in JROTC, John because I thought that was how I was going to pay for college. I could go to college, get paid for it, I got a job for five years, I am in. Then my junior year I got a letter from Iowa saying we would like to offer you a full grant and aid to attend the University of Iowa and I said to my parents, “What is a grant aid?” “Well, that is a scholarship.” Iowa was my first scholarship by Kirk Ferentz who I later would end up winning the Super Bowl fifty with his son James Ferentz so just a cool little full circle moment I got to enjoy there. But then, yes, went to Notre Dame, prepared my tail off the summer before, was also on the show MTV True Life which I did not think anybody would see it. Then I got the campus and the guys were like, “Hey, where is that MTV brat?” I had a couple of weeks to pay off.

John: [laughter] [crosstalk] More people were watching than you thought, huh?

Ray: [crosstalk] Yes, that taught me at an early age, that sometimes people recognize you before you recognize them. Be very, very careful. I had a successful career in Notre Dame, I was the third offensive lineman to start and as a freshman in the history of Notre Dame and got drafted by the Broncos 2007. Played there until 2011, where I got released just probably the worst moment in my professional career, a moment I am so grateful for. Then I went on to play for the Houston Texas for two years, the Kansas City Chiefs. Then after that year, my eighth year in the NFL can see chief said, “Ryan, we do not think you have any football left.” I have had four surgeries by now, three on my back. I said, “You know what, you are wrong.” Got picked up again by the Denver Broncos because coach Kubiak was with me in Houston said, “Hey, I need you. I need you to come to help us win a championship.” We came back once to bowl 50 Payton’s last game. Then I went to play for the Pittsburgh Steelers and I will tell you, John, to finish my career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, what a franchise what a lesson in leadership, what a lesson in the team and I went from a huddle. I played with, Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning, Jay Cutler, but I went from Peyton Manning to Ben Roethlisberger. I ended my career back to back Hall of Famers and just had a blast learning about life, traveling, playing and I played in London, you are the kid from St. Paul playing in London with the Broncos and, got knocked down a lot but got up one more time and I am so grateful I did and learn so many lessons from it.

John: You have a Super Bowl ring which very very few people ever get to wear.

Ryan: The best diamonds are the ones you get for free, my friend.

John: [laughter] Oh my gosh. What happened after you retired, a lot of young athletes have problems with retirement. It is a weird world coming out of being a professional athlete and one that has had so much winning in their career and a Super Bowl champion, how did you find that transition? Where do others go wrong? Where did you go right? What lessons learned can you share with our listeners who have to go from whether it is being the high school star to just a regular person in college or the college star and never making the pros? Or from the pros and moving on in life to a regular career? How did you make that transition? What tips can you give to our listeners out there that have to make that transition?

Ryan: Yeah, man. It is a phenomenal question. After my third back surgery, I was out of the NFL for about three months and got picked back up by the Broncos and then got released by them. That time was really formative for me and after making one point two million dollars, my first two years in the NFL, I was thirty thousand dollars in debt to start each season. 78% of NFL players are bankrupt or divorced and chemically dependent or all three just two years after they were done playing. I immediately knew I got a double major at Notre Dame, political science, and economics, and policy but I knew I had to prepare. One of the things I started doing was just paying attention to what wealthy people were doing. I am such a proponent for college. I learned a lot about wealth at the University of Notre Dame, right? The wealth that I had never seen. Wealth does not look as rich as you and I know John, right? Wealth looks well-rested. [crosstalk] My dad was like, “Why do not you five hundred bucks in a Scottrade account and start investing.” I read some stuff by this guy named Warren Buffet. He said own what you buy. I literally bought McDonald’s stock, Chipotle stock, Google, and Apple and this is in 2008. Just started financially preparing. How many cars can you drive at the same time? One, so that is how many I bought. How many houses can you live at the same time? One, and until Bill Gates is wearing some diamond-studded chains, I am not doing that. The less you see the more I have. John, unfortunately, I got a lot of calls, two from guys who want me to buy back a used Louis Vuitton backpack, buy back a Mercedes Benz.

Ryan: I tell this story all the time. I had a young rookie, I was in Pittsburgh, and I was so adamant about guys just financially preparing, just make sure you think about retirement. Study says 90% of people have not even thought about retirement. Of those who have, only 5% have the savings to actually do so. This young man I said, one of my big things, delay your purchases three months to three years. This young man, five hundred thousand dollars he was making that year and I said, “Do not go buy a new car, do not go buy a new car, do not go buy a new car.” He buys a brand new Porsche Panamera. Now, three months later, John, he is released from the Steelers, never plays in the NFL again, no house, no 401k, no assets, with a Porsche with no winter tires heading back to Philadelphia. That is a tough story that repeats itself over and over. I just told myself I had to financially prepare. But my biggest tip to those who are going to transition to retirement, the piece that I did not want to admit that matters is ego. One of my mentors has told me, he said, “Ryan, you are still going to want to have your ego tickle.” I said, “No, man, I want to be obscure. I do not want to be noticed at all.” He says, “Ryan, a fish does not know you are on the water.” Sure enough, especially as a football player, I did not know how to work a copy machine.

Ryan: If I went to your office to work for you, John, as much as I was successful in football, if I am in your office, you do not care about that. You care about me making copies and making sure I email the file and put a Google Docs link that is available to everyone. I did not know how to do those things. Turns out you do not have to do that when you are playing with Peyton Manning and your fingers are on the dirt. I had to realize that I still wanted to be recognized for what I had have accomplished, overcoming failures, fighting through surgeries, keeping my body in peak physical condition, conditioning my mind to have a mindset that overcomes failure and that say, “Hey, you are wrong if you do not think I can do this.” I do. That is why I want it and listen, winning the Super Bowl really helps. I got to say nothin when I wear that ring into a room. But I did make sure my doctorate in applied football mechanics and theory would be recognized by people I was around every day because I do have a lot of talent. I may not be able to put it on an Excel spreadsheet, but I can teach you tips on how to build strong teams, I can give you tips on how to achieve your goals and speak to yourself positively. That can lead to those Excel spreadsheets that change the world.

John: Hey, for our listeners out there who are just joining us, we have got Ryan Harris, he is a Super Bowl champion. He is a broadcaster, speaker, and best selling author. You could find Ryan at www.Ryan Harris68.com. I am holding in my hand right here, this wonderful book: Mindset for Mastery; an NFL champions guide to reaching your greatness. Ryan, you wrote this best selling book, it is on Amazon and other great platforms for people to download or buy. Talk about why you wrote this book and give our listeners two or three of the best tips out of this book as a little preview that they can expect if they buy or download this book today.

Ryan: Yes. well, thank you, John. When you win the Super Bowl, everything you believe about yourself comes true for other people. I want people to have that moment in their life in business, right? In their relationships. The difference between winning and losing a championship in the NFL is your mindset. Choosing everything, no matter who you are, where you are from, we all share these experiences of failure, pain, loss, gain, circumstance. So what? We are in Coronavirus lockdown right now and you and I have talked, well, you have lived beyond all those moments. Since you are going to live beyond, would not you rather choose how that is going to be after that failure, disappointment, or circumstance? That is the power of your mindset. People say mindset all the time. But one of the things I pride myself on is actually giving people tangible tools. Well, mindset is I built my mindset through nine different surgeries in 10 years, failures, coaches telling me I was not going to be successful, by using the three phrases “I am, I can, I will.” I use it as a parent job, I use it in broadcasting. Anytime I faced self-doubt, I talked to myself in a positive way. “I am as the identity.” The night before the Super Bowl, I said to myself, “I am terrified. My greatest achievement is going to be my greatest failure if we lose this game.”

But what else am I? I am prepared. I am excited. I am ready, at some point you and I have experienced it. It is a choice you got right there. You and I have experienced it at some different point. At some point, your goal is not good enough. That is okay. What do you do then? Do not look behind you. Do not ask our favorite question like, “Whose fault is it? Could it possibly be ours” But what can you do? Okay, I gave up a sec, I can make sure I am going to use my technique. I can think about the next play. I am terrified the night before the Super Bowl. I am going to be successful. I am a champion. I can go out and prove it tomorrow. When you speak the words “I can”, you start to see opportunities in front of you instead of that past behind you. It is how you choose to add something. My ninth year in NFL I had to add breathing, John because Peyton Manning runs so many plays, I had to breathe again. I went to an MMA coach, I can not breathe. I am out of breath all the time. Okay, I can go to an MMA gym and learn how those fighters control their breath to perform at a high level. I did. Breathe in for five, hold your breath, swallow it, breathe out for eight. Boom, let us go, next play.

John: You put your ego aside, you put all your, you were champion at Notre Dame, well decorated, got drafted to the NFL, already had a longer career than most will ever have in the NFL and you put all that aside to now take your game to the next level, to be able to win the Super Bowl with Peyton Manning. You learn how to breathe again.

Ryan: Had to.

John: Unbelievable.

Ryan: How many times in your life did you have to learn a new skill? I always remind people, John, like, we are all in relationships. If I took my wife to the same restaurant we went for our first date, we would not be as happy as we are now. Right? But we do that in our professional lives, right? We know, I am good at this job. I am good at this program. I do not want to learn anything else. Why am I not getting the results? People ask me all the time. “Ryan, what can I do to be successful?” I said, “Well, what have you done new?” Often times they will say, the most common response is “What do you mean?” “What do you mean what do I mean? You are an accountant, are you in a networking group? Are you doing leadership trainings? Are you learning about yourself as a leader? Do you want to be a leader? Is this even what you want to do?” Finding out what you can do is how you can continue to stay in motion when other people are stuck. Then you got to commit to it. John, there are over two hundred diamonds on the Super Bowl 50 ring, and none of them are just laying on the ground to be picked up. You have got to dig for diamonds and when you speak the words “I will,’ you commit yourself to it. The part of the book is built, the first chapters “I am, I can, I will.” Build your mindset. [inaduible] as a parent, as a professional, as a performer, you choose your mindset, and that is how you create your success.

John: Wow, I love it. Who taught you that? Was that something self-taught or did you have a mentor? Was that your mom or dad? I mean, obviously your parents are super bright human beings, an educator and an engineer. I mean, where did that come from? Is that from coach, or is that something you just got in your own self teachings?

Ryan: I had to create it myself because when I first got to Notre Dame, I got hit so hard. One of my cleats was gone. I was sprawled out. this senior was making a point of me. That night and I read the book, and one of my favorite books is The Book of Five Rings. It is written by the most successful Samurai swordsman in Japanese history. He said, “You must commit with utter resolve to destroying your enemy.” That night I visualized, right? I am going to kick this guy’s tail on this next drill. If he had done anything different than he did the previous seven days, I would have fallen on my face, but I smacked him with a power I did not know I had. At that moment, I realized so much of my performance is up to me. I could have been embarrassed I could have thought I would never play again after being knocked out of my shoes. By the way, you do not make a great sound when that happens, right? But I said, “No, I am here. I belong. I can focus on this play and practice. I will.” When that happened, that was it. I cemented it. Then I started seeing other things, like my favorite quote by Muhammad Ali, and check this out. He said, “I am the greatest. I called myself that before I knew I was.” Even the greatest champion in the world has self-doubt. But fear is something we talked about less than sex. I just came to a realization and acceptance that fear and doubt were going to be a part of my journey, but I would choose success over falling to those feelings.

John: I love it. That is awesome. For our listeners out there. We have got Ryan Harris with us today. He is a Super Bowl champion. He is talking to us about leadership, about mindset, about financial literacy. He has a great book, Mindset for Mastery. You can find that on Amazon and on other great book portals. You could download it or buy it today. He is also on Instagram and you can find them at WWW. Ryan Harris68.com. Ryan, let us talk a little bit about financial literacy, who was your mentor? How did you go in what is basically the opposite direction, as you said of 78% of professional athletes who are ending up in bad spots when they retire? Who was your mentor? Was it the Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway way, the Bill Gates way? What books did you read? How did you get financial literacy as part of your DNA? What do you recommend to our listeners now who need to get on the right side and stop being entitled in terms of their spending and start really saving for a better future?

Ryan: Yes. The big thing that was a difference-maker for me was just buying my first stocks. Just getting through and learning how to buy a stock, learning what the stock symbol is the stock price. The first time you buy a share yourself, you start seeing money differently, right? I can go to a hundred dollar concert or I can buy a dividend stock of Chevron or Exxon Mobil that will pay me for the rest of my life. Then I can go to a concert next time it is around. But the big key for me, John, is right after my rookie year, I had a sixty thousand dollar tax bill by the IRS. I said to my accountant, I said, “How do I make sure this never happens again?” He is like, “Well, you should probably buy a house so you can write off the mortgage.” I went to the bank, a 23-year-old millionaire who has got a contract with the Denver Broncos, and I go to my bank, and I asked the wrong question. “What kind of house can I afford?” Well, the bank is going to say, “You can do this with 5% down or 10 percent.” I was standing with the realtor in a house that I was going to buy, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, unmarried, no kids, one car, four-car garage, with an office. I had my conciliary, I call him, he is my lawyer. He came to visit me randomly and I was telling him about the house I wanted to buy. He says, “You sure do look happy in this two-bedroom apartment.” I kid you not. I said to him, “Do you think there is a cheaper house I could buy?” Instead of ridicule me he goes, “I think there is, maybe something in the three hundred thousand range.” That was my first awareness, banks do not have my best interests in mind. I can buy less and then I started realizing.

John: Be happy and still be happy.

Ryan: Be completely happy, functional. Function versus flash. Then I started asking the people who are wealthy that I knew, “What do you do with money?” “Oh, I invest. Hey, I could buy a bigger house but what do I need a bigger house for?” I had room, people were always bugging to buy this house like, “Yes, my friend can stay.” I am not buying a house. No one buys a house for roommates. Do you know what I am saying? I had to unlearn what I had learned. Part of what I had learned in my family was that you never paid off the debt. I did not know you could pay off debt until I was in my second year of the NFL. My whole process between starting to purchase shares of stocks that I use every day, minimizing my expenditures. Being frugal. I mean, they are big times, guys who spent ten thousand dollars a night at a club in the NFL. But I say I did not go to the club at all my rookie year and I went to tour Europe afterward for six thousand dollars. Those kinds of experiences really show me that I can have security if I want. Then how it made me more money, John, was when I went to the Steelers afterward.

After winning the Super Bowl, they gave me a deal that was below market value. I said something to them that they later said they had never heard. They gave me an offer. It was below market value. I told him I said, “I will go home.” They looked at me like I was absolutely insane. Who would not take any kind of money to play for the Steelers? But I was financially stable. I was confident in my value. They immediately said, “Well, give us about five minutes.” They took five minutes, it came back, they offered me exactly the deal I wanted and it only happened because I had been financially secure. These things matter to my children, right? One UCLA, I know your son graduated UCLA law, they just had a receiver who is at the Jets now. His father played in the league for five years, did not watch his money, did not invest his money, ended up getting shot multiple times in a drug deal gone bad while he was a kid. These are preventable situations and I wanted to be rich when I am fifty. I want to take vacations, I want to retire. That is why financial literacy is so important to everyone.

John: I am so glad you laid it out that way. You got to play for one of the greatest coaches in NFL, coach Mike Tomlin and also one of the greatest owning families, legacy families in the NFL, the Rooney family, what an experience, what an experience.

Ryan: The Rooneys, man, talk about financial literacy. The original Mr. Rooney, his cigar box is encased in Latrobe Pennsylvania where we do a training camp. I said after a couple of practices I am going to go see what kind of cigars he had and I am going to buy a box. I go up there. John, it is a cherry wood box with Swisher Sweets in there. The owner of the greatest franchise in the NFL smoke Swisher Sweets like, what am I doing buying a twenty dollar cigar?

John: [laughter] Who needs Cuban? You got to listen to it. As you said you got to pay attention to what really wealthy people are doing. I mean, it is interesting. We have talked about mindset and your great book Mindset for Mastery. We have talked about financial literacy. Let us talk about leadership. I want to frame it this way. I just finished watching and I assume you watched as well. The Michael Jordan biography. Last Dance, 10 episodes and the most moving part for me, the most both touching and emotional but moving and impactful part for me was the end of episode 8, I believe, last couple minutes where he was sitting in this chair when they were interviewing him. He said, “Winning has a price..” He said, “Leadership has a price.” He got emotional and he actually asked for the camera to cut at that point. He basically said, “If people did not want to be part of the system that I was helping to create with Coach Jackson and the ownership of the Bulls, and the leadership of the Bulls, then if you do not find me inspiring then find someone else to follow.” But he goes, “This was my rules and this is how I was doing it.” He took it so personal and he made it so personal. Talk about what that means to you. Winning has a price and leadership has a price. What does that mean in the Ryan Harris ecosystem and the world and all the winning that you have done and the leadership that you now exude and the leadership that you teach?

Ryan: Well, I mean, I am so glad you brought that point up, John, because, and he says that leadership has a prize, winning has a price. He says if you do not want to pay it if you got a problem with that you have never won anything.

John: That is right. He exactly said that. Great quote. You were watching the same thing I was. That is right. That is exactly what he said.

Ryan: That is a mindset, right? Why would I listen to someone who does not win? One of my chapters in my book, you have noted the song by Queen I love it. “No time for losers, because we are the champions.” I have got no time. If you do not want to work. I have no time. If you want to layout I had roommates would lay on my couch. I came back from practices like what are we doing for dinner? What are we doing? What are you doing? But this concept that everybody wants to win, it is just not true. There are sixteen hundred players in the NFL every year, only 53 become champions and it is not because not everyone is talented. People are what Mike Tomlin says comfort seekers, right? You want a job. Okay, you can do it for fifteen years. You can slide on by. I even had a neighbor come to talk to me and said “Ryan. I watched the documentary, I thought, what if I flip the switch tomorrow?” “What do you mean? He goes, “What if tomorrow I just made it about greatness.” I am thinking, “What the hell you have been doing your whole life?”

But the people around you, many do not want to be successful. Many will never risk failure to succeed. You have got to realize that if you want to do something great, you are entitled to do so. Everyone is not going to be along for the ride. I have lost friends. I have had issues with family members where we did not speak for a while. Do you know what? That is okay. Because I was on a mission to win a championship. I even change, people usually come in on Fridays for families in the NFL, but I told them to come in on Saturday right before I went to the hotel because listen, my job is not to take you out on a Friday night. I do not show up at your house on a Wednesday and say, “Hey, what are we doing for dinner?” That is not how this is going down. You want to hang out, you are staying until Monday. That was so poignant. The fact that so many people do not want to win. In ten years in the NFL, I was only on three teams that cared about winning. The rest were happy with the paycheck, free sweat pants, the status, and that was good enough for them. But when you dedicate yourself to greatness, which you are entitled to, you are going to be lonely. There are going to be periods of time where people around you do not want to work. I was in dark gyms not just literally, but also figuratively of doubt. I worked my way through it, believing I would be a champion and I was. I am so happy I did not listen to the Kansas City Chiefs when they told me I was done playing football. I had no football left because I did have football left. I had a championship football left. It just was not with them.

John. Not only you did not listen to them. Just like Jordan made things personal and he put chips on the shoulder with people, whether they were perceived or real, you put a bigger chip on your shoulder when they said you have no football left, and you went out and probably work triple as hard. That is how you became a Super Bowl champion after that.

John: Well, you do not have to listen to everybody. Everybody is not an expert on your life. For me, when I heard that by Jordan, I just talked about on my radio show, I said, “I hope everybody heard that.” Because, yes, Jordan may not be the favorite person at the time, but all his teammates said what? “We love him.” Looking back on it, he was making us great. I had been through that wormhole. I did not want to be great. I had a coach who challenged me and I hated it, not only because he was right, which pissed me off even more, but that I had a level that I had failed to see in myself that I could perform at. You have got to continue to believe in your dream but beyond belief, you better work for it. You better demand that if people are going to be around you that they are going to do it too.

John: You bring up a great point on the price. Winning has a price and leadership has a price. You brought up a word that Jordan did not bring up but it was so apparent in the documentary. You just brought it up lonely, both figuratively and literally. Just share some thoughts on how do people overcome because there is no greatness that I have ever seen in anybody whether it is athletes, entertainers, business people, politicians, that loneliness is not part of that price. How did you overcome that loneliness?

Ryan: Yes, I just did not care. Do you know what I am saying? I rather wear a Super Bowl ring and be lonely for a while because guess what, I got too many friends now. Not every friend is a good friend. I have had bad friends who I stick around but you know what is funny John, we are going through, NASA is about to launch a historic space mission, you never see family members in space with astronauts. You do not see their friends in the cockpit of a spaceship. I remember talking with Mike Tomlin, we had these amazing side conversations and practices. I said, “Coach, what is one thing about being a leader?” He said, “I tell people all the time, you want to be successful get used to being lonely.” He is right. Because no one is coming to a 6 AM workout with me. The people asking for tickets are not showing up at a 6 AM workout with me. That is going to be lonely, but are you lonely because you are an asshole, are you lonely because you are tough to be around or are you lonely because you are going towards a goal while other people are going out to party? I mean, I had a 7 AM workout the day after I graduated high school. I am not sure everybody did that but I can tell you that made a difference in me being prepared to go to Notre Dame and be successful. For me, I saw success as paramount and I was willing to do whatever it took to be successful, to maximize my greatness, go beyond my potential. Some people were not coming with me, because none of them are going to step on that field with me. I needed to make sure that my success was the priority. Listen, maybe I have been wrong. Could I have been a better friend at some time? Sure. Could I have been a beterr student at some time? Sure. But I will tell you what, I was great at football, and I will never apologize for that.

John: There is no apologies needed. One last question and then we were going to let you go for today. But we were going to have you back obviously. You mentioned the issue of Tomlin saying to you people are comfort seekers, and that strikes a chord because Jesse Itzler, David Goggins, they always are preaching. “You have got to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” How did you learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable because there is no greatness that ever comes in a comfort zone, in anything in this world? Again, I love that you brought that up, I just want to ask, what tips do you have for our listeners out there, how to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable?

Ryan: Do something new, simple. If you have not done yoga, go do a yoga class. If you have not done Tai Chi, do a Tai Chi Class. It is harder for me, John, and I am sure for you sometimes when you speak with people, and they want success but they do not really want it right. We talk about financial literacy, oftentimes I talk with corporations or people I say, “Raise your hand if you want to be a millionaire.” Every hand goes up. “Raise your hand if you have any investments and stock” About a quarter of the hands, if I am lucky, go up. People are lying to themselves. Not everybody has this. But I also realize most people have not been told they can be great. It is your right to be extraordinary. You can be great whether that is a surgeon, a doctor, an accountant, whatever that is, you can be great. Do something new. Try new things, try new foods. That is what I started with. Anthony Bourdain had his show that everyone wants. I went and tried Pho. I have never had Pho, the Vietnamese soup.

John: Yes, I love Pho. [crosstalk]

Ryan: I want people to think about what I call the math class mindset. No one ever goes into math class saying, I am going to take calculus one and I am going to know every single answer. I am going to learn somehow by doing that. But we do this in life. I do not want to talk about race because it is uncomfortable and I might say something wrong. I do not want to talk about money, because I might show that I am not very good at it. But listen, you do not enter into math class thinking you have got all the answers and you are going to learn, you learn by making mistakes. You are not going to be drawing the ire of people who say, “Hey, I want to talk about race and I have a question on this.” ” I want to talk about sexuality. I have a question about this.” If you are asking a question, you are showing an intent to learn, a willingness to be wrong. You and I both know, we want to surround ourselves with people who are reaching for new heights, because you are going to slip on the rung of a ladder when you are 10,000 feet up. Does not mean you are falling off that thing, but be willing to make that mistake and that type of effort goes recognized by every successful person in any business. Do something new. If you are an introvert, go to a networking event. If you are a bad writer, take a YouTube class on writing. Do something new to prepare yourself for your success.

John: I love it. Ryan, thank you for your time. today. We are going to have you back again for our listeners out there who want to learn more about Super Bowl champion, broadcaster, speaker, and best selling author of Mindset for Mastery, Ryan Harris. Go to www.RyanHarris68.com. You can also find them on Instagram and other social media platforms. Ryan Harris, you are making a great impact and making the world a better place. You have taught us all today how to be great. Thank you for joining us on the Impact podcast.

Ryan: John, It is an honest pleasure, my friend, and I can not wait to take you to dinner and just hang out for a couple of hours. Can not wait.

John: Can not wait myself. Thank you again.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider, and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. And I am so honored, and privileged to have my friend on today. He is the Executive Director of E2, welcome back to the Impact podcast, Bob Keefe!

Bob Keefe: John, thank you very much. So great to be with you again.

John: Oh, it is so great to hear your voice, and for you to be with me as well. You do such an important work, and you make such an important impact on the United States, and around the world with not only your great work, but the work of your organization. This is why I do this podcast for people like you, for organizations like yours. And it is just my honor and privilege to have you on today. And Bob, for our new listeners that have not heard you before, or know your background. Can you share a little bit about your own biography, and background before we get talking about your great organization, E2?

Bob: [inaudible] Well, my background is relatively boring. I spent probably about 20 to 25 years as a journalist, John, covering businesses, covering environmental news, covering political news, and my last stint was covering Washington in the White House, and Congress for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper. But in between all of that, I was a National Technology Editor for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Texas. I was a national reporter for Cox newspapers, covering everything from the glaciers in Alaska to maquiladoras in Mexico, and a whole lot of things in between. Probably about in 2011, a good friend of mine who was covering the White House for the LA Times, called me up to let me know that he was leaving the newspaper business to go to an organization called NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, as the NRDC’s Federal Communications Director, and he knew me, and he knew my background in business, journalism. and things like that. And he said, “Hey, why don’t you come help me out over here? We have got this great organization called E2, Environmental Entrepreneurs. And you know how to talk to business people, you understand business, and you care about the environment. I know that.” At the time, John, I had three little girls, and I knew I needed to leave them a better place in this world, so I decided to dedicate my career to making the planet a better place for them. And when I get up, and people ask me why I do the job I do, I say, “There are three reasons: Delaney, Grace and Carly. My three daughters.” And that is what I do every day.

John: That is a great answer. And I am so grateful for the great work that you do because you truly do make an impact, and so does E2, and the work that you do is so important. And I will tell you what, as the world becomes stranger and stranger sometimes, making sure that these great stories get out on the story of your work and E2’s initiatives is more important than ever. Can you share for our listeners who are not familiar with E2, and for our listeners who want to learn more in their own time, you could go to www.e2.org. Can you share a little bit about the background of E2, and the important role that it plays in our world today?

Bob: Absolutely. So E2, John, got started 20 years ago this year, this is our 20th anniversary. We got our start in Northern California. Back when the state of California at that time was considering the legislature, was considering what then was the very first ever tailpipe emissions legislation for vehicles. The first clean cars legislation in the world, not just the United States but the world. And at the time, we had a number of… in California we had the automakers, the petroleum industry, others coming to Sacramento and saying, “Hey, listen lawmakers, if you pass this law, it is going to kill our business. It is going to put American auto industry out of business. It is going to ruin the petroleum industry, and the world is going to go to hell in a handbasket. California is going to float out in the ocean, and it is going to be the end of humanity as we know it.” Kind of a typical argument we get sometimes.

John: Right.

Bob: Well, there was a group of Silicon Valley folks who stood up and said, “Now wait a minute, actually, we know something about innovation, at least. We do not know the car industry necessarily. We know about innovation, and we know about market signals. And we know about markets. And we also know that what the right market signals from government intervention, maybe we can drive innovation in the clean car’s business or in the vehicles business back then. Maybe we can drive innovation in cleaner fuels.” And who knows, and again, this was 20 years ago, John, our founder said, “Who knows maybe those previous thingies that we have been seeing starting to pop up in these hybrid vehicles can be something that is more commonplace with the right laws and regulations in place. And hey, maybe even an electric vehicle someday. We know that is crazy, but electric vehicles might be a thing.” And so these… our founder started going to Sacramento, and bringing a different kind of message to lawmakers. And the message that said, “With the right policy, innovation, and the right policy decisions, we can drive innovation, we can create new markets, we can create jobs. And by the way, we can clean up the dirty air in California and the water, and everything else.” So we won on that policy. And it resulted in California clean car standards which increased mileage standards for vehicles all across the country eventually. And guess what, we have got a lot more hybrids and a lot more electric vehicles on the road these days. Slash, last 20 years from then, John, to today, E2 has expanded to nine chapters across the country. Stretching from New York and New England to Seattle and San Diego where I happen to be, as you know. And we have got about 9000 members and supporters now. And these are business people, our members, our business people not businesses. They come from the gamut of every type of industry you can imagine from clean energy, and real estate to the recycling business to investing. And the one thing they do have in common is that they realize that the economy and the environment are not at odds. They do not have to be at odds. And in fact, they rely on one another. We cannot have a good, strong economy without a good environment.

John: That is true.

Bob: We cannot have a good environment without a strong economy.

John: You know, Bob, there is so many important initiatives that your organization works on on a regular basis. Can you share with our listeners some of the key initiatives that you are focused on right now?

Bob: You bet. You bet. So honestly, our goal has not changed, John, from 20 years ago when we got our start. Our goal, our mission is to advance a clean economy, and to advance policies that are good for our economy, and good for our environment. So right now, one of the most important things we think we can do is to do that, to reach for that mission through expanding clean energy, expanding clean transportation, which, as we know, are the biggest sources of carbon pollution right now in our country, and also huge parts of our economy. So on the federal level, that means right now particularly, focusing on making sure that any economic stimulus that comes out of Congress, and out of Washington, as we face these dire times in our economy right now, make sure that those include policies that will allow our countries to build back, that to build back faster, to build back cleaner, to build back a more resilient economy. We can do that. We can do that through advancing policies that are going to get more clean energy on the ground. We can do that by advancing policies that improve energy efficiency in our buildings, our schools, our offices, our homes. We can do that by advancing policies that help get more of those clean vehicles on the roads. So as horrible as things are right now, and as bad as shape is our economy is in, let us face it, we have never had an opportunity, if you want to call it that is not [inaudible], but we have never had the chance where we have had to stop our economy and restart it again. Why would not we do it in a way that makes it better? We have that opportunity to do that right now. And that is what we work on every single day, trying to tell the story of the importance, and the opportunities of building back our economy better and faster to clean energy, clean transportation.

John: You know, as you have mentioned, and usually you and I are super positive guys. But to just reiterate, we are having this conversation during the COVID-19 tragic period that we are all trying to make our way through and get to the other side on. What are the impacts that COVID-19 has had on E2, and what does that mean for you, the rest of the year as an organization, as you run as you are the executive director of this organization? And what does that mean for you in 2021 and beyond?

Bob: Well, thank you for that. First of all, E2 has been impacted operationally just like every other organization in the country, if not the world, right? And we have had to adapt to that. We typically, I have mentioned we have nine chapters around the country, we typically do chapter events in those chapters, in-person events [inaudible] once for all those chapters. We certainly spend a lot of time in Washington walking the halls of Congress with our business members, or in the state houses in the states that we work at. All of that has come to a stop, of course. But the good news is, like every crisis, there are opportunities. And I think we have learned a lot, and we are doing things different than in some cases, even better. I will give you an example.

John: Yeah.

Bob: We typically a couple, two or three times a year will take anywhere from 12 to 15 business people from around the country to Washington DC to work on clean economy issues, and to talk to lawmakers, and to tell their stories about how policies are needed or existing policies are impacting their companies at the intersection of economy and environment. And you know, there are 12 to 15 business people, and I cannot remember if you have done this with us or not, John, but we will run around Capitol Hill, and we will meet with 60 or 70 officers.

John: Yeah.

Bob: So I will make members of Congress.

John: I have been there for those. That was great.

Bob: Yeah, yeah. Well, as you should remember, they are pretty rushed, and we cover a lot of ground, and [inaudible]. So in the past couple of… in the past month over the course of a couple of weeks, we decided we really needed to get in there and talk to lawmakers about this next economic stimulus, and we have to do it virtually. So thanks to the great staff that I have, we were able to organize nearly 50 business people from around the country, and set up a series of virtual meetings with members of Congress from all across the country to talk about these issues. We ended up meeting with something around 100 members of Congress over the course of a couple of days.

John: Wow!

Bob: Virtually on Zoom meetings. I think [inaudible] to Congress that way. In terms of the networking and bringing our members together, that was a big part of what we did with our in-person meetings. We are doing those differently also. Just last night, we did a really cool thing. We had a film screening, John, screening of a great film called “The Human Element,” that talks about mankind’s role in shaping the climate that we have today. It was done by a guy named James Balog. He is really a well-known documentarian. He did something called “Chasing Ice” as well. But anyway, we had this virtual film screening with more than 100 or so E2 members all across the country. And this interactive dialogue via Zoom with James Balog, the director of this film, and a broader discussion about the policies and so forth that we can help push forward to stop things like the world’s biggest wildfires in California or flooding on the east coast and and all the other issue that we are grappling with with climate change.

John: That is just wonderful. Do you… how old are your daughters now? You mentioned your daughters at the top of the show. How old are those three young ladies now?

Bob: Well, they are a little older. I have got a 14, 16, and a 21 now.

John: Okay. So now they have grown up somewhat since you have made the decision to take over and be the Executive Director of E2, and make the world a better place. And we are living through strange times, COVID-19, and other things that are very troubling for all of us, and as a society here in the United States. But I want to ask you this, this weekend I was with my family. We have just welcomed our first grandchild so I am like you, you know.

Bob: Congratulations!

John: Yeah, thank you. And we are… this is why I do the podcast. This is why I support E2, and great people like you because it is just not enough platforms to get the good word out, to get these important messages out. But I was so hopeful this weekend. I wondered about your family and your children as well. Although, yes, we are living in times that are somewhat overwhelming and somewhat troubling right now. How about SpaceX, and NASA, and the great things that happened this weekend? How- did that… was that a moment for your family, and for you as the Executive Director, and leader, the power of this nation, the power of the invention, and innovation nation that we are so honored that all of us get to be part of, was that something your family enjoyed, and did you have a… were your girls as excited as my children were about it as well?

Bob: Well, I must profess they did not really get into the SpaceX launch. I did myself. And I remember we were talking about journalism. I remember covering SpaceX when it got started and going out to the [inaudible]. Watching those early rocket launches so it was pretty cool for me, personally. What they have noticed, John, we have talked about this at least in our house, [inaudible] a couple of things in this current time frame. The power of people to impact change, and to affect change. We are seeing that in the streets right now, and across the map. And they are understanding that they can, everybody can make a difference. And they should try to make a difference pushing for things that we know are right, and things that we know need to be changed in this country. So that has been really educational, I think, for them and for me. We have also learned from this COVID lockdown a couple of things. First of all, what a blessing it is, frankly, to be able to spend time with each other, unencumbered by crazy stuff like going to school every day, or [inaudible] or getting on an airplane and traveling for work or whatever.

John: Right.

Bob: And we have also realized, I think we are going to increasingly realize not just as a family but as a nation, and ultimately as a world, that this great pause has had an impact on our environment. Carbon emissions are down substantially right now. There is less traffic on the road as we know. And what is happening, we can see downtown LA on any day. We can see the Himalayas from our cities, and in the far east. We were seeing the canals of Venice become cleaner, and our oceans become cleaner almost overnight. And we are seeing things like wildlife pop up in places where they did not pop up before. So I think it has given us a much needed view, I guess, into all of the things we are talking about that are so important when it comes to climate, and clean energy, and environment are theoretical. It is real. [inaudible]

John: That is right.

Bob: And for me, at least, and for my family, it reinvigorates the need to do more.

John: Well, that is well said. But so you are really saying that again, just to reiterate, the pause has been really the proof of concept that we can make an impact, our behavior can make an impact, and the behavior that you are trying to… Yeah, and so let us go over that though. Short term, we had this pause. We are coming out of it now. But there is now, when you listen to people, James Fish was on the other day at CNBC, the CEO of Waste Management, and he said, “Hey, we really believe 30% of America is now going to work for them from their homes.” If that trend holds, and if those numbers are correct, you are saying that long term, we are going to have a cleaner America, a cleaner society here. Less emissions, cleaner air, and all the impacts that those trends bring with it.

Bob: Well, I am hopeful if that will be the case.

John: Right.

Bob: Just to be clear, this is not having a global pandemic is not the way to solve climate change.

John: I am with you. You are right.

Bob: But this pause again, has given us a window into what we can do. Now we need to have the societal fortitude, political will, to keep the positives of what we have seen moving in the right direction without the negatives of a global pandemic to do it. Let us look at travel for instance on what we are talking about. We do not need to ground all of our airplanes. We do not need to quit traveling. We should not, we do not, we cannot quit traveling given the way the world works right now. But you know what? We can fly planes that fly on cleaner fuels. We have the technology to fly as the military is shown fly any airplane, a combination of biofuel that is cleaner than traditional jet fuel. We can do that. We need to make that happen. Let us look at our schools. Right now, we have got 135,000 or so schools that are sitting vacant, John. They have been sitting vacant for a couple of months now. They have been sitting back for several other months. We have also got 600,000 people out of work in clean energy right now who lost their jobs because of this downtrend. Why cannot we get some of those people into those schools in energy efficiency? Make those schools clean or better. Use electricity by the way, saving money for cash strapped states and local school districts. And when those students want to get back to school, they will be in a cleaner, better building because of it. We have got something like 900,000 miles, I believe, of power grid in our country. Two years ago in California, we had the worst wildfire ever in the history of our country because a 100 year-old clip failed on a PG&E tower, sparking the campfire that caused trillions of dollars in economic damage. Why cannot we get electricity and utility workers up on those power lines right now, which by the way, is a lot more than six feet is pretty easy to do social distancing? And let us upgrade our electricity bit grid to make it safer, to make it more efficient, to make our country stronger, more resilient. So when I talk about it, we need to build back our economy better, and we need to build it back faster. We can do this. We just need leadership in Washington and our states to make that happen. And that is our role in E2, to bring business voices to bear, to try, and change some of those policies, to move our country forward in a smarter way.

John: And your daughters are still young, and my children are somewhat older but they are also part of the generation behind us. I have a 34 year-old and a 28 year-old, and we are very interested in making the world a better place as well. What is your advice to those young people that are listening that want to be part of the new clean, green economy? They do not want to just make a paycheck, they want to make a difference. They want to make an impact every day when they wake up. And two, they feel a little hopeless right now where we are politically in the United States in terms of leadership. What is your advice to them?

Bob: We are at a really, we are seeing some really interesting things, in my opinion, these days. And that is your… you can speak to this as well. But I have talked to a lot of technology companies, and big employers, the ones you would think about when you think about big tech companies and others. And what I have been hearing from some of them, and what we have been saying at some of them publicly and otherwise, is that young people today as we know, just do not want to go and get a paycheck, and punch a clock for eight hours a day and go about their business. This is not the 50’s anymore, if you will, or the 40’s or other times in our past. People want to go to work at places that are going to make a difference in the world that are going to… they come with value. And the cool thing is that a lot of the major societal shifts that we have seen in our country in recent years have been driven apart by employees or companies, demanding change to those companies. Look at gay marriage, for instance. A lot of that started that big employee, big companies, where gay couples were looking for health benefits. We are starting to see some of that now. Increasingly, seeing more of that, and employees demanding young people straight into the workforce, demanding that the companies that they work for do more on the environment, for the environment, and for climate because they are in a position to do so. And companies gratefully are listening in a lot of cases. So what I would say to my daughters, to your kids, and other other people that are coming into the workplace right now, get involved. Look for ways to bring your voice to the change that you want to make in this world. Because otherwise, you are going to be stuck with somebody else’s vision of the world. And that might not be the one that is best for the world.

John: Wow, that is important information. And I hope our young generation behind us are taking heed of this and getting involved, and getting registered, and going out, and exercising your right to vote. I mean, we really need that now more than ever. Talk a little bit about your goals for the second half of this year, for 2021, as the Executive Director. What are you really excited about right now? Given that we had this pause, and it was unintended, and as you said, though, I mean, when they have even taken the satellite pictures, photos of the world, the smog over China, and other parts of the world beyond the United States has dissipated greatly. So the change is real, the pushback on the ability for us to make a difference to make the world a cleaner, better place is real. As you said, it has been proven in this pause, petri dish pause, beta test area. What are you now going to really… what is the second half of the year look like for you, for your focus?

Bob: I think our focus in E2 is going to continue to be building back our economy better, and building it faster. With this, we only got 20% almost unemployment in this country right now. As I mentioned, there about the clean energy space at least there are the first in March and April alone 600,000 clean energy workers, energy efficiency people’s solar wind. By the way, we are talking about electricians. We are talking about HVAC technicians. We are talking about the people who put insulation in your attic, and better windows on the outside of your buildings. 600,000 people lost their jobs. Well, we are headed to what looks like about 850,000 clean energy job losses by the end of this month. And these jobs are not going to come back overnight, none of these jobs are going to come back overnight. And we are going to be talking about jobs in the economy, not just at E2, but as a society and as a country. For yes, all of the rest of this year and probably the year after that, this is going to be a multi-year economic recovery. And again, our focus is going to be making sure that we can recover. Learn the lessons that we learned in this pause. Learn and take the time that we have had to do things better, to build back better, and to have a stronger, cleaner, more resilient economy, for those kids of ours and others.

John: You know, Bob, as you said at the top of the show you were a 20-year career journalist before you took over as Executive Director of E2. And, as I have said to you both on the air and off the air, the reason I do this podcast and I have been doing it since ‘07, is because there is just not enough outlets covering the good news, the important news. It is more of the tragic, and the sensational news that sells soap rather than other important news like what you are doing, and E2 is doing. What do you see in the future now that news has become more democratized as ever, and a reporter is a young person with a cell phone, really? How does the media, and public education play in terms of environmental health, and the growth of this movement in the United States, but even more broadly around the world with the Greta Thunberg’s? I mean, we have our legacy Jane Fonda here, who is still fighting the great fight. But now you have the advent of young, brave young people like Greta Thunberg. How do you see now the interrelationship of journalism, media, and the growth of the great mission that E2 has?

Bob: Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate that, John. When people talk about the media, it means a lot of different things. To me it is the communications tool. It is like the phone I am talking to you right now on, it is like, that we turn on at night. It is like the newspaper we pick up in the morning. It is a communications tool. The good news, I think, is that the tools of communication have become more accessible to, obviously, everybody. So people like Greta Thunberg can get a message out more broadly on their own. Or let us say the president of the United States can get a message out more broadly on his own. That is not necessarily about, I think it is a good thing. When it comes to journalism and the practice of selling and explaining the news, and what is happening in our world, as a professional way, and when I say professional I mean objective and well-thought out, and well-researched, and well-reasoned. That is a little bit different. Journalism, unfortunately, right now is under siege in this country like never before. I do not understand why people are not more upset about what is happening to the first amendment in this country, as they are the second amendment, and every other amendment in our constitution, because it is the fundamental. It is a fundamental part of the foundation of what our democracy is built on. But when I went to journalism school, and when I worked as a journalist, we were always told or taught that journalism and news should be a reflection of the society that surrounds us, and what is happening in our world, its history on a daily basis, right?

John: Right.

Bob: And it kind of gets to your point. I do not know that journalists for a long time did a good enough job, telling the story of climate change, and telling the story of the environmental impacts that were causing to the world that we live in. I think they can still do a much better job of telling the economic benefits and the cost of climate change. They are not just, John, when the hurricane caused billions of dollars of damage in the Carolinas or a wildfire wipes out the community in Northern California, those are the obvious things. Journalism and journalists, I think, need to do a better job. And I think they are beginning to do a better job of telling the broader story, the scope and the suite, if you will, of the costs of increasing asthma rates, for instance, among kids from admissions. The cost of something that I know is dear to your heart because of chemicals leaching out from electronics into water, the water that we drink. Telling a better story and putting it in an economic frame of the cost of climate inaction. And very importantly, the economic benefits of action on climate. The savings from some of the things that we have been talking about the policy that we work on and others that have really done a lot to improve the economy more, to improve the economy, and definitely to, than they have to hurt the economy, despite what you hear from some people.

John: Well, Bob, any final thoughts before we have to say goodbye for this episode?

Bob: Well, the one thing I was gonna mention, John, is again, we focus a lot on the economic benefits of policies, and the economic cost of [inaudible]. And I think it is important for people to realize what that looks like.

John: Please. Yeah.

Bob: I will give you a couple of examples.

John: Absolutely.

Bob: The Clean Air Act was signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. The fundamental law to keep our air clean. Since then, these are shown that the returns on what we have gotten from the Clean Air Act economically have exceeded the cost 30 to 1. But that is another one. For every dollar we invested in cleaning up dirty power plants, for instance, for putting catalytic converters on cars, for instance, for every dollar we have invested in cleaning up our air, this led to $30 in benefits in jobs, in investments, in reduced healthcare costs. About twice as many heck of a lot easier for all of us to breathe. We can walk around downtown LA now without a mask on. Well, actually we are [inaudible] now. But it is not because of [inaudible].

John: Right.

Bob: So many years. If you look at renewable energy standards, we now have renewable energy standards in 29 states in this country that require utilities to get some portion, some bigger than others, some portion of their power from renewable sources like solar, wind, et cetera. What does that done? That has created thousands of jobs in those industries, in those states. It has helped clear our air. We do not have to get that money from coal-fire, excuse me, we do not have to get that energy from coal-fired power plants anymore. So let us clean up our air, let us clean up our water. And by the way, it has become the cheapest power available in many parts of the country. So now we are at a place where we need to restart our economy again and rebuild our economy again. And to me when we think about that and look at the economic benefits versus the economic costs, we have to look at what we know. And what we know is the last time our country faced an economic tailspin like this was of course in 2008. And when you look at what we did in response to that, the 2009 American Recovery Reinvestment Act, we invested through that about $90 billion in this clean energy program in this country through that. What did we get for that? We got about 100,000 solar wind clean energy projects all across the country that created thousands of construction jobs and almost immediately killing America to work. We weatherize a million homes through the Department of Energy’s weatherization program. What do we get for that? We got those energy efficiency workers back on the job. And by the way, we reduced the monthly power bill for a lot of cash strapped consumers and businesses at a time when they needed it the most. Through daily loan programs, we jumpstart it nearly 500 clean energy and clean tech companies in America. These are companies like Tesla, John, that now has 45,000 employees in our country and obviously revolutionized the market for electric vehicles. But there are also startup companies, startup companies focusing on solar and wind innovation that in addition to creating thousands of other jobs themselves, also expanded American innovation in those areas to the point where now, the technology that they developed 10 years ago has made solar and wind the cheapest power available in many parts of the country. So we have done this before. We are at a precipice in our country again economically, we are hurting, we are in a bad place. But the past show that we can do the right thing, and we can build it back better, we can build it back faster, and we can build it back smarter and more resilient. And that is what I hope we do.

John: And we are going to do that and coal is not the answer. Let us just be clear on that. Coal is not the future.

Bob: Absolutely.

John: Well said and those are great examples. And for our listeners out there that want to reach Bob and his great organization and his colleagues, and join 9000 other environmental entrepreneurs, please check out www.e2.org. He is Bob Keefe, he is Executive Director, he is my friend, he is making an impact and making the world a better place every day. And thank you again, Bob, for being with us on the Impact podcast.

Bob: Thank you, John.