Dr. Sarah Mitchell started her career as a rural family physician. When a personal health crisis forced her to step away, she saw firsthand how broken the communication systems were for patients trying to navigate care in underserved communities.
That experience led her to found Community Health Partners, which has grown from a single clinic to a network serving 43,000 patients annually across rural America. In this conversation, she shares the communication infrastructure changes that made the biggest difference.
Key moments
- 2:15 – What “hitting rock bottom” looked like for Dr. Mitchell
- 8:30 – The communication gaps she discovered as a patient
- 15:45 – Building the first clinic with SMS-first engagement
- 23:10 – How automated texting reduced no-shows by 34%
- 31:00 – Scaling to 43,000 patients: what broke and what held
- 38:20 – Advice for leaders in mission-driven organizations
Don't be scared. If you're in the room, you deserve to be in the room. If they say a word you've never heard, look it up and continue to grow. Do not feel like you have not earned it or that you don't deserve it. Work hard, do the work, and know that God will take care of the rest. That's what I would say to myself. And that hasn't failed me [Music] yet. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Heart and Hustle podcast. Now, I'm sitting across this table from another amazing leader. Today I have Sera Barlo who is the CEO of the YW.CA in El Paso, Texas. Now it's important to also recognize that you guys are one of the largest YW.CA in the country. Sera, welcome to the show. I'm incredibly excited for you to be here. Well, thank you. It's such an honor to be on your show today and for you to reach out. I look forward to talking with you today. You know, it's it's interesting because I have the pleasure of sitting across this table, if you will, with amazing leaders who truly represent Heart and Hustle. And I want to really take the opportunity today while we're sitting here to really understand and communicate to the audience what Heart and Hustle means to you. And so, one thing that I want to kind of share about your background is that you grew up in a military family. You had early aspirations to be a veterinarian or a dentist, but here we are today as a former healthcare executive. now we're the CEO of the YW.CA. Let's talk a little bit about those early days and you wanting to be a veterinarian or a dentist and also growing up in a military family and how do you think that kind of shaped your worldview? So having military life and military parents, you know, it definitely has me very global minded. I'm very international broading. I don't think just about America. I you know I want to know what's happening in Europe, what's happening in the Middle East because these are all I understand the interconnectedness of us in the world. But growing up with military parents, I have learned the qualities of hard work. I I have seen my dad work, you know, ridiculously um late hours going to the field for, you know, exercises. I spent most of my time over in um Germany. The longest place I lived into where I live now is in Deutsland, Germany. So I was up there, you know, you know, while the wall was still up and you know, there was still cold war remnants. And so it's I I've I've seen my dad prepare for the field and, you know, in case he ever needed to go to war. And so I've learned from having military parents how to work really hard. And my dad and my mom hadn't gone to college while I was still in high school at the time. And so um first generation college I my parents were telling me as a young girl it's important for you to do well in school and go to college. And so I will say I've learned about hard work and the importance of education from my parents in that lifestyle early early on early on. I mean you had experience of I love the fact that you talked about you have like an international or global perspective on things. You know I've had the privilege of living in quite a few different places during my lifetime. I was born in Seattle. I grew up in Detroit. Spent some time in South Carolina during college. Moved to Las Vegas. Hawaii. Vegas. Now I'm back in Hawaii at the time of recording this. And the benefit that I think that comes with that is you see so many different types of people. You see so many different perspectives. You see how different people think about certain opportunities and certain things in their life. Do you feel like that global perspective of dealing with so many different types of people has kind of shaped who you are here today? Oh, for sure. I mean, just last night, I'm up here watching uh uh normally my Korean dramas, but I'm now migrated because I'm running out of them. So, I'm now listening to Mandarin and my Chinese dramas and reading the subtitles because, you know, I mean, I find them interesting. And when you need an escape, you know, there's something about their simplicity. There's something about, you know, the cleanness of the art, you know, there's not all of this killing and drama. I mean, if I looked for it, I'm sure I could find it. But the things that I choose to watch, um, I I don't think that if I had not necessarily lived in a lot of places that I would be seeking, you know, Asian dramas to pass my to help me pass and unwind after a busy day. And so I think not only just from the things I like to to experience, but even the food that I eat. Like I raised my family the same way. I have three teenagers. Well, I guess I no longer have three teenagers. I now have a 20year-old and two teenagers. So, uh, you know, but in my household, I'm from Louisiana originally, and you know, they've grown up on, you know, red beans and rice and gumbo and that type of thing, but it's not crazy or uncommon in our household that, you know, I'm making yakasobi or, you know, I'm making authentic orange chicken, uh, you know, um, Chinese orange chicken and fried rice because those are all the types of foods that I've experienced through traveling and have learned how to make them. And so, you know, it's kind of a hodgepodge of of everything. Even my house is that way. I have so many different countries. Every country I've been to, there's a little piece that kind of all embeds into. It's just like a relaxing vibe. So, yeah. I It's It's who I am. I'm a weird black girl. Let me just say I love it. You're well experienced, you know. I want to here's a here's a personal question for you. When you think about living in Deutseland, right, for the longest time and that you've lived in another place other than where you're at right now in El Paso, how did you replant yourself in a new place after living in somewhere for so long like Germany? I know it's a weird question, but this is something that often I think about is like when you move to a new place, you have the ability to reinvent yourself, if you will. You have a new environment, new habits, new ways in which you can present yourself to the people who you meet. So, how do you kind of approach those big moves and like kind of replanting your roots? You know, you make it sound so eloquent and, you know, so thoughtprovoking, but the truth is being in the military, having been in the military and having been a military brat, I didn't have much of a choice. So, when my dad was told he needed to go somewhere, it's like, hey, suck it. You know, you know, it's in it. suck it up. Put your chin up, you know, cry a little and say goodbye to your friends. And we're on to our next adventure. And when I actually joined the military, you know, later on in and after college, because I was a cadet, it was kind of like, where to next? Where where are you going to send me? Oh, you're going to send me to Korea? Oh, you're going to send me to Afghanistan. I really couldn't say no. So, what I've learned is to adapt and to be flexible, to look at every space as an opportunity. And yes, I mean, having now been in a city for 14 years, it's it's a little bit weird to to be stuck or stay I say stuck. You can tell I travel a lot. Yeah. To stay in a place so long. Everything you do and say matters. people will remember you from like I didn't have the life where people would go like oh yeah I remember in elementary school back when we were when I go to visit my parents even though I call that my hometown I didn't go to I didn't go to school there but for one year and so people don't know what I looked like with or without braces or they don't know my ugly duckling face when I had a Jerry curl You know, it's like they don't know. I don't have to live those moments down. I was in South Carolina when I had a Jerry Curl looking like Ozone. So, all all this to say is it's pretty cool. And so, you don't have to be in the military to reset and to reestablish yourself or you don't have to be a military brand brat. But what it does do, if you get the opportunity, it does build up a lot of resilience. And as far as rebranding, you don't really have to rebrand yourself if you are a good person and you're a nice person. Your past won't haunt you. Your past will bless you. And so, um, all this to say, I'm still great friends with my military family. you know, with the modernization of social media, we're all connected again and we started having um high school reunions um every 3 years since social media has really taken off and and connected our lives. So, I would say it the rebranding isn't necessary, but the reset is nice because sometimes you need a change in environment to give you the courage to change, but not because you have to have a change environment to have the courage to change. It really just depends on you doing what you want, what you need to do. And sometimes the change just acts as a facilitator or a catalyst, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. If the Heart and Hustle podcast has ever sparked any idea or made you think differently, do us a favor. Make sure to guys share this, post it on LinkedIn, or even text that nonprofit friend that you just have. Whatever works. This is what keeps the conversation going and allows us to just grow this community together. Seriously, we appreciate you. Yeah. I think about the different places that I've lived as kind of chapters of the story of me, right? There are some wild chapters. There are some younger chapters. There are some chapters that were a little bit tougher, but at the end of this whole journey, it's going to be a beautiful story that I've written. And I just look at it as an opportunity, which you kind of said there as well. Why' you say you have the ability to look at things as opportunities rather than challenges? Yes. I used to, you know, every time my dad would say, "Oh, we're getting ready to move to California or we're getting ready to go back to Germany." And I would be like, "But I'm leaving my friends." And I used to be like upset with him because you know you're causing me to have to do this and but it's and my mom is a great person and she you know she would remind me what this really is offering not only me but our family and you know she would remind me of some of the cool things we'll get to do once we get to the new location. So, she seemed to always, you know, smooth it out. And then after a while, I realized my dad is just providing for us. And he's a pretty cool guy that I'm fortunate to have. And so, you know, when you're young and that age, every, you know, eventually that too will pass. And, you know, you're on to the new space. And who knew you were going to be camping in Holland or spring breaking in Spain or you know spring breaking in Yugoslavia or you know those are sometimes no risk no reward but basically I was just a passenger on the ride fortunate enough to just get the experience and the opportunities. It sounds like an amazing life journey. You know one of the I think it's important for us to kind of fill in some of the gaps here. here. So we talk about after college, right? We join the military, right? And we have our our career there. So what happens beyond our military career? What are we doing inside the military, right? Are we in healthcare in any way or what does that look like for you? Yes. I got commissioned as an Army officer to serve my scholarship time off. I was dead set that I would only do my eight years to pay off of my scholarship. I didn't want my parents to have to pay for my college. And so, um, as I was doing my time and I came in as an medical service core officer, which basically translates to being a healthc care administrator. I um and you can do so many things in healthcare administration, but I specialized I went to a special program probably midcareer to become one of those people that could run hospitals and so it's called the Army Baylor program. It's through Baylor University. So I got selected to go to that program and the rest was history. I finally had reached the space. I was determined my first duty assignment which was in Washington DC at the Walter Reed the original you know you know center of healthc care u for military medicine. I was determined that I was going to run a hospital one day and I was told that the only way I could run a hospital like that or of that size in the military was through the army bor program. So, I just deposited that in my brain and it's like, you know, as soon as I can sign up for that, I'm gonna go and they're going to accept me. So, it takes a little while for you to be old enough to apply, but I applied. I got accepted. One of the 40 people that got accepted across the military healthcare system. They only they they only get a small group because it's a basically it's a it's a Baylor University master's degree that you don't pay for. you pay for it with your time. So, it's very selective. But I was fortunate enough to be one of the 40 people um selected in my year and I went and I successfully graduated with my masters in healthcare administration and after that it's all things hospital and so I spent my career learning and working my way up the ladder in army hospitals or joint hospitals and and um till I eventually you know got to the really really big ones you having fun doing doing big big army things. So, here's here's my question. When did you have like your aha moment that you knew healthcare was going to be your thing? Oh, I knew I knew healthcare was going to be my thing. when I was in like elementary school, like that time where I said a dentist or a veterinarian, it was going to be medical because, you know, when you're coming from, you know, working parents, you want something that's going to be that's going to make your life easy or, you know, you, as my husband says now, pick something hard and and he puts some explicatives in it, But pick pick something hard and do a good job at it. And so I wanted lifechanging material wealth. You know, coming from parents that at that point had only gone to high school. I knew they had kept preparing me to be a college graduate. And I understood that if I became a college graduate, I could make six figures. And in that time in my life, I didn't know anyone making six figures that looked like me. But it was something that I I I understood that that was a lifecher. And I wanted one to make my parents proud, but two, I wanted to have that life-changing experience and I had the foundation for it. So yes, I knew at a very young age I was going to be in healthcare. Was it going to be a dentist, a veterinarian? You was gonna pay me some money. You were gonna get paid for all the time that you put in, right? You gonna pay me. I will make sure you get a job that you can pay me. You can't take away my knowledge. So, I didn't know I wanted to run the hospital though until I went to Walter Reed and I was like, "What do you do?" Colonel Farley, that was his name. He was running the department of surgery. And I I came in to be an assistant administrator with him. And I was like, "How did you get this job?" And he's like, "Well, I went to this program." And I was like, "I want it. I'm gonna do I'mma run not only the department of surgery, I'm gonna run this hospital." And then funny, the center closed. Walter Reed moved to Maryland and it became um Bethesda, Walter Reed Naval Bethesda Hospital. And ironically, when I got promoted in my last rank, I did get a call from my consultant. And my consultant offered me a job in four places. One of them was in San Antonio, one of them was at Walter Reed, one of them was in El Paso, and one of them was in Shape Belgium. And he asked which one did I want? And I said, you know, it's full circle because I said I wanted to run Walter Reed and just getting the opportunity to take on it would have been equivalent to being like a a COO um at Walter Reed and I got that offer and I and I told my consultant that I appreciated it, but for the space that I was in with my family, I was going to make the choice to stay in El Paso. and I did. And do you ever ever have any second thoughts about that process of staying in El Paso when you kind of set that dream up for yourself? Yeah, absolutely not. No, this is um it's one of the best decisions I've made. El Paso is a special community on a border. It's very we call it a a a small big town or a big small town. A big small town. It's over 800,000 people about 200,000 cross between Wades and Mexico every day either going there or coming from there to work and and so very friendly. It feels it feels to me more like having been in other countries as opposed to being, you know, in the Paso de Norte region, which is what we call it, tri-state. You know, you're between the state of New Mexico, the state of Texas, and the state of Seedat, um, Mexico. So, I love it. Um, the community is very embracing, and I I can't think of a lot of places in the US I would want to stay beside here. And it's very it it has been not only amazing embracing me but my family and I don't know I just love this community. I mean you you spoke incredibly highly. There was one thing that you talked about last time you talked about the El Paso way when people are nice to you right and the community that comes together and it reminded me a lot of kind of the culture here on Aahu in Hawaii. Very family oriented, very community-based. Everybody's incredibly friendly and it just makes you feel a different way from living in a place like LA or, you know, New York or something like that where people kind of just like run past you. How important is a sense of community and the impact that you make in the work that you do every single day? I think it drives me. I I will tell you as I've gotten older, it's probably in my top three like purpose driven motivators. Um before you know I was just about being successful, trying to become successful, trying to grow and climb up the corporate ladder. But now community is what drives me making um helping others making I used to say all the time that my job was I felt that I was a a bridge builder. I I would a lot of times be one of the first. So as soon as I crossed the bridge, I made sure that I connected the route for other people. And and now that I've gotten older, I I I think maybe not so much um a bridge builder before cuz I'm now I'm a door opener. You know, I I've graduated from having to build the bridge to let me open a door and let me connect you to this person. Let me open a door, let me connect you to that person. And it's fulfilling. So, I hope I answered that question properly. You did. I I grew up uh with one of my favorite toys when I was a kid was called a connected set, right? Where you had all these different pieces, but you couldn't build anything if you didn't have the circular gray pieces that connected everything together. Yeah. When I think about as I get older, the ability just to connect people, the ability to be a door opener is such an amazing opportunity, but you only get there if you've built relationships, if you truly invest into other people, and you're willing to kind of think about things on a longer time horizon. I hope that kind of makes sense. No. Yeah. And my kids had that set. So, I'm like I'm thinking of the little the gray and the yellow and the pieces that were making the little Yes. I'm familiar with with that for sure. So, we're we're a a healthc care leader, healthcare executive, right? We're, you know, working in in healthcare systems, right? One of the things that I have to ask you is during the pandemic, right? We also talked about in our previous conversation how hard hit the city of El Paso was the community in general. How do you kind of keep like a cool head in mind when you're going through those challenging times as so many healthcare executives and leaders did? again, you know, um not like you had a lot of choice. It's either you were gonna ball up in the fetal position and, you know, hope it goes away or you got in the fight and tried to make a difference. And so I'm not a fetal position kind of girl on a regular basis. So, you know, I did the best thing I could do. I'm a I'm a very strong critical thinker coming from the military. if you give me a problem, I'm going to come up with a solution almost to a fault. I know everybody doesn't always want to answer, but I'm always thinking of an answer. And so when CO came and was working through our community and lots of people were losing their lives, you know, we were working together as a community trying to figure out how to care for them as El Paso was amongst um and I've heard some even say the hardest hit city. Um, I always go to New York first before I think about El Paso, but I do know um, we were definitely one or two in the country. And, um, I mean, I just started working with smart people and looking at the resources that we had and you like, "Oh, we're out of O beds." Not O, not O. We're out of ER beds. Okay. So, how are we going to make new ER beds? You're like, oh, they're in the hallway. Okay. So, not we don't want them in the hallway. What space do we have? What how do you make an ER? And what do we end up ultimately? You know, the government came in and helped us set up tents outside of our regular ER. So, now we have two ERs. We're like, "Oh, we need ICU units and beds." So we worked with the company that I was working for and we got rest, you know, ventilators and respirators and everything else you needed to let's create another ICU, let's create a step down ICU, let's create we created a lot of things to help people. Yeah, we just made made it work. Um, you don't really know at the time how you are pulling from yourself, how you're exhausting yourself, how you are, you know, probably taking off minutes of your life with the level of stress that you're carrying because you're seeing people lose their lives. You have people who are sad because they want to see their loved one and their loved ones are on their last breath and and you can't safely let them in the room. So, they're cussing you out and calling you anything but a child of God cuz you won't let them see their dying member because you can't risk them dying. It was a tough time. I probably like I probably still need therapy, right? I'm like I probably am going to sign up for some therapy because it was an emotional time. And so you got to release that so you can live your best life. But I know like so many other healthcare executives, you know, we we went another route when we had a chance and an opportunity and once I would never leave my team in c crisis or chaos like as the military says, you never leave a a fallen soldier down. But when my hospital was back on its feet and I looked at the toll it had taken not only on me but my family, it's time to go. And so thus comes the nonprofit and this is the place where we're at now. Yeah. So so let's talk about some of the some of the differences, right? If you're, you know, a highly functioning, highly successful healthcare executive, you're used to running highly efficient teams, right? You're used to putting people in positions where they can be successful. You're dealing with crisis like we talked about. Now we come to the nonprofit space. So first the question is why come to the YW.CA? And second, what are some of the differences that you've noticed? Oh, I did not choose the YW.CA. I'm gonna say that to say that it chose me because it was not my plan. Uh, am I happy? Do I love what I do? Absolutely. But I would not have been smart enough to come to the YW.CA on my own, honestly. I mean, just, you know, a highly reimbured healthc care executive and probably had just made the most money I've ever made in my life, you know, working through a very busy time and hospital history. Covid hospitals made money this you know that's people are in healthcare you know make money while you know while other people are combating sickness and disease and that was a very high um sick and disease time in the simplest lay layman's terms and so there was a lot and I would have thought considering knowing my background where I wanted to have wealth changing career, you know, why would I come to a nonprofit because you do not make the same amount of money, let me just say. But I will tell you um you know once you feel like you've reached your goals like I say to people I mentor if I were 25 again I would at 25 try to determine and set a goal of whoever if you're partnered or married or whatever your situation is um when you partner up with someone or or if you choose not to just determine how much is enough. So that I'm sorry I need to I need to interject this. One of my mentors one time asked me a question back in 2021. Um just as we were dealing with the things in the pandemic and I was running a tellahalth company at that point in time. So yes, you're right. When crisis occurs, we do need to kind of lean into our expertise in those spaces. But he said, Kenan, you have to ask yourself at one point in time, how small is big enough? because you talk about these gigantic goals for yourself, but are those truly the things that are going to be fulfilling for you? And that really helped me kind of look at my world in a different lens. How small is big enough? Well said. Very, very much in that same thread. How much is enough? Because I can work myself to the bone. You know, if I had several million, you know, now do I need a hundred million? Do I need a trillion? Do I you know what? How much is enough? Are you going to work yourself to your dying day always trying to get to the next level or are you going to say that this is enough for me and I'm going to do what makes me completely happy? Because oftent times you're working for something but not necessarily towards what's bringing you joy. And so I think I had finally like got an understanding that all of this, you know, the nice tiles, the nice car, you know, the the designer bags and the, you know, the shoes and all of that, that's great. But if you miserable and not happy, like why you working so hard? What you need? Did you ever have one of those Did you ever have one of those moments where you put you know we get excited when we set goals for oursel like I'm going to get this bag. I'm going to get a new car. I'm going to buy my son or my children a car or my daughter a car. Right. And then you accomplish those things and they don't exactly feel as fulfilling as you thought they were going to when you first set out that that mission for yourself. Yeah. I experienced that at a young age. which I was 26 24 and my roommate at the time um was incredibly successful and he was making a couple hundred,000 a month in a business that he was running out of a small room in the top of our house together. And he purchased um a brand new Tesla and for a long time I always thought to myself, when I can do that, I'm going to be I'm going to be happy cuz that means I've made it. But then I accomplished that and I got the car and I'll tell you, one of the scariest moments that I've ever had was when that thing got delivered and I went to go pick it up and it felt like just another day and I was like, "Wow, do I need something bigger to stuff into this hole of unsatisfaction inside of me and that was terrifying." So, how do you kind of deal with that? I stopped chasing the money and I started chasing the purpose. And so, I'm regardless, I'm a servant. Like I don't like saying the word servant leader, but I serve people. I've always served people. So I'm not going to stop trying to explain why I serve people. Like beforehand, I'd be like, "Oh, I feel guilty cuz I want to help people. I, you know, no, I serve people. That's what that's who I am." And so for me it is more about watching someone else reach their goal or come into their own strength or or become empowered that really gives me the truest satisfaction because it becomes a multiplier. The more people that I can open up them to themselves the more people they're going to make a difference with. So, you know, we're all interconnected if we choose to be. And so, I I deal with walking away from that need to recognize if I don't make another penny, if everybody, you know, stops doing what they do as for the Barlo household, we still going to be all right. And so, as Kendrick would say, we going to be all right. Um, so I really now just work on trying to help others and really sharing what I've learned. I've had great mentors and great teachers and leaders, you know, impart their knowledge, their wisdom. I've had bad ones that have taught me, I don't want to be like that ever. So, let me not. And so coming to the YWCA, I really just wanted to bring my collection of leadership and try to turn uh a nonprofit with a mentality and the word poverty was this poverty mentality was you know told to me when I first started this job. So I have come here working with our team to move us from a poverty mentality to being in the business of social advocacy. And so teaching my team that we are in a business and we provide a service of social advocacy and we can only provide as much advocacy as we can raise in business. And so we learn the better we do in business the more we can give. It's like paying your tithes. So, all that to say, the more we earn, the more we can give back. And that's really what a nonpower a nonprofit is. It's not that you don't make money. It's not that you don't generate revenue. It's that that you're in a mission of making sure that you're giving back as much as you earn or you trying to earn as much that so you can give back. And that's usually the story for nonprofits, trying to make it so you can earn enough to really serve the community and meet their needs. And that's where I am. I'm trying to make as much as we can as a YWCA so that we can meet the needs of our community. I'm not just trying to do services that I want to do. I'm actually going out and like, what do you need? You need more housing. Okay. You need more child care. You need more after school. Well, if you need it, choose me and let me show you why we're the best. So, we're really working on being the first choice and being in the business of social advocacy. And that's been that's been a change a paradigm shift because, you know, a lot of us that are in nonprofit are relying on grants and the world of grants, particularly now federal grants, that's a word. Um, you know, we've had a lot of changes since January and so we are um really just trying to make sure we can do as much as we can with what we have and working to grow the business to do more. Why do you think we a lot of people in the nonprofit space come from that poverty mentality? How did that come about and why do you think that's so prominent? Now, that's a great question. I part of this is part of it is you you and it's not to offend but and it's I hope I don't but part of it is a lot of times you get people who want to help others but they don't have a sense of business acumen but they continue to help others and so you know I may have come in at this person but now I'm a manager and I believe in helping others oh now I'm you know now I'm a a a associate director but I believe in helping others but in nonprofits not all of them depending on the size require you to grow your business knowledge require you to go to school and you know get a master's or require you to have advanced degrees. So a lot of times you have people with kind hearts that are mission focused and mission based trying to help people but what you need is the resources too. So I just said recently, you know, in nonprofits there has to be more emphasis on the business develop, not business development, but on the the what's the word I'm looking for? The fact that it is a business and you have to run a nonprofit like a business and not like a community service project. And that's where I think there's there are more and more people recognizing that and particularly now because funding depending on what types of services you provide, it's it's unpromised. It's not guaranteed. Well, it never is, but it's even more doubtful in the current environment that we're operating in. Yeah. It's really important to recognize that nonprofit is a tax designation, right? It's not meaning we're not going to make money as an organization. And this is one of the biggest fallacies that I see so many people falling victim to is like, hey, if we make money, that makes us bad. But if you make money, you have the ability to actually inject that capital and those services back into the community in which you serve. So it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it takes a complete paradigm shift to be able to kind of approach everything that way because the helping sphere of nonprofits often doesn't think that maybe there's a subconscious, I guess, say like identity of like, well, I'm a helper. That doesn't mean I need money. You know what I mean? Right. No, that's exa You have to be businessminded to run a nonprofit. And if you're running a nonprofit and you're not thinking about scale, you're not thinking about interoperability, you're not t thinking about leveraging resources, there's so much that you should be thinking because the better you do in the business, the more you can provide to your community. And we are relying on fundings from philanthropic donors. We are relying on grants. That cannot be how you are majority supported. And that's that's that's the challenge. What can you do on the business side that will give you enough income and revenue that will allow you to give to those that are in need or to help those that are trying to help themselves? And so it's a balance and and it is it's probably a new awakening for nonprofits because typically in America we help people who are in need and especially with like the new administration and things that we're seeing, right? I mean there's definitely also a need for us to think about these organizations as businesses, right? That can prove the impact that they're making and just getting to another year of funding, if you will, from grants and donors is not true impact, right? just staying afloat does not impact, but progressing forward and having an impact in your community is impact, right? And and I think that the more nonprofits get to the level of becoming closer to being sustainable probably the more philanthropic the community would be because the the limited amount of dollars that do go around. You know, if you only need like to close your gap like about this much and this organ this other organization only needs so much then you know it's easy to help you and help you and help you and help you and a few but if you are running a service and you need this much. That's a really good point. Yeah. Only you know you can only help a couple of those people before all the money's gone. So the better we do the more people we can help. That's the bottom line. When when you think about, you know, how business has changed in the recent years, a lot of the conversations that I kind of end up having here on the podcast are about how do we leverage things like technology, things like AI to help us be more impactful so we can serve on our mission, right? To take the redundant tasks that weigh our teams down, off their table, off their plate, and then put them in the position of higher leverage so they can impact the community. How are you thinking about this new wave of technology, especially coming from health care systems that are for-profit and you guys are actually innovating? So, what do you think is going on in the nonprofit space and how are you preparing for the future? Oh my goodness, you must have like been listening to me yesterday. I was at I I sit on an advisory board for the University of Texas and the Department of Education and uh which is at risk right now from a federal perspective. But um we were talking about how nonprofits could potentially benefit from the newer things that are out there like artificial intelligence. This was a conversation I had with a gentleman on the committee with me who works at Microsoft and he was telling me that there is a lot out there but the question is where are you as a nonprofit? Are you digitized yet? You know or you know there are still nonprofits including I have programs that are still writing things on paper getting them from parents. Feels like 2014 before EHRs were deployed you know. Ex exactly. So I mean if you look across if you look across just nationally to find out where nonprofits are they often don't invest a lot in infrastructure software and those types of things. So that is one of the things because we were we needed to be modernized. So this past two years with me being here and working with our team, you know, we've created master plans for modernization and we have gone in and moved to the cloud and certain things and we're doing all of the things that will prepare us. But we're we're talking, you know, we're talking like we've gone from being on a bicycle to like we now may be on we we may have moved up to a Harley, but we we are so far from a Tesla. So, will there be opportunities for AI? There will be, but we're still trying to figure out some of the basics, you know, like queuing systems for for your phone calls and just making sure that you're queued up and moving people to the right division and that your scripts are right for your customer calls. There's just so much opportunity. But again, Kenan, you have to remember we have not always been operating, you know, just as an industry as a whole. There by far there's going to be those that are doing phenomenal at it and they're outliers and then there are some that you know just created a nonprofit because it was a cool thing. But somewhere in the middle, there's still a tremendous gap from where nonprofits are from a digitized perspective um to where they have the potential to be with where we are with AI and and chat GBT and all of the things that we can add to make our lives easier. We're still writing on paper. So, yeah, totally. I totally get it. No, not yet. Not quite. I think it's uh it's super important for us to approach these new pieces of technology and these new chapters of business, right, with the lens of curiosity because when we look at things through a lens of curiosity, we think about how can this work here, right? Or what areas can this technology impact our organization rather than saying this is great or this is bad, right? Because those are the natural human reactions that we have. And I just think it's so important for our leaders of our nonprofits to think about how can we use this technology to impact our mission to get better reach into the communities to allow us to be more responsive to the things that people want and are asking of us. And that's kind of where I guess there's like a slingshot moment where we can kind of jump forward without going through the labor pains of the lessons learned and the failures that so many people have gone through over the years, you know. Yeah. No, it there you know if you really want something done right, you you have to go through the phases and I was just talking to this gentleman last night at dinner a dinner I was at and he's like probably 70 something and he was like you know old school programmer and he's like you know AI you know who needs AI that was kind of the conversation but what you know what he reminded me of is like you you can't just jump to AI when you can't you know electronically sign in to a service yet. So it's like you know we and and some nonprofits are further along but I I would I would say there's probably a majority and that's a guess so you know no one fact check me because you probably can't find it because we probably not digitized anyway. Exactly. But but I still think there's too too far for us to go. I would love to integrate where we can but I'm just still trying to ar take the archive that I have get it in a system so I can start mining the data so we can start talking about you know the analytics and what the findings are but and running some correlation analysis and yes but I got to get the stuff out of a box first. Yeah, you got to dust off the top of those boxes and see what year they're from as well. That's a big a big challenge. So, one of the last questions I have for you is if you were to give advice to, you know, the 18-year-old version of yourself as you were to navigate your time, your experiences to be here today, and you had five minutes to kind of lean into you and give you some advice about how you're going to navigate the future. What would you say to yourself? I would say stay close to God because no matter what life brings you, having a belief in something bigger and greater than yourself will never fail you. I would say love someone and love them hard. love them to the best of your ability because when you love others, they'll love you back. And you don't want to do life alone because it's hard by yourself and you're better together. And I would say don't be scared. If you're in the room, you deserve to be in the room. If they say a word you've never heard, look it up and continue to grow. Do not feel like you have not earned it or that you don't deserve it. Work hard, do the work, and know that God will take care of the rest. That's what I would say to myself and that hasn't failed me yet. Well, Ser, it's easy to understand why you are on the podcast today because you are the definition of heart and hustle. Just hearing your experiences, how you look at the world, the challenges that you overcome, the passion that you have for serving your community, and the opportunities that you've maybe passed up on to do what you know is right in your heart is truly inspiring. I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast. Seriously, it means a lot. Well, thank you, Ken, and I wish you the best and much success, and I will be watching you for years to come. Well, guys, we appreciate it. We'll catch you in the next one. That's the podcast. Don't be scared. If you're in the room, you deserve to be in the room. If they say a word you've never heard, look it up and continue to grow. Do not feel like you have not earned it or that you don't deserve it. Work hard, do the work, and know that God will take care of the rest. That's what I would say to myself. And that hasn't failed me [Music] yet. All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Heart and Hustle podcast. Now, I'm sitting across this table from another amazing leader. Today I have Sera Barlo who is the CEO of the YW.CA in El Paso, Texas. Now it's important to also recognize that you guys are one of the largest YW.CA in the country. Sera, welcome to the show. I'm incredibly excited for you to be here. Well, thank you. It's such an honor to be on your show today and for you to reach out. I look forward to talking with you today. You know, it's it's interesting because I have the pleasure of sitting across this table, if you will, with amazing leaders who truly represent Heart and Hustle. And I want to really take the opportunity today while we're sitting here to really understand and communicate to the audience what Heart and Hustle means to you. And so, one thing that I want to kind of share about your background is that you grew up in a military family. You had early aspirations to be a veterinarian or a dentist, but here we are today as a former healthcare executive. now we're the CEO of the YW.CA. Let's talk a little bit about those early days and you wanting to be a veterinarian or a dentist and also growing up in a military family and how do you think that kind of shaped your worldview? So having military life and military parents, you know, it definitely has me very global minded. I'm very international broading. I don't think just about America. I you know I want to know what's happening in Europe, what's happening in the Middle East because these are all I understand the interconnectedness of us in the world. But growing up with military parents, I have learned the qualities of hard work. I I have seen my dad work, you know, ridiculously um late hours going to the field for, you know, exercises. I spent most of my time over in um Germany. The longest place I lived into where I live now is in Deutsland, Germany. So I was up there, you know, you know, while the wall was still up and you know, there was still cold war remnants. And so it's I I've I've seen my dad prepare for the field and, you know, in case he ever needed to go to war. And so I've learned from having military parents how to work really hard. And my dad and my mom hadn't gone to college while I was still in high school at the time. And so um first generation college I my parents were telling me as a young girl it's important for you to do well in school and go to college. And so I will say I've learned about hard work and the importance of education from my parents in that lifestyle early early on early on. I mean you had experience of I love the fact that you talked about you have like an international or global perspective on things. You know I've had the privilege of living in quite a few different places during my lifetime. I was born in Seattle. I grew up in Detroit. Spent some time in South Carolina during college. Moved to Las Vegas. Hawaii. Vegas. Now I'm back in Hawaii at the time of recording this. And the benefit that I think that comes with that is you see so many different types of people. You see so many different perspectives. You see how different people think about certain opportunities and certain things in their life. Do you feel like that global perspective of dealing with so many different types of people has kind of shaped who you are here today? Oh, for sure. I mean, just last night, I'm up here watching uh uh normally my Korean dramas, but I'm now migrated because I'm running out of them. So, I'm now listening to Mandarin and my Chinese dramas and reading the subtitles because, you know, I mean, I find them interesting. And when you need an escape, you know, there's something about their simplicity. There's something about, you know, the cleanness of the art, you know, there's not all of this killing and drama. I mean, if I looked for it, I'm sure I could find it. But the things that I choose to watch, um, I I don't think that if I had not necessarily lived in a lot of places that I would be seeking, you know, Asian dramas to pass my to help me pass and unwind after a busy day. And so I think not only just from the things I like to to experience, but even the food that I eat. Like I raised my family the same way. I have three teenagers. Well, I guess I no longer have three teenagers. I now have a 20year-old and two teenagers. So, uh, you know, but in my household, I'm from Louisiana originally, and you know, they've grown up on, you know, red beans and rice and gumbo and that type of thing, but it's not crazy or uncommon in our household that, you know, I'm making yakasobi or, you know, I'm making authentic orange chicken, uh, you know, um, Chinese orange chicken and fried rice because those are all the types of foods that I've experienced through traveling and have learned how to make them. And so, you know, it's kind of a hodgepodge of of everything. Even my house is that way. I have so many different countries. Every country I've been to, there's a little piece that kind of all embeds into. It's just like a relaxing vibe. So, yeah. I It's It's who I am. I'm a weird black girl. Let me just say I love it. You're well experienced, you know. I want to here's a here's a personal question for you. When you think about living in Deutseland, right, for the longest time and that you've lived in another place other than where you're at right now in El Paso, how did you replant yourself in a new place after living in somewhere for so long like Germany? I know it's a weird question, but this is something that often I think about is like when you move to a new place, you have the ability to reinvent yourself, if you will. You have a new environment, new habits, new ways in which you can present yourself to the people who you meet. So, how do you kind of approach those big moves and like kind of replanting your roots? You know, you make it sound so eloquent and, you know, so thoughtprovoking, but the truth is being in the military, having been in the military and having been a military brat, I didn't have much of a choice. So, when my dad was told he needed to go somewhere, it's like, hey, suck it. You know, you know, it's in it. suck it up. Put your chin up, you know, cry a little and say goodbye to your friends. And we're on to our next adventure. And when I actually joined the military, you know, later on in and after college, because I was a cadet, it was kind of like, where to next? Where where are you going to send me? Oh, you're going to send me to Korea? Oh, you're going to send me to Afghanistan. I really couldn't say no. So, what I've learned is to adapt and to be flexible, to look at every space as an opportunity. And yes, I mean, having now been in a city for 14 years, it's it's a little bit weird to to be stuck or stay I say stuck. You can tell I travel a lot. Yeah. To stay in a place so long. Everything you do and say matters. people will remember you from like I didn't have the life where people would go like oh yeah I remember in elementary school back when we were when I go to visit my parents even though I call that my hometown I didn't go to I didn't go to school there but for one year and so people don't know what I looked like with or without braces or they don't know my ugly duckling face when I had a Jerry curl You know, it's like they don't know. I don't have to live those moments down. I was in South Carolina when I had a Jerry Curl looking like Ozone. So, all all this to say is it's pretty cool. And so, you don't have to be in the military to reset and to reestablish yourself or you don't have to be a military brand brat. But what it does do, if you get the opportunity, it does build up a lot of resilience. And as far as rebranding, you don't really have to rebrand yourself if you are a good person and you're a nice person. Your past won't haunt you. Your past will bless you. And so, um, all this to say, I'm still great friends with my military family. you know, with the modernization of social media, we're all connected again and we started having um high school reunions um every 3 years since social media has really taken off and and connected our lives. So, I would say it the rebranding isn't necessary, but the reset is nice because sometimes you need a change in environment to give you the courage to change, but not because you have to have a change environment to have the courage to change. It really just depends on you doing what you want, what you need to do. And sometimes the change just acts as a facilitator or a catalyst, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. If the Heart and Hustle podcast has ever sparked any idea or made you think differently, do us a favor. Make sure to guys share this, post it on LinkedIn, or even text that nonprofit friend that you just have. Whatever works. This is what keeps the conversation going and allows us to just grow this community together. Seriously, we appreciate you. Yeah. I think about the different places that I've lived as kind of chapters of the story of me, right? There are some wild chapters. There are some younger chapters. There are some chapters that were a little bit tougher, but at the end of this whole journey, it's going to be a beautiful story that I've written. And I just look at it as an opportunity, which you kind of said there as well. Why' you say you have the ability to look at things as opportunities rather than challenges? Yes. I used to, you know, every time my dad would say, "Oh, we're getting ready to move to California or we're getting ready to go back to Germany." And I would be like, "But I'm leaving my friends." And I used to be like upset with him because you know you're causing me to have to do this and but it's and my mom is a great person and she you know she would remind me what this really is offering not only me but our family and you know she would remind me of some of the cool things we'll get to do once we get to the new location. So, she seemed to always, you know, smooth it out. And then after a while, I realized my dad is just providing for us. And he's a pretty cool guy that I'm fortunate to have. And so, you know, when you're young and that age, every, you know, eventually that too will pass. And, you know, you're on to the new space. And who knew you were going to be camping in Holland or spring breaking in Spain or you know spring breaking in Yugoslavia or you know those are sometimes no risk no reward but basically I was just a passenger on the ride fortunate enough to just get the experience and the opportunities. It sounds like an amazing life journey. You know one of the I think it's important for us to kind of fill in some of the gaps here. here. So we talk about after college, right? We join the military, right? And we have our our career there. So what happens beyond our military career? What are we doing inside the military, right? Are we in healthcare in any way or what does that look like for you? Yes. I got commissioned as an Army officer to serve my scholarship time off. I was dead set that I would only do my eight years to pay off of my scholarship. I didn't want my parents to have to pay for my college. And so, um, as I was doing my time and I came in as an medical service core officer, which basically translates to being a healthc care administrator. I um and you can do so many things in healthcare administration, but I specialized I went to a special program probably midcareer to become one of those people that could run hospitals and so it's called the Army Baylor program. It's through Baylor University. So I got selected to go to that program and the rest was history. I finally had reached the space. I was determined my first duty assignment which was in Washington DC at the Walter Reed the original you know you know center of healthc care u for military medicine. I was determined that I was going to run a hospital one day and I was told that the only way I could run a hospital like that or of that size in the military was through the army bor program. So, I just deposited that in my brain and it's like, you know, as soon as I can sign up for that, I'm gonna go and they're going to accept me. So, it takes a little while for you to be old enough to apply, but I applied. I got accepted. One of the 40 people that got accepted across the military healthcare system. They only they they only get a small group because it's a basically it's a it's a Baylor University master's degree that you don't pay for. you pay for it with your time. So, it's very selective. But I was fortunate enough to be one of the 40 people um selected in my year and I went and I successfully graduated with my masters in healthcare administration and after that it's all things hospital and so I spent my career learning and working my way up the ladder in army hospitals or joint hospitals and and um till I eventually you know got to the really really big ones you having fun doing doing big big army things. So, here's here's my question. When did you have like your aha moment that you knew healthcare was going to be your thing? Oh, I knew I knew healthcare was going to be my thing. when I was in like elementary school, like that time where I said a dentist or a veterinarian, it was going to be medical because, you know, when you're coming from, you know, working parents, you want something that's going to be that's going to make your life easy or, you know, you, as my husband says now, pick something hard and and he puts some explicatives in it, But pick pick something hard and do a good job at it. And so I wanted lifechanging material wealth. You know, coming from parents that at that point had only gone to high school. I knew they had kept preparing me to be a college graduate. And I understood that if I became a college graduate, I could make six figures. And in that time in my life, I didn't know anyone making six figures that looked like me. But it was something that I I I understood that that was a lifecher. And I wanted one to make my parents proud, but two, I wanted to have that life-changing experience and I had the foundation for it. So yes, I knew at a very young age I was going to be in healthcare. Was it going to be a dentist, a veterinarian? You was gonna pay me some money. You were gonna get paid for all the time that you put in, right? You gonna pay me. I will make sure you get a job that you can pay me. You can't take away my knowledge. So, I didn't know I wanted to run the hospital though until I went to Walter Reed and I was like, "What do you do?" Colonel Farley, that was his name. He was running the department of surgery. And I I came in to be an assistant administrator with him. And I was like, "How did you get this job?" And he's like, "Well, I went to this program." And I was like, "I want it. I'm gonna do I'mma run not only the department of surgery, I'm gonna run this hospital." And then funny, the center closed. Walter Reed moved to Maryland and it became um Bethesda, Walter Reed Naval Bethesda Hospital. And ironically, when I got promoted in my last rank, I did get a call from my consultant. And my consultant offered me a job in four places. One of them was in San Antonio, one of them was at Walter Reed, one of them was in El Paso, and one of them was in Shape Belgium. And he asked which one did I want? And I said, you know, it's full circle because I said I wanted to run Walter Reed and just getting the opportunity to take on it would have been equivalent to being like a a COO um at Walter Reed and I got that offer and I and I told my consultant that I appreciated it, but for the space that I was in with my family, I was going to make the choice to stay in El Paso. and I did. And do you ever ever have any second thoughts about that process of staying in El Paso when you kind of set that dream up for yourself? Yeah, absolutely not. No, this is um it's one of the best decisions I've made. El Paso is a special community on a border. It's very we call it a a a small big town or a big small town. A big small town. It's over 800,000 people about 200,000 cross between Wades and Mexico every day either going there or coming from there to work and and so very friendly. It feels it feels to me more like having been in other countries as opposed to being, you know, in the Paso de Norte region, which is what we call it, tri-state. You know, you're between the state of New Mexico, the state of Texas, and the state of Seedat, um, Mexico. So, I love it. Um, the community is very embracing, and I I can't think of a lot of places in the US I would want to stay beside here. And it's very it it has been not only amazing embracing me but my family and I don't know I just love this community. I mean you you spoke incredibly highly. There was one thing that you talked about last time you talked about the El Paso way when people are nice to you right and the community that comes together and it reminded me a lot of kind of the culture here on Aahu in Hawaii. Very family oriented, very community-based. Everybody's incredibly friendly and it just makes you feel a different way from living in a place like LA or, you know, New York or something like that where people kind of just like run past you. How important is a sense of community and the impact that you make in the work that you do every single day? I think it drives me. I I will tell you as I've gotten older, it's probably in my top three like purpose driven motivators. Um before you know I was just about being successful, trying to become successful, trying to grow and climb up the corporate ladder. But now community is what drives me making um helping others making I used to say all the time that my job was I felt that I was a a bridge builder. I I would a lot of times be one of the first. So as soon as I crossed the bridge, I made sure that I connected the route for other people. And and now that I've gotten older, I I I think maybe not so much um a bridge builder before cuz I'm now I'm a door opener. You know, I I've graduated from having to build the bridge to let me open a door and let me connect you to this person. Let me open a door, let me connect you to that person. And it's fulfilling. So, I hope I answered that question properly. You did. I I grew up uh with one of my favorite toys when I was a kid was called a connected set, right? Where you had all these different pieces, but you couldn't build anything if you didn't have the circular gray pieces that connected everything together. Yeah. When I think about as I get older, the ability just to connect people, the ability to be a door opener is such an amazing opportunity, but you only get there if you've built relationships, if you truly invest into other people, and you're willing to kind of think about things on a longer time horizon. I hope that kind of makes sense. No. Yeah. And my kids had that set. So, I'm like I'm thinking of the little the gray and the yellow and the pieces that were making the little Yes. I'm familiar with with that for sure. So, we're we're a a healthc care leader, healthcare executive, right? We're, you know, working in in healthcare systems, right? One of the things that I have to ask you is during the pandemic, right? We also talked about in our previous conversation how hard hit the city of El Paso was the community in general. How do you kind of keep like a cool head in mind when you're going through those challenging times as so many healthcare executives and leaders did? again, you know, um not like you had a lot of choice. It's either you were gonna ball up in the fetal position and, you know, hope it goes away or you got in the fight and tried to make a difference. And so I'm not a fetal position kind of girl on a regular basis. So, you know, I did the best thing I could do. I'm a I'm a very strong critical thinker coming from the military. if you give me a problem, I'm going to come up with a solution almost to a fault. I know everybody doesn't always want to answer, but I'm always thinking of an answer. And so when CO came and was working through our community and lots of people were losing their lives, you know, we were working together as a community trying to figure out how to care for them as El Paso was amongst um and I've heard some even say the hardest hit city. Um, I always go to New York first before I think about El Paso, but I do know um, we were definitely one or two in the country. And, um, I mean, I just started working with smart people and looking at the resources that we had and you like, "Oh, we're out of O beds." Not O, not O. We're out of ER beds. Okay. So, how are we going to make new ER beds? You're like, oh, they're in the hallway. Okay. So, not we don't want them in the hallway. What space do we have? What how do you make an ER? And what do we end up ultimately? You know, the government came in and helped us set up tents outside of our regular ER. So, now we have two ERs. We're like, "Oh, we need ICU units and beds." So we worked with the company that I was working for and we got rest, you know, ventilators and respirators and everything else you needed to let's create another ICU, let's create a step down ICU, let's create we created a lot of things to help people. Yeah, we just made made it work. Um, you don't really know at the time how you are pulling from yourself, how you're exhausting yourself, how you are, you know, probably taking off minutes of your life with the level of stress that you're carrying because you're seeing people lose their lives. You have people who are sad because they want to see their loved one and their loved ones are on their last breath and and you can't safely let them in the room. So, they're cussing you out and calling you anything but a child of God cuz you won't let them see their dying member because you can't risk them dying. It was a tough time. I probably like I probably still need therapy, right? I'm like I probably am going to sign up for some therapy because it was an emotional time. And so you got to release that so you can live your best life. But I know like so many other healthcare executives, you know, we we went another route when we had a chance and an opportunity and once I would never leave my team in c crisis or chaos like as the military says, you never leave a a fallen soldier down. But when my hospital was back on its feet and I looked at the toll it had taken not only on me but my family, it's time to go. And so thus comes the nonprofit and this is the place where we're at now. Yeah. So so let's talk about some of the some of the differences, right? If you're, you know, a highly functioning, highly successful healthcare executive, you're used to running highly efficient teams, right? You're used to putting people in positions where they can be successful. You're dealing with crisis like we talked about. Now we come to the nonprofit space. So first the question is why come to the YW.CA? And second, what are some of the differences that you've noticed? Oh, I did not choose the YW.CA. I'm gonna say that to say that it chose me because it was not my plan. Uh, am I happy? Do I love what I do? Absolutely. But I would not have been smart enough to come to the YW.CA on my own, honestly. I mean, just, you know, a highly reimbured healthc care executive and probably had just made the most money I've ever made in my life, you know, working through a very busy time and hospital history. Covid hospitals made money this you know that's people are in healthcare you know make money while you know while other people are combating sickness and disease and that was a very high um sick and disease time in the simplest lay layman's terms and so there was a lot and I would have thought considering knowing my background where I wanted to have wealth changing career, you know, why would I come to a nonprofit because you do not make the same amount of money, let me just say. But I will tell you um you know once you feel like you've reached your goals like I say to people I mentor if I were 25 again I would at 25 try to determine and set a goal of whoever if you're partnered or married or whatever your situation is um when you partner up with someone or or if you choose not to just determine how much is enough. So that I'm sorry I need to I need to interject this. One of my mentors one time asked me a question back in 2021. Um just as we were dealing with the things in the pandemic and I was running a tellahalth company at that point in time. So yes, you're right. When crisis occurs, we do need to kind of lean into our expertise in those spaces. But he said, Kenan, you have to ask yourself at one point in time, how small is big enough? because you talk about these gigantic goals for yourself, but are those truly the things that are going to be fulfilling for you? And that really helped me kind of look at my world in a different lens. How small is big enough? Well said. Very, very much in that same thread. How much is enough? Because I can work myself to the bone. You know, if I had several million, you know, now do I need a hundred million? Do I need a trillion? Do I you know what? How much is enough? Are you going to work yourself to your dying day always trying to get to the next level or are you going to say that this is enough for me and I'm going to do what makes me completely happy? Because oftent times you're working for something but not necessarily towards what's bringing you joy. And so I think I had finally like got an understanding that all of this, you know, the nice tiles, the nice car, you know, the the designer bags and the, you know, the shoes and all of that, that's great. But if you miserable and not happy, like why you working so hard? What you need? Did you ever have one of those Did you ever have one of those moments where you put you know we get excited when we set goals for oursel like I'm going to get this bag. I'm going to get a new car. I'm going to buy my son or my children a car or my daughter a car. Right. And then you accomplish those things and they don't exactly feel as fulfilling as you thought they were going to when you first set out that that mission for yourself. Yeah. I experienced that at a young age. which I was 26 24 and my roommate at the time um was incredibly successful and he was making a couple hundred,000 a month in a business that he was running out of a small room in the top of our house together. And he purchased um a brand new Tesla and for a long time I always thought to myself, when I can do that, I'm going to be I'm going to be happy cuz that means I've made it. But then I accomplished that and I got the car and I'll tell you, one of the scariest moments that I've ever had was when that thing got delivered and I went to go pick it up and it felt like just another day and I was like, "Wow, do I need something bigger to stuff into this hole of unsatisfaction inside of me and that was terrifying." So, how do you kind of deal with that? I stopped chasing the money and I started chasing the purpose. And so, I'm regardless, I'm a servant. Like I don't like saying the word servant leader, but I serve people. I've always served people. So I'm not going to stop trying to explain why I serve people. Like beforehand, I'd be like, "Oh, I feel guilty cuz I want to help people. I, you know, no, I serve people. That's what that's who I am." And so for me it is more about watching someone else reach their goal or come into their own strength or or become empowered that really gives me the truest satisfaction because it becomes a multiplier. The more people that I can open up them to themselves the more people they're going to make a difference with. So, you know, we're all interconnected if we choose to be. And so, I I deal with walking away from that need to recognize if I don't make another penny, if everybody, you know, stops doing what they do as for the Barlo household, we still going to be all right. And so, as Kendrick would say, we going to be all right. Um, so I really now just work on trying to help others and really sharing what I've learned. I've had great mentors and great teachers and leaders, you know, impart their knowledge, their wisdom. I've had bad ones that have taught me, I don't want to be like that ever. So, let me not. And so coming to the YWCA, I really just wanted to bring my collection of leadership and try to turn uh a nonprofit with a mentality and the word poverty was this poverty mentality was you know told to me when I first started this job. So I have come here working with our team to move us from a poverty mentality to being in the business of social advocacy. And so teaching my team that we are in a business and we provide a service of social advocacy and we can only provide as much advocacy as we can raise in business. And so we learn the better we do in business the more we can give. It's like paying your tithes. So, all that to say, the more we earn, the more we can give back. And that's really what a nonpower a nonprofit is. It's not that you don't make money. It's not that you don't generate revenue. It's that that you're in a mission of making sure that you're giving back as much as you earn or you trying to earn as much that so you can give back. And that's usually the story for nonprofits, trying to make it so you can earn enough to really serve the community and meet their needs. And that's where I am. I'm trying to make as much as we can as a YWCA so that we can meet the needs of our community. I'm not just trying to do services that I want to do. I'm actually going out and like, what do you need? You need more housing. Okay. You need more child care. You need more after school. Well, if you need it, choose me and let me show you why we're the best. So, we're really working on being the first choice and being in the business of social advocacy. And that's been that's been a change a paradigm shift because, you know, a lot of us that are in nonprofit are relying on grants and the world of grants, particularly now federal grants, that's a word. Um, you know, we've had a lot of changes since January and so we are um really just trying to make sure we can do as much as we can with what we have and working to grow the business to do more. Why do you think we a lot of people in the nonprofit space come from that poverty mentality? How did that come about and why do you think that's so prominent? Now, that's a great question. I part of this is part of it is you you and it's not to offend but and it's I hope I don't but part of it is a lot of times you get people who want to help others but they don't have a sense of business acumen but they continue to help others and so you know I may have come in at this person but now I'm a manager and I believe in helping others oh now I'm you know now I'm a a a associate director but I believe in helping others but in nonprofits not all of them depending on the size require you to grow your business knowledge require you to go to school and you know get a master's or require you to have advanced degrees. So a lot of times you have people with kind hearts that are mission focused and mission based trying to help people but what you need is the resources too. So I just said recently, you know, in nonprofits there has to be more emphasis on the business develop, not business development, but on the the what's the word I'm looking for? The fact that it is a business and you have to run a nonprofit like a business and not like a community service project. And that's where I think there's there are more and more people recognizing that and particularly now because funding depending on what types of services you provide, it's it's unpromised. It's not guaranteed. Well, it never is, but it's even more doubtful in the current environment that we're operating in. Yeah. It's really important to recognize that nonprofit is a tax designation, right? It's not meaning we're not going to make money as an organization. And this is one of the biggest fallacies that I see so many people falling victim to is like, hey, if we make money, that makes us bad. But if you make money, you have the ability to actually inject that capital and those services back into the community in which you serve. So it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it takes a complete paradigm shift to be able to kind of approach everything that way because the helping sphere of nonprofits often doesn't think that maybe there's a subconscious, I guess, say like identity of like, well, I'm a helper. That doesn't mean I need money. You know what I mean? Right. No, that's exa You have to be businessminded to run a nonprofit. And if you're running a nonprofit and you're not thinking about scale, you're not thinking about interoperability, you're not t thinking about leveraging resources, there's so much that you should be thinking because the better you do in the business, the more you can provide to your community. And we are relying on fundings from philanthropic donors. We are relying on grants. That cannot be how you are majority supported. And that's that's that's the challenge. What can you do on the business side that will give you enough income and revenue that will allow you to give to those that are in need or to help those that are trying to help themselves? And so it's a balance and and it is it's probably a new awakening for nonprofits because typically in America we help people who are in need and especially with like the new administration and things that we're seeing, right? I mean there's definitely also a need for us to think about these organizations as businesses, right? That can prove the impact that they're making and just getting to another year of funding, if you will, from grants and donors is not true impact, right? just staying afloat does not impact, but progressing forward and having an impact in your community is impact, right? And and I think that the more nonprofits get to the level of becoming closer to being sustainable probably the more philanthropic the community would be because the the limited amount of dollars that do go around. You know, if you only need like to close your gap like about this much and this organ this other organization only needs so much then you know it's easy to help you and help you and help you and help you and a few but if you are running a service and you need this much. That's a really good point. Yeah. Only you know you can only help a couple of those people before all the money's gone. So the better we do the more people we can help. That's the bottom line. When when you think about, you know, how business has changed in the recent years, a lot of the conversations that I kind of end up having here on the podcast are about how do we leverage things like technology, things like AI to help us be more impactful so we can serve on our mission, right? To take the redundant tasks that weigh our teams down, off their table, off their plate, and then put them in the position of higher leverage so they can impact the community. How are you thinking about this new wave of technology, especially coming from health care systems that are for-profit and you guys are actually innovating? So, what do you think is going on in the nonprofit space and how are you preparing for the future? Oh my goodness, you must have like been listening to me yesterday. I was at I I sit on an advisory board for the University of Texas and the Department of Education and uh which is at risk right now from a federal perspective. But um we were talking about how nonprofits could potentially benefit from the newer things that are out there like artificial intelligence. This was a conversation I had with a gentleman on the committee with me who works at Microsoft and he was telling me that there is a lot out there but the question is where are you as a nonprofit? Are you digitized yet? You know or you know there are still nonprofits including I have programs that are still writing things on paper getting them from parents. Feels like 2014 before EHRs were deployed you know. Ex exactly. So I mean if you look across if you look across just nationally to find out where nonprofits are they often don't invest a lot in infrastructure software and those types of things. So that is one of the things because we were we needed to be modernized. So this past two years with me being here and working with our team, you know, we've created master plans for modernization and we have gone in and moved to the cloud and certain things and we're doing all of the things that will prepare us. But we're we're talking, you know, we're talking like we've gone from being on a bicycle to like we now may be on we we may have moved up to a Harley, but we we are so far from a Tesla. So, will there be opportunities for AI? There will be, but we're still trying to figure out some of the basics, you know, like queuing systems for for your phone calls and just making sure that you're queued up and moving people to the right division and that your scripts are right for your customer calls. There's just so much opportunity. But again, Kenan, you have to remember we have not always been operating, you know, just as an industry as a whole. There by far there's going to be those that are doing phenomenal at it and they're outliers and then there are some that you know just created a nonprofit because it was a cool thing. But somewhere in the middle, there's still a tremendous gap from where nonprofits are from a digitized perspective um to where they have the potential to be with where we are with AI and and chat GBT and all of the things that we can add to make our lives easier. We're still writing on paper. So, yeah, totally. I totally get it. No, not yet. Not quite. I think it's uh it's super important for us to approach these new pieces of technology and these new chapters of business, right, with the lens of curiosity because when we look at things through a lens of curiosity, we think about how can this work here, right? Or what areas can this technology impact our organization rather than saying this is great or this is bad, right? Because those are the natural human reactions that we have. And I just think it's so important for our leaders of our nonprofits to think about how can we use this technology to impact our mission to get better reach into the communities to allow us to be more responsive to the things that people want and are asking of us. And that's kind of where I guess there's like a slingshot moment where we can kind of jump forward without going through the labor pains of the lessons learned and the failures that so many people have gone through over the years, you know. Yeah. No, it there you know if you really want something done right, you you have to go through the phases and I was just talking to this gentleman last night at dinner a dinner I was at and he's like probably 70 something and he was like you know old school programmer and he's like you know AI you know who needs AI that was kind of the conversation but what you know what he reminded me of is like you you can't just jump to AI when you can't you know electronically sign in to a service yet. So it's like you know we and and some nonprofits are further along but I I would I would say there's probably a majority and that's a guess so you know no one fact check me because you probably can't find it because we probably not digitized anyway. Exactly. But but I still think there's too too far for us to go. I would love to integrate where we can but I'm just still trying to ar take the archive that I have get it in a system so I can start mining the data so we can start talking about you know the analytics and what the findings are but and running some correlation analysis and yes but I got to get the stuff out of a box first. Yeah, you got to dust off the top of those boxes and see what year they're from as well. That's a big a big challenge. So, one of the last questions I have for you is if you were to give advice to, you know, the 18-year-old version of yourself as you were to navigate your time, your experiences to be here today, and you had five minutes to kind of lean into you and give you some advice about how you're going to navigate the future. What would you say to yourself? I would say stay close to God because no matter what life brings you, having a belief in something bigger and greater than yourself will never fail you. I would say love someone and love them hard. love them to the best of your ability because when you love others, they'll love you back. And you don't want to do life alone because it's hard by yourself and you're better together. And I would say don't be scared. If you're in the room, you deserve to be in the room. If they say a word you've never heard, look it up and continue to grow. Do not feel like you have not earned it or that you don't deserve it. Work hard, do the work, and know that God will take care of the rest. That's what I would say to myself and that hasn't failed me yet. Well, Ser, it's easy to understand why you are on the podcast today because you are the definition of heart and hustle. Just hearing your experiences, how you look at the world, the challenges that you overcome, the passion that you have for serving your community, and the opportunities that you've maybe passed up on to do what you know is right in your heart is truly inspiring. I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast. Seriously, it means a lot. Well, thank you, Ken, and I wish you the best and much success, and I will be watching you for years to come. Well, guys, we appreciate it. We'll catch you in the next one. That's the podcast.
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