Why Leaders Should Invest in Underserved Communities

[0:00]  in today's episode of the heart and hustle podcast we sit across the table from Kevin Irvin the CEO of our turn now today's episode is going to be very impactful because we're going to listen to How Kevin's Journey informed him with an opportunity to be able to double down to be able to serve his community in ways that he could never imagine we're going to hear about a tragedy that happened outside of his childhood bedroom window we're going to talk about how he looked to build community to be able to unite people in the Bronx and in Brooklyn we're going to hear about the thousands of Lives who he's impacted and what's next for Kevin in this episode let's get into it so I knew the bodega owners by name I knew the parents in the streets by name I knew the man that stood on the corner by name the construction workers all of them knew me and I and I knew them and they would actually call me Mr vacus I worked for an organization called vus and they'd be

[0:48]  like oh there's Mr vus coming and when kids didn't show up to school I was just going and knocking on their door often times schools do reactive work for attendance right it's like oh you miss school today so we'll call you at the end of the day I was monitoring I I had a case load of about 100 students I was monitoring them by the hour if you weren't in school by 9:00 a.m. school started at 8:00 a.m. I was going to your house I was knocking on your door and I was pick all right come on take a shower get dressed I'll I'll stand here I'll wait so Kevin when we met previously you had

[1:37]  mentioned something that was incredibly EMP powerful and impactful and something that my mom said to me every single day what did your mom say to you every single day when you and your you know siblings would leave the house every day you know on our way to school or wherever we were going my mom would pray with my siblings of me and then just say uh be a leader not a follower and she would tell us that uh every problem has an answer you know it's like a puzzle piece you just need to find the the right pieces and that has really resonated with me throughout my entire life and my career you know something that I'm really excited about is to talk about your educational experience and how it puts you on a little bit of a different path to be able to be a leader and an impactor and Inc incredibly young age you said that in the first grade you had a tragic

[2:24]  event happen outside of your bedroom window would you mind sharing that yeah so I I attended what's now known as the uh Patrick F daily School uh but when I attended it was just Public School 15 and the principal there was Patrick F da and when I was in the first grade he uh was pursuing a student who ran outside of the school just being the good human being that he he was and that I remember him as and he got caught in the crossfire of a sort of like a gang war that was happening and was shot and killed right outside of my childhood bedroom window and I remember not really understanding what was happening and my mom picking up my brother and me really early and going home and seeing all the police outside of my home uh and later it was revealed to me that that that

[3:11]  occurred and as a result of that my entire School Community wrapped its arms around peace we got a new school song uh we we got a new mantra and uh the sixth graders were being trained in uh mediation at at that point and as a first grader I was watching the mediators be trained and sort of thought to myself this is kind of odd because there are problems across all the grades and sure the sixth graders could help out the fifth graders or or fourth graders but who was on the ground with us in the first grade and and I asked if I could be a mediator and they said no it was exclusive for the sixth graders uh and I sort of said no I don't I don't think so I think we could do this for us as well maybe on a on a smaller level and because of that they helped me to create the junior mediators at our

[3:57]  school who were first graders who did what the sixth graders did just on a smaller Level Kevin how does a first grader have that sense of awareness about his environment to be able to go to leadership at the school and say Hey I want to be a mediator too and they're looking at you as a little first grader and saying hey man you know this is reserved for sixth graders how was that reception like what was that like I I I think a lot of my confidence uh comes from that that sort of same be a leader not a follower a bit uh and my mom always sharing sharing with me that aside from money and wealth and all of those things and things that one could gain and guns and bullets and things growing up in a project she told me that the most powerful weapon was a a human being with knowledge uh and she said that your voice matters and that you

[4:45]  could go out and ask and advocate for yourself uh and sometimes that backfired on her in our home when I would advocate for myself but out in the public World She always told me like speak your mind say say what you think and if people don't accept you uh you know even the Bible says uh brush the dust from your feet you know uh where people don't accept you and she take that same Mantra so approaching that as a first grader I just thought and still believe that humans are humans right whether you are six years old or 60 years old you deserve respect you require respect you need respect love and care and and that's what I gave out and that's what I expected back so it it wasn't a really horing task for me I didn't get get afraid of human beings until I became an adult actually that's a that's an interesting Revelation you know one of

[5:34]  the things that we talked about in our previous conversation was your experience going through school which was the exact opposite of mine you said you fell in love with education you really enjoyed going to schr quite early but you also had a little bit of a pivot where you went to a charter school right and you experienced what it was like for the institution to invest into you what was that like yeah so I I started my education in public school I went to public school for elementary school I went to public school for middle school and I actually went to boarding school for high school not a charter school which is which is a little bit different uh it's a Preparatory School uh which my friends thought I was either being sent away for bad behavior to the military or I was going to Hogwarts uh and neither was true neither was true but my mom didn't even understand that there existed these like very exclusive institutions in our

[6:22]  country and in the world that prepared students exclusively for college and at that point I realized that education wasn't about teaching us what to think but education was in fact about teaching young people how to think right you go to public school and they're teaching you towards a test and sort of just saying hey here's what you need to think so you can tick the boxes here and pass these tests where at the hkis school which is the boarding school I went to they didn't teach us what to think they said here here's all this information we'll teach you how to think critically and you make up your own mind you figured this out for yourself you know philosophy was a required course you know imagine a 14-year-old kid from the Red Hood projects in Brooklyn taking a philosophy course right where I I'm trying to prove the existence of God

[7:10]  through dart's uh theories right I was like this is mindblowing and ridiculous and amazing all at the same time but gave me the the ability to advocate for myself and for others because I was no longer thinking towards a test I was thinking towards the world critically you know in our previous conversation we talked a little bit about how the education system has been constantly formed shaped and molded based on someone's perspective that is outside of the education system AKA never asking the students what they're looking for in their education when you went to this boarding school and you were given the plethora and the platter of things that you could pursue did it kind of just completely change the way that you looked at education in general both that and and one other experience so whilst I

[7:57]  was in the hka school uh my sort of nighttime career is is being a musician uh so I went to hotkis and I was working on music and I finished all of the music classes that I could take within my first two years there and at that point typically most students you know just finish their requisites and go on to do other things I loved music so dearly that I asked Fabio W kovski who was the head of the music department uh what else I could study and he told me that I could take on independent study at that point and craft my own route uh in music and I I really love music production and composition so he worked with me to craft two years of Music studies where I was studying with some of the professors there on Jazz composition and coral arrangements and I

[8:44]  studied with him music technology and uh as a result of that they built a studio for me uh at the school so that I could learn music technology and that expanded out into a larger music building but one of the other sort of Pinnacle points in my hka career there's an organization called the seed Foundation which actually has basically free preparatory schools for uh young people of color in America that was started while I was at hotkis and the people who started that were going around the boarding schools asking students about their experiences and asking to be a part of the fabric of the creation of this and I was asked to be on that committee from the Hat school and I was blown away because I was like wow you guys are starting a school trying to invent a school and you're not asking any of the teachers or or staff

[9:32]  members here how this school should be formed you're asking only students to be on this this board this committee to create this school which exists to this day and really helps out a lot of folks around the country and that I think was the Lynch pin of change for me where where my opinion became valuable uh regardless of age in the education space I think that we all have early experiences in life where we are heard and seen for the first time and it changes the way that we look at every other opportunity I feel like there are so many people out there who have never actually had that validating experience no matter how old you are of being seen validated and heard that had to change like the entire trajectory of how you viewed yourself absolutely I I think not I think I I know that as a as a black male growing up in New York City

[10:22]  in the projects right my story was also the story of so many of my other friends uh and because code switching is a thing that is almost inherently taught to people of color when you step into other spaces when I went to the hotkis school um I was an excellent cold switcher right I was immediately going to assimilate to that culture and not the other way around and and I met a group of friends from around the world I had friends from Jamaica from Houston Texas from you know Upstate New York from Miami ET and when we got together we all could be uniquely ourselves and at some point I remember sitting with my friends and them sort of saying hey um you got this

[11:11]  Talent around R&B hip-hop music and this school needs that right so at some point during my hkas career I think about my third year there we took the the school song which is a very stiff old Preparatory School Song and REM mixed it and and into a rap song used the school song as the chorus and even had our school Headmaster who was a probably in his 60s or 70s at that point wrap a verse on the song we recorded the verse and it like still lives in the school archives now and at that point I felt really seen for who I am and what my talents are what my gifts are and what I can bring to the world and throughout my career it's been sort of this fluctuation between uh holding on to that and presenting myself fully and

[12:00]  totally to to the world and then you know also assimilating to this like do I need to Cod switch I'll say here a year into my my relationship with my wife she sat down with me and she said I don't understand this thing that you do and she grew up in the Bronx and I was like what thing and she was like I don't know like we go into these like fundraising things or these Gallas or these rooms and you're able to like talk about things that you never do you don't play golf and you're able to sit talk with people about golf or you don't watch sports as much as you you are and I didn't even realize it at that point that she had the luxury during her entire life of never having to code switch she never had to code switch and before that conversation I actually thought I had a

[12:48]  skill of of code switching where in fact she had the luxury of never having to have to do that so now I try to show up you know as my full self all the time man this is really hitting me hard today um you know when we get into different environments right we go through the process of having to code switch and become a different version of ourselves to assimilate to be able to see be seen and validated by these other people and at some point in time we almost get an internal conversation that happens or something happens along the way where we say if I show up as my true self I can be more powerful I've been through that experience when I first started my business back in 2014 I used to go into these Healthcare organizations these hospitals and wear suits and ties and everything like that and the reason why I did that is because deep down inside

[13:36]  now that I have the perspective I wasn't confident in myself enough to show up as I am and so when I go sit across from a CEO of a hospital today I will show up in a black T-shirt I'll show up in one of my team hats I'll show up in Jordan's because I'm so confident that I know what I'm doing that if they don't see me for who I am and the value that I bring that's on them not me does that make sense that makes perfect sense that makes perfect sense I I I had that exact same experience my first job ever you know I'd come out of uh going to the hka school I wasn't able to go to college immediately that's another story we can talk about that later um and I was working in a school in the Bronx and I loved wearing ties I loved wearing this wasn't even this was a part of my fashion sense so I'd show up to work in like a bow tie and Nike Dunks right like people in the community knew me as that

[14:24]  human being and then as I sort of rose on the the job lad I started wearing more and more suits all the time which I like a good suit but I didn't want to wear it every day and also I was working with young people I didn't want them to see me as being stiff but I I I had that in congruency like you said I didn't have the confidence in myself to believe that people would be able to see the me as who I am if I was in my normal clothes and and I actually had proof of those experiences sometimes I showed up at the Department of Education in the Bronx uh taking uh 150 students to to sleep way camp for a weekend trip and I had a hoodie on um and I was going to get these these bus passes and I remember going there and the lady at the front desk wouldn't recognize me like she wouldn't say anything to me and she actually uh was having a conversation in

[15:12]  Spanish with one of her co-workers and asked her like who's this hoodlum standing at the front desk now she didn't know I'd been in the Bronx for nine years at that point so my Spanish was was top notot y so she she says like who who's this this uh hoodlum at the front desk so you know I'm just there patiently and I get the passes and I have to come back that Tuesday and on Tuesday I'm wearing a suit and she speaks to me immediately hello how are you what do you need and I shareed with her hey I'm the hoodlum who was here last week with the hoodie on I'm wearing a suit now and I don't think that that's responsible for you to talk to your own people because you're from the Bronx you look like us you you talk like us etc etc let's build each other up instead of uh pulling each other down and I remember for years I I was the guy that was telling my students if you dress a

[16:00]  certain way you won't be pulled over by the cops if you look a certain way you won't be harassed if you do this if you do that and then in my own neighborhood in Brooklyn in carot Gardens where where I grew up I remember being pulled over at 2 o'clock in the morning once and I was wearing my normal dressed up clothes I was coming from a gig that I played and the police officer and I was on the corner of my house which has terrible parking the police officer asked me what I was doing driving around at that time and and I was perplexed I I'm looking for parking I'm trying to go to sleep and he said there's no way you live in this neighborhood there's no way you actually live here and I was like I've actually lived here my entire life this is the neighborhood I live in and grew up in and at that moment something clicked for me that it was like it's not my clothes it's not you know my Swagger or what have you they're just some

[16:47]  people who are not going to be able to see beyond their own biases and that shouldn't impact who I show up as you know man I'm really inspired by your story and I think it's really important that touch on some of the elements of you know when you're getting ready to go to college you had so many opportunities in front of you but you got a bad hand and Misfortune that caused you to double down and reinvest into the community I want to talk a little bit about that if you're okay with that definitely so uh like I said I went to the hotka school I had an amazing experience I applied to 11 uh universities I was accepted to 10 of them uh all except NYU which wrapped around and came a part of my story later on uh I I was accepted to Berkeley College of Music where I knew I was going to go uh University of

[17:34]  Miami uh BC Princeton you know all all the big names USC uh and and then I wasn't able to go because I filled out the financial a form the FAFSA incorrectly most of the students at the hka school come from really wealthy backgrounds so these folks were not filling out uh financial aid forms at all and hkis basically filled out the financial aid form for you when you were at their school the the form for their school so I was on a full ride scholarship uh to go to the hotka school so you know what was sort of uh maybe1 160 $180,000 across four years so when it came time to apply for college I was applying to all of these colleges and my College advisor didn't help me with the financial aid form um so I filled it out incorrectly and couldn't go to any of

[18:22]  these schools I I wasn't able to go to college immediately I watched all my friends go up to college I lost 22 pounds in a month because I sat on the couch and just cried again like you said at the beginning I love school I love learning I love being with that my friends in that environment and I was just depressed about it and uh during that summer uh the summer camp that I'd attended during my entire childhood I was hired there as a counselor and I double triple quadruple down on just really investing in in young people and those who look like I do and right before the first day of school in New York City my summer camp called me and said hey do you want a job working in in the Bronx um and anybody who's from New York City knows the the Bronx is sort of afraid of Brooklyn and Brooklyn is afraid of the Bronx so I was like yeah

[19:09]  sure but I'd never been to the Bronx I was nervous about going there uh and then I fell in love and and some would say I got trapped uh but I stayed there for the next 11 years uh in the Bronx really uh working in community and with Community uh finding the solutions that are there and and what I realized very quickly is that a lot of nonprofits try to superimpose their Solutions on communities when in fact the solutions are in the communities already they just don't have the resources the people who are most proximate to the problems are the ones who are most proximate to the solutions they know what their experiencing they know how to fix it they often times just don't have the resources which is actually my my exact view on education and education Justice which is why I work at our chart now I want to reverse a little bit and

[19:56]  talk about that pivotal moment of resilience right we have a a tragic moment happen we lose 22 lbs we're obviously devastated we have two choices in this in this instance we can either continue to go down this negative spiral or we can double down at what we're good at how did you muster the fortitude to say all right if I can't do this right now then I'm going to go double back down on the community which I came from invest into the people who believed in me yeah I I I probably really attribute that ability to to having Community around me right if I was siloed alone in that moment I probably would have continued down that that negative Road you know my mom I would hear my mom crying at night because my mom blamed my inability to go to college on herself on her like she was doing that thing that we do it's

[20:43]  like if I didn't spend $5 20 years ago you know I'd be rich now um or if I didn't buy that Chinese food last week but my mom hadn't gone to college at that point so she didn't know about college savings or even the financial aid form herself Etc but she would come out from cry in the room and praying and she'd come out and say all right what are you going to do let's figure this out let's do this and then I I had uh a gentleman named Mike and a a woman his wife named Sandy Mike and Sandy Friedman who were the executive directors of that camp that that hired me and they were sort of my my my Camp Jewish parents and they were doing the same thing they my entire life they would say Kevin you have so much potential you can do this you can be that and when they realized I wasn't going to college they sort of said okay so what are you going to do here this opportunity can you do this

[21:30]  can you do that and then many of my my friends that I grew up with and that I worked with said the same thing and they would sort of say all right we haven't heard from you in a month in three months in six months that's not like you Kev what are you going to do what are you doing and as soon as I got to the Bronx honestly because I thought it was going to be a short-term thing I really was like Hey I I'll work here for a few months and then I'll go get a job at Guitar Center or I'll go on tour with Beyonce somebody's going to call um but as soon as I to the Bronx that Community wrapped their arms around you as soon as they realized I was one of them and fighting for the same things that they were fighting for they just wrapped their arms around me and said all right here here's this bakala eat this this aroko gondes eat that uh because we exchange currency and food we don't have

[22:16]  a lot of money but that's how we do and we're going to support you through and through everything that you need you you let us know and we'll let you know what we need so it was really community at large wrapping their arms around me man and this is one of of the key elements it's like sometimes when we don't believe in ourselves we have a magical gift of having other people believe in us and fill some of those gaps and it sounds like that's exactly what happened for you man I want to transition into some of the impact that you started having in the Bronx because this story and the numbers and the people that you were engaging with is inspiring so let's kind of go down that road yeah so when I got to the Bronx um I was tasked with helping with uh attendance Improvement right uh they they had across New York City what's called aidp program attendance Improvement Dropout prevention and I was in an elementary school that had 64% attendance at the

[23:05]  time when I arrived and they said all right you got to improve attendance there was no manual there was no uh sort of training session I showed up on the first day of school and the principal after some some tussling got me in office and said all right do your thing and over the next two years I I helped raise that attendance from 64% to 94% attendance and I mean I was doing anything and everything to get kids in the seats uh my first two weeks there really not understanding what I was supposed to do I walked through the neighborhood and talked to every person standing outside every Bodega owner every grandmother sitting on a bench so that they didn't think that I was ACS so that they didn't think when I came knocking on their door that I was trying to take their kids away right so I knew the bodega owners by name I knew the parents in the streets by name I knew the man that stood on the corner by name

[23:53]  the construction workers all of them knew me and I and I knew them and they would actually call me Mr vus I worked for an organization called vus and they'd be like oh there's Mr vus coming and when kids didn't show up to school I was just going and knocking on their door often times schools do reactive work for attendance right it's like oh you missed school today so we'll call you at the end of the day I was monitoring I had a case load of about a hundred students I was monitoring them by the hour if you weren't in school by 9:00 a.m. school started at 8:00 a.m. I was going to your house I was knocking on your door and I was pick all right come on take a shower get dressed I'll I'll stand here I'll wait then their their parent their grandparent was feeding me breakfast at that point like okay thanks for picking them up thanks for picking up little PTO uh and then I was walking them to school uh or there

[24:41]  were test days and you know the test has to start at 9:15 and the principal would call me at 8:45 and say Kevin we're missing these five students they got to get in by 9:15 to take the the Citywide test so I'm driving around the community as the the community school bus at that point you know picking up kids to to make sure that they uh get to school and we we really got some some huge numbers at that point but after two years the city and its Infinite Wisdom said hey kids don't really cut school at elementary school they cut it at high school which is actually not true tons of elementary school kids do cut School uh and they took away all the funding from elementary schools so uh 31 out of 32 staff members in my organization were laid off my uh uh executive director asked me to move to Brooklyn to run our student and temporary housing program

[25:28]  program and I refused because i' fallen in love with with the community in the Bronx and we've been there even before I arrived and I said this is ridiculous for us to up and leave I didn't understand how nonprofits worked at that point I thought that we could just decide to stay there and he hung up the phone on me a few days later he called me back and said what do you want to do and I realized that a lot of our students were graduating from our elementary school and going to school across the street uh and then ending up 5 10 20 times worse than when they were in elementary school they really started to pick up bad habits then and I did some research and realized that when students don't have a a catchment net of services that sort of wings them off that that catchment net then they actually end up worse off than students that never had any support so I pitched an idea of having a joint after school program that went from third graders

[26:15]  through eighth graders that joined together these two schools uh to to really help our students get weaned off of that service and get them into High School uh and that program actually turned in over time to when they got to high school they actually volunteering to work for that after school program so we actually had them up to college uh and I pitched them on 100 students at $100,000 he said yes I said all right we can start tomorrow he actually said no you need to raise this money uh he gave me three months that he'd pay my salary and then I'd be fired if I couldn't raise it I thought that I was actually being set up I called my mom crying and she said no baby this is your opportunity you go out there and raise that money so I started trying to raise money on September 5th of that year October 5th I raised $135,000 000 to start our first glow program which existed for the next N9 years

[27:02]  conglomerated about 7,000 scho students from 16 schools across the tri-state area for uh uh nine years there and then I went on to Renaissance Youth Center where I helped to do much of the same work their CEO recruited me and said hey I saw what you were doing there can you do that here uh we expanded that to 3,000 students across the city uh two summer camps where we serviced about 600 students every summer uh and we were the loudest camp in New York City we got called by 301 every day uh people were complaining they were like why are these kids singing on the train but all I knew was the woods so we would take the woods to the hood I didn't want this to be a stale summer camp experience where we just sort of took the bus every day to trips I wanted them to feel like they were at Sleek weekend so we were singing the loudest boom chicka Booms that you

[27:49]  could hear on the the Subway at 800 a.m. uh to the point that we were forcing Joy on people you know uh the 311 calls stopped eventually because people were just expecting of this joy every day uh and then I I moved on to satellite Academy High School the number one transfer High School in New York City where we helped to raise money to bring kids to study abroad programs across the world and I'm talking about overaged uncredited students our youngest students were 16 years old many of our students had children or were responsible for their younger siblings um and couldn't afford to go you know maybe even to the next state let alone to another country we were taking kids to South Africa to to Costa Rica to Brazil uh we we almost went to Cuba that got cancelled a week before bureaucracy uh and doing some real

[28:36]  amazing stuff and then ended up at change for kids where I worked with uh uh 13 schools across the city about 5,500 students to do this real bepoke Community work and figure out what communities need and raise Monies to to provide that for them do we hear everybody who's tuning in and listening here today the impact that one man can have in his community you know every single time I hear you talk about the impact in the lives that you've changed man it literally gives me goosebumps the fact that you've been so intentional about investing into the people who need help most who often don't have the ability to raise their own hand for help in a time of need is a inspiring why did you choose to double down on this work when you are incredibly articulate incredibly talented you could have been doing so

[29:24]  many other things Kevin it's my mother's fault uh my mom was on the front line of HIV and AIDS before it ever had a name uh she was working in case management and such during that time and I watched my mom come home every day break out in tears because her clients were passing away and get up every next day and do it again and I mean my mom was doing everything she was feeding the crackheads in the neighborhood for Christmas and Thanksgiving she was buying double triple quadruple the amount of insure that one human being would need because her her clients weren't eligible for Medicare and Medicaid just yet so that they could get that weight up uh uh she was giving the the clothes off her back my mom always tells a story about her buying me a new

[30:12]  shering coat when I was in the first or second grade and me showing up at school and one of my friends didn't have a coat and I gave him my coat and she yelled at me about it when I came home and sort of was like why would you give your coat away and I was like he doesn't have a coat because that's all I saw my mom doing and she looked at me and said you don't have a coat now I don't know what we're going to do about it but she asked me you know when I got into to Youth Development and into social impact work said how' you end up here and I looked at her and I said where else would I have ended up this is all I ever saw I I I only ever saw you you function in the spirit of generosity for mankind and if we're we're honest the word philanthropy the etymology of that word means for the love of mankind M exactly that and I I ended up in in philanthropic work social

[31:03]  impact work because I I followed in the footsteps of my mom and your mom has to be incredibly proud of everything that you've accomplished man you know I think it's uh really important to recognize where we came from and those people who inspired us very early to become the men who we are today and you know there's an interesting you know time in space right now we're at in society where being Alpha means being tough being Alpha means being loud but you know I would consider you one of the most Alpha people that I've come across because you are leading with a kind heart you are leaning into people who can't raise their voice and you're being that voice and that advocate for people who often don't even have an opportunity man and like that's the true definition of alpha in my opinion thank you thank you first for that I I'll share something with you uh which is not you know that we didn't talk about previous

[31:50]  to this and this podcast will probably come out after this news is revealed to the world sadly enough uh about a week ago our organization voted to dissolve uh so over the next couple of months our turn is actually going to be dissolving because of the the state of fundraising in education Justice right now now to your point about really advocating for people who can't advocate for themselves uh I had two options uh when when I thought about this decision I could have you know resigned from the role and said hey this is someone else's mess uh figure this out or option two was to do everything that could for my staff members who many of them have never had another job I've got folks who've been here for 10 years eight years nine years who this was their first job and their

[32:36]  only job they haven't been on the the front lines of uh the the job market in many many years and uh when I discussed this with my wife she said lean into your values and your morals like what do you believe and I said I'm I'm here for people as a leader I work for the people I'm working every day for them so I need to ensure that they have as much of a parachute as possible um so you know in discussion with the board I said all I care about is making sure that these people can land on their feet to the best of our ability I don't even care about me like what will happen with me is in God's hands but let me do what I can to ensure that those folks end up where they can be best let left off and the same thing for our students that we just uh finished our last Fellowship in August I said what can we do to make sure that they land best as possible for

[33:25]  where they need to go uh so it's just a confirming for me for you to say this in such a tumultuous time uh and I'm trying not to get emotional a tootal tumultuous time in uh our organization's Journey but that's what I believe in I believe in people and I believe in advocating for those who maybe don't have a seat at the table to advocate for themselves I mean this is what the definition of being a true leader is you know what I mean like it's easy to lead in times where everything is going right it's tough to be a great leader when things are hitting the fan you know what I mean and like the that we are given you know I've heard this quote many times but it's like you know God only gives us the test that we are ready to overcome and the things that we can handle and often when things happen in our life we're like ah why is this happening to me but on the other side of this transition of this growth period

[34:12]  there's going to be so many opportunities for you man I mean anybody who tunes into this podcast literally is gonna be like dude Kevin is a badass you know what I mean like this guy's doing some amazing stuff in our previous conversation we talked a little bit about leadership and what you're talking about here is a true demonstration of leadership but we talked about the concept of glass Cliffs I want to talk a little bit about this because you were really passionate about that yeah um I I glass Cliffs is the notion that uh women and leaders of color often times get set up uh to take on leadership roles in organizations when those organizations are in times of Crisis or or heading into you know a negative space and they're not informed about this or readily informed about it uh so it sets them up on this glass Cliff that that

[35:00]  could possibly harm their careers and you know in between the last time we talked and now I I spent a couple of weeks in Bali with with my wife and we did uh some waterfall canyoning uh so we're like repelling down waterfall which has become one of my new favorite activities and I learned a lesson and if I ever write a book or or something I I'll write one of them about this um the guide in front of you it's their duty to to ensure your safety when you walk into their situation and I think about that in leadership as well as as I'm about to transition into my next it is important for me to set up anyone behind me to understand what they're getting into first and then to know how to safely go about it so when we were repelling the

[35:48]  guide would go would go ahead of us and then as we were walking he'd say put your foot there don't put your hand there put your your rope there don't put your rope there right so he'd guide us to the edge of the cliff and then we had the opportunity to make the the choice and the the decision on whether or not we'd step off that Cliff because it it was uh canyoning by by um election right so you could elect to to say no and then you could just walk down the cliff or you could repel off and I think that that's very important in leadership and in business is that you want have the election the opportunity to elect whether I'm going to hop off this thing or I'm going to avoid it and that there's someone who's in front of you who's able to say do go there don't go there do put your rope there don't put

[36:36]  your rope there you know I think that as I just mature as a leader I think about taking care of my team very similar in the biblical sense of like protecting your flock right knowing where we are going allowing for them to navigate this path but being the structure that keeps everybody safe you know how did how did you become such a prolific young leader did you have people who you leaned into very early in your career that kind of gave you some of this wisdom or is this all just coming out of you know your mom being an awesome mother and giving you the intuition to be able to navigate these times a lot of it is my mom uh a lot of it is Mike and Sandy fredman from from Theus um sending you know we we'd have 1500 campers a session right so so

[37:26]  upwards of 3,000 cber a summer and she knew every kid's name she knew every kid's parent I I I mean I could describe a kid that I went to Camp with when I was a kid and she'd say oh that's Stephen and his mother is so and so and I remember when he did this and he he was from this state uh and she was just that dedicated but also they would wrap their arms around every staff member we had staff members from across the world and they'd learn their little idiosyncracies and their foibles and what they needed and what tick them off and they taught me how to lead from the heart first a a and then in my career I I met a gentleman named Alan van Capel who's now uh the CEO of the friends of the Highline in New York City and I met him when he was uh the CEO of Educational Alliance and he taught me about values based leadership and he

[38:15]  said you have two responsibilities as a leader and then as a nonprofit leader you have a third so as a nonprofit your responsibility obviously is to keep the ship moving you have to fundraise you have to inspire but as a leader you have two responsibilities one is to the people who work with you you need to engender them with such confidence in their own ability first and then then your ability to lead them that they'd run into a burning building with you or for you and then secondly you need to know that your your your excuse me your responsibility is to build them to be the best versions of themselves which often time means that they will leave you far best that they can be for them in their own organizations in their own work

[39:03]  where he sort of said hey build them to be the best that they can be and that oftentimes means that they will leave you leave you a and that shifted my mind for me I I have recommended so many staff members who were working for me at that moment for higher positions for better positions recruiters reach out to me for stuff for me and I say no but I have the perfect person for you and many of my staff members don't even know that I ever recommended them you know and they'll come to me as many staff members do when they leave and they're sad they man I got this new too I'm so sorry for leaving and I'm always gracious about it but in the back of my mind I'm I'm cheering that's another win for us for the global team because they're moving on to big bigger better and best for them you know there's a there's an amazing author his name is Kevin Kelly and in one of his recent books he says you lead by letting others know what you expect of them which may often exceed

[39:51]  what they expect of themselves provide them a a reputation which they can live up to yeah yeah exactly that I couldn't have said it better my nam's sake Kevin I mean this is the exactly um you know the thing that I the thing that I think is really powerful about this conversation is you come from a place of such deep confidence and such gracious willingness to invest into others that you have ultimate trust in yourself we have conversations with leaders all the time where often our ego right gets in the way of saying I'm going to train people so good that they can leave but treat them so good that they won't that is a confidence that comes with an abundance mindset do you feel like you kind of tap

[40:40]  into that consistently absolutely absolutely I um you know not to get overly biblical or spiritual but I I really live and exist in this space in place that believes that me being able to live me being able to lead is all a gift and a privilege right and none of this belongs to me like inherently belongs to me right it it it it belongs to to God which is outside of me and as a result of that I'm just a Steward I'm just a Steward I'm just here try to do the right things with the resources that I have and the time that I have so I need to Steward all of that correctly I think I live in this abundance uh sort of mindset because I live the the first couple of

[41:27]  years of my life in a poverty mindset right believing like oh man we don't have what's on TV we don't have enough but back to my mother she didn't live in that mindset my mom did everything that she could to never say no I don't remember my mom ever saying no when I was a kid she didn't always say yes but we joke about it my siblings and I my mom's favorite line was I see and I see like 93% of the time meant yes but it gave us just enough hope to to be able to go on hey can we get this new game boy I'll see and that was enough that was enough for us to believe and to have that faith that it's going to happen uh hey uh could we go out to Juniors for my birthday Al see that was enough I I could run on for a month on that ALC and I I just live in that same space where I

[42:15]  just believe that in my heart and in my life that I'm always functioning in an ALC uh spirit I've been messing around with this framework on the podcast and I want to get your opinion on it so part of my personal brand and I feel like I haven't been living up to the fullest potential of it when I sit across from amazing people like you is I'm always incredibly optimistic right I've been so optimistic that people in the past have called me toxically positive and so what I've tried to do is put language around this so people who don't understand that the world that we see in front of us is malleable when we put trust and we put hope and we put compassion into the future things happen and so what I've tried to do is put a framework together called practical optimism practical optimism is something that you can deploy when things aren't going your way but you have a confidence of all see

[43:03]  what happens in the future and being able to lean into that sent of optimism what do you think about that practical optimism framework compared to being pessimistic in this world I I think it's it's very very NE necessary there's a um uh I forget the name of the the gentleman who the the principle is about but there's a principle that basically says um in leadership you have to hold both truths at the same time that you have to have faith and belief that you can win while also saying the odds are stacked against us or like we lost the last battle or what have you and those two things have to exist at the same time and as a leader you have to be able to hold that and and I think that's exactly what practical optimism is right

[43:51]  because far too many people look at the day-to-day scenario and say man here are all the reasons why this won't work or can't work or shouldn't work right but if you live in this place of of optimism practical optimism you can exist with the reasons that maybe it couldn't or shouldn't work but you can also say I have the hope the faith the belief in myself my team my people in the vision etc etc that will get there like the other night I had I had the uh the privilege of playing uh keyboards with Imagine Dragons at the Tyler Robinson Foundation G which is for Pediatric cancer patients and I was so inspired being there because of these young people who otherwise could have said I have pediatric cancer they said I'm not going

[44:39]  to make it so why be joyful why be happy why run around why laugh giggle etc etc but each one of these kids was amazingly and all inspiringly just a kid they were just hopeful they were just joyful they were just Lively enough to just be a kid and I said that is the way that we are purposed to live that IR irregardless of what we are faced with on a day-to-day basis there's still Joy there's still hope there's still faith and we need to pursue that everything else is going to work out the way it's going to work out but pursue that Kevin if you could go back to that young kid who was sitting on the couch who just got the worst news of his life at that point in time right and you could give him advice for how he was going to navigate the future what would you say to him I probably tell him

[45:27]  the sun the sun is always going to come out the sun always Rises always Rises you know not to be cliche with with Annie The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow but storms are going to happen but the sun always comes out it always Rises it may take a day it may take two days but the sun always Rises and and I think it's really easy in that moment and for me it was really easy to be like dude Gloom my life is over the world has crashed you know they said if you go to college you can be whatever but if you don't go to college you'll be nothing all right to those those two extremes and to be able to sit down with him and say hey I see you I hear you I understand what you're going through but

[46:14]  I promise you the Sun is going to rise again you know one of the traditions we have as we end our episode here is our previous guest wanted to ask you a question and their question was did your goals ever shift in the priorities of life or the priorities of your career along this journey absolutely I I think my my shortterm goals shifted but never mind my big hairy audacious goal um very early on at the center for Creative leadership someone asked me what's your life mission uh and I had no clue and it worked us through you know a couple of days of determining that and my life mission is to uh get the best out of people or to produce actually use the word produce to produce the best in and out of people for the betterment of them

[47:03]  right and that speaks to all areas of my life right whether that's nonprofit work or in music by trade though I I get to play keyboard sometimes I'm a music producer and not in the sense that I want to be in a video dancing around and such I want to get the best work out of the artist that I'm working with and craft the painting that they already have in their mind so that's another podcast for other day but far too many producers believe that their job is to be the artist I don't want to be I want to get the art out of the artist but that's the same thing for anyone I'm coaching any young person I'm working with Etc um so yeah shortterm goals definitely shifted you know I got married and this happened or I lost that job or gained that job or what have you but the big hairy audacious goal has remained the same I feel like that's a beautiful place for us to end today's

[47:50]  conversation Kevin thank you from the bottom of my heart for being on the podcast man it means the world to me thank you