Welcome to Imagination in Action, where we have conversations with compelling people driving the action that will power our futures. These are successful Imaginators you want to know?
Welcome, Gerald, it's great to see you. Hey, John,
how you doing today? Good, good.
So this is Imagination in Action, where we have Imaginators. And tonight's Imaginator is Gerald. And these are people who are using their imagination to have impact on the future, and are people who are shaping the world that we live in. And Gerald has certainly done that, and has done some extraordinary work. And he's just getting started in this show. We're recording it. There'll be a transcript produced soon after. We shut this down. Tonight, but this is a two hour long form, format show where we can really understand what Gerald has been up to and where he's going and what he wants to achieve. I see. Gerald, where are you calling in from? Are you in Massachusetts today? Are you out? And about?
No, I'm in good ol Massachusetts today and in actually be down in New York tomorrow, but here in mass today and waiting for that warmer weather to catch up to us?
Yeah, well, let me say a few things about Gerald. Gerald is quite a quite an inspiration. He He's created a nonprofit that's had tremendous impact. And I think it's served over 35,000 young adults. And he's going to talk a little bit about what his organization does and how he supports them. And what are the opportunities, he opens up for them. But it's a nonprofit that's grown very fast. And they're not that many nonprofits that have over $100 million operating budget. And, and most of them have been around for decades, maybe over a century. And his is achieved that and just because you have a big operating budget doesn't mean you're the best. But he's using those resources in a really smart way. And he has a plan. And we're going to we're going to hear a little bit about, you know, how, how wonderful this nonprofit is. And I met Gerald, I guess he had graduated from Bowdoin I knew he had worked in Wall Street and had been really inspired by a boy named David who he was, I guess a mentor for through the Boys and Girls Club. While working in Wall Street, I think he found his way to Harvard Business School, got another credential, and then started a company and I knew the company was in United Kingdom. And I think he sold it. And instead of becoming a serial tech entrepreneur in the for profit world, he decided he wanted to create a nonprofit that would really solve some some of the challenges in our society. And I met him I had the opportunity to meet you, Gerald, when you came back from the United Kingdom after you sold your company. And you were kind of thinking about what's next. And you were doing a listening tour. And remember, you were so respectful of the nonprofit leaders, you didn't come in saying that you had a business background, you knew how to do everything you really wanted to understand the lay of the land. And I really respect you for the way you you launched your your nonprofit. And I know this nonprofit Europe, I think, has a record of the Fortune 500 companies. Some of the most employees have folks of color have have gotten hired into them. And you can tell us more about that. But I'm really proud of how you've helped young people get tech skills and professional skills. Internships.
Yeah, I remember John, when we, when we first met, and in coming back to this country, I lived abroad for about eight years, my tech company was largely in London and Amsterdam. And, you know, to come back and just, as you said, pay respect to the folks who've been serving in, in the community for many years, of which you were, you know, have been one of the leaders in helping them to make, you know, and certainly at that point, Massachusetts a better place and a lot of ways, especially for young people. In the one thing for sure is business acumen of business experience doesn't connote that you're going to be successful in the nonprofit industry and just understand that context. So I was lucky. I remember Alan Casey sat me down, and he showed me a video and City Year did kind of explain what they were doing. He gave me advice when I had nothing but a business plan at best, and spent a good hour hour with me. Just just, you know, talking about the industry. And I remember he asked me a question, he said, Are you willing to try to become an expert in your field, because it's going to take, you know, the 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell style, to develop some insight or some knowledge of what you're trying to do. So you willing to do that, because you really shouldn't start this thing if you're not willing to put in the time and the effort and the energy. And he was right. I mean, I was 22 years ago. And I still feel like I'm just getting started and learning some of the things I need to be learning. But you know, I was inspired, Boston's been a great place to start social enterprises, because of people like citizens, schools, and city, air and many others that have been born here. And we're generous, spirited, and helping others to get started. And I remember I made a vow, then whichever pulled that 22 years later, which is when another social entrepreneur gives me a call, who's just starting out, to take a little bit of time with him. You know, it may not be nine to five, maybe nights and weekends. But just to take time, because I certainly remember what it felt like to have nothing to have a business plan to have no experience, no contacts and network, and for people to pay attention, and try to give you some advice and perspective. So I think Boston is frankly, the best place in the country to start a social enterprise in the community has been a really great place to hang out and develop friendships and partnerships over the past couple of decades.
Well, a few other things I want to share with the audience and share for the record. Before we get into some questions. I know, along the way, you were asked to be the the chair of Roxbury community college, you were also asked to join the Massachusetts board of early and secondary education. So you got some insight into community at community college, and and in the public education on a state level. I just want to point out to our listeners that I think people of color in this country were north of 300 million represent close to 40%, maybe even more, and yet. They not 40% are employed in the tech world and some of the Fortune 500 companies. And I think, Gerald, you're really trying to do something about that. And you're talking, you're thinking a lot about skill based hiring, and the opportunity divide, and the role of 44 year degree degrees and credentialing and, and how we can help everyone achieve the American dream and thrive and, and reach their full potential and contribute. And I think you've done that for many. So this show is about imagination, imagination. And when you came back from UK, and you started Europe, tell us a little bit about where your imagination was at that point. Had you come up with the name? What was the original kind of goal you kind of touched on it a moment ago, but maybe kind of model for others, listening who we want to inspire that they too can use their imagination and make action happen? What were those early days like we're gonna fast forward soon if you know if you were the next Secretary of Labor, you know what you would do and and where you see, you know, these times heading. I also want to introduce Alison Sanders, my co host tonight she is the chief futures that BCG and definitely following a lot of trends in the future work so I'm excited for her for you to to meet. But General tell us those early days had you come up with the name and what what were you thinking of what what why do you do this? After your your success in England?
You know, it's interesting imagination, I think the words interesting when, what, what gets you to imagine things but what inspires you, in my case, was actually through the big brother's Association, just being proximate, you know, for spent, I spent every Saturday of my life for three years with a boy who lived in what was most heavily photographed crime scene in New York City. And that was my Saturdays for three years is getting to know David his family, his mom who I talked to, you know, still the state 20 plus years later, more than that, and and in so I think imagination in this way is, is born out of often small acts of being proximate in imagining what could be when you see something that was wrong. I mean, I, as I said, I spent every single Saturday with David, and I would, you know, he lived with us over the years. His mom, let me take them off Long Island. He she let me take them out of the country. I took them on vacations, and he became part of our My extended family and even to this day, I don't treat them as one of my children. But it was so clear to me like just being up close to someone who who grew up in both shelters and public housing, who lived in very, you know, tough zip codes, had very little resources, had a school system, which was embarrassing when he used to go to his parents night at school, his mom would ask me to attend family night at school, and the teachers would barely know who he was. And you kind of saw this total lack of opportunity, and inequity that so many young people were facing, and had nothing to do with your ability or their motivation, their talent, their hustle, like they want to get ahead and always have, it just struck me back then. And I said to imagine, well, what, what would life be like, if if this country lived up to its concept of of opportunity for all? You know, what would what would life be like if the actual American dream wasn't the American nightmare? For a lot of folks who can't quite see the next rung on the ladder? Not sure where to go next, not sure how to get access to opportunity. And so that, you know, I was only about 25, that at the time, this would have been back in at late 80s. You just imagined is this something we have to live with? Like is on our watch? Do we have to live with inequity and inequality as I was experiencing it. And then frankly, when I left New York and was in London, building a tech company, and I was still, David would come over and live with us. In the summer. I hired a lot of people. And we were one of the fastest growing companies in England for about five years. In we hired a lot of folks who were smart, but it wasn't always dictated by where they went to school. So I kind of learned that as a business person upfront that it wasn't necessarily where you had gone to school, which was really correlated to your brains. In fact, one of the smartest folks I was able to hire had not gone to college. He had done what's called a levels over in England. Oh level, excuse me. And, and he was brilliant. And so that also got me thinking, Where were we looking for talent? Where were we thinking people who were talented lived? And then who might we be missing? Because I know, I found an incredible person who wasn't at Cambridge, or Oxford or Birmingham. And he was really valuable to our company. So I thought, okay, there's got to be some correlation here between businesses, you need talent in a looking for the best talent, and then a lot of young people who lack of opportunity and lack access to that opportunity, and kept imagining, well, you've got a dysfunctional broken market for talent. What would a market for talent look like? That connected, motivated young adults with employers who actually wanted to hire, retain and advance those young adults? In that? You know, that was the genesis of the idea. And I sold my company. My dad, let me know pretty quickly, I was lucky, because we'd sold it during the.com. Boom, and we were fortunate on what we get paid for that business. And remember, Dad told me Don't think you're that smart. Don't think if you said you got lucky, my friend, don't don't think you're anything more than somebody who worked hard, but happened to get overpaid for what he built.
And they had a few of the folks that you know, you've talked about Europe for a lot of years, now's the time to do it. People, my family. And so I sat down, started doing the research, slowly but surely went to visit places, both in America in England and Germany, to see what was going on out there in this field of youth workforce development, and then started to write down names of what could this be? The first name I wrote down was jumpstart your smile at that, John, because jumpstart isn't nonprofit, both you and I know, Jordan and Aaron right? Yeah, absolutely. And so I went to search back to lose the early days of the Internet, kind of search online. And that was taken. I saw it was a nonprofit already that existed. And then I thought, you know, I felt the program had to be intensive and it was longer program was in a few months. And I thought it's going to be about a year. It's a year in which students can go up, they can rise up, they can achieve their potential. And so that I came up with the name of year up, and then found that it wasn't registered, and then went to a school, high school and got a group of seniors together. who represented the population I wanted to serve. I bought them all pizza and I said, Hey, I'm trying to name this new organization. That's is what Europe is in does it resonate. So I did a little bit of field testing with young people and most of them said you I get it a year in which I can go up. And that became a journey back in August of 2000, when we moved back to this country with a business plan to start, year up, which is now about a $200 million organization.
Great. Well, soon, Gerald, you went to Bowdoin College, right? Yeah, yep. Yep. And Joshua Chamberlain went there. Civil Civil War. Someone very famous during civil war. And Geoffrey Canada and Reed Hastings offshore graduates are doing a lot in the education space, and Bowdoin is, I think, considered a top five or top 10 liberal arts school, which I think they're only like, 400 real liberal arts school. So that's not such a great way to define it. But it's considered a great four year school. And I know you're very proud of graduating from there, and you were on the board. And I think you helped diversify the student body. I'm wondering, what's the future of four year college credentials and university credentials? How are they helping the US economy? How are they? How are they hindering the US economy for reaching its potential? I know, You've thought a lot about this. I just use that as a launching point by saying voting, but what I really want to know is what you know, Google said that you could get a job without a college degree. You know, where do you think we should be? You know, what kind of policy should we be making around credentialing in college?
I think it's kind of a both. And so in my view, us, United States is probably the best quality system of higher education, college masters, PhD programs. So it's, it's got a very high quality in well recognized sector and post secondary education. But the way it is structured today, albeit it is high quality, and it's certainly privilege for those who can gain access to it, it in no way shape or form, is actually going to educate the majority of Americans who need education in this country. So it's like, it's not that we're going to do away with four year education. It's just, it's necessary but insufficient as a system to educate folks with the skills, the competencies they need to, to live productive lives and earn livable wages. So I think it's, it's less about the government doing away with, you know, elite, four year colleges, I think those are going to exist for a long time to come. I think lesser, supported lesser endowed, institutions are going to have a hard time having people pay them 50 $60,000 a year to attend. So you'll see a lot of, I think, closure in the the lesser ranks of expensive private colleges. But, but they will exist that but I think you got to remember that. Look, only nine out of 100 people in this country over the age of 22 have a four year degree that they got between the ages of 18 and 22. Right, so 91 out of 100 people in this country who are more than 22 years old, do not have a four year degree that they got between the ages of 18 and 22. The average age of a Bachelor of Arts is about 27 and a half right now in this country. So the system that we call traditional college, we think of is this is the way you get educated is actually not traditional at all, it only applies to 9% of adults in the country. Yet, yet we kind of see that as for we've convinced a generation of people that if you don't do that you are less than you are somehow other, you're not the right stuff. And so the college for all mentality, I think did a disservice, in many respects, if we had called it post secondary for all that every human being needs post secondary education. And it can take different forms. Right? It can be whether it's an apprenticeship, it can be a trade, a two year a four year, a skill, a certificate, a certification in for both culturally and professionally for those two, multiple pathways to be recognized to be valued. So I would argue that the big big change we have to make is to develop, value and find relevant multiple pathways of post secondary education and expect that everyone needs some form of post secondary education. It's not to do away with four year but even if you doubled, tripled or quadrupled, the number of people getting a four year degree in this country in the traditional quote unquote manner. It still be at 36% it still leaves 64% of the country who's not going to do that. So by by just definition of numbers, we need different systems of post secondary education. And they need to be supported, valid by the government, valued by employers in ways that bring many more people in this country into economic mobility, and a place where they can take care of themselves and their families. That's, you know, we're going to see increased ages of people getting college degrees, because they need economic stability. Here, you can't feed your brain until you feed your belly. So how do people get economically stable? How do they take care of themselves? How do they get economic credentials signal signaling that they have economic value in the labor market, in just getting degrees as well, but that age is only going to increase in colleges and community colleges. And online colleges are going to have to focus more on credentials and certificates and things that connote and signify labor market value, so that someone can actually take care of themselves and continue their education over a longer period of time. So that this we're in the cusp of a big shift in this country educationally.
Great. So this is Imagination in Action, we're 19 minutes in is a two hour long form journalism show. We're here with our imagining, or tonight, Gerald Tavian, who founded and leads Europe. And he's just getting started. I think the numbers are 35,000. Young adults have gone through the program in a little bit, I want to definitely hear what the intervention or what the program is and how it's evolved and where it's going. I also want to ask Gerald, you know, what are labor economists getting? Right? And what are they getting wrong? That you're aware of from from where you sit? And I also want to ask about the green economy. And are you helping to help young people be leaders in the green economy, because I think that's going to play an important role in future generations. I also want to point out that I see Carol Young is in the audience. She has a House of Correction, named after her and is very aware of, of things down in Texas, and I may bring her up on stage. And I see Esther Dyson, it's always a joy to see you yesterday. I don't know if you've missed one of our shows. But we look forward to having you be part of the conversation. But for now, I want to turn to Allison. Allison, do you have any questions for our Imaginator tonight?
Oh, absolutely. Gerald. I mean, I think so many of us in the audience are big fans of the work you've done. And I wanted to follow up a little bit on what you were saying about four year education. The 9% number is really shocking. So have you seen models that you think are scalable in the US with either online education? Are you impressed by what Starbucks offered to baristas be? Do you see any of that as solutions? Or do you think we need something much more massive?
You know, I think when I think about kind of leaders in education today, I think of certainly Michael Crow at ASU, who's been really thoughtful about innovating post secondary, Eduardo prodromou ran the largest community college in the country, Miami Dade. Think of folks like Paul blanc at Southern New Hampshire University and the work he's done around competency based degrees. If you added those together, you're probably talking half a million more than that probably 600,000. Individuals could be up 700,000. Now. So I do think there are models that scale. And it's there's a cultural piece to I think, Allison, where people are accepting that there are different ways people will get educated in this country, and that they're not less than they're not kind of stepchildren, educational systems. So I do think we did his party, there is a cultural change, and a cultural acceptance and a mindset, which is why when businesses look differently, who's talented and how to recruit talent, it typically has to be led by the top because you're talking about a mindset shift that's required. I'm convinced we do have models that can scale conserve folks. Well. I think we're still in the early innings of of increasing quality of online education, that my guess is a one way street, we'll get better and better at doing that. And also the assessment industry. You know, companies right now are working hard and as researchers to figure out how to assess authentically, someone's problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, customer service skills, as that now that gets cracked. That'll put employees in a position to, to hire for what they really, really want, which is skill competency. And to triangulate on that, in ways that really, it's harder for them to do today. So I think that not only will business figured out how to assess in a more authentic manner, what they really want as opposed to use a proxy, like a college degree, which is pretty blunt sorting mechanism. But the online educational world will continue to increase in both quality and the ability to to have experiential activity online. Certainly the the metaverse is going to play a role here. I think we're in the very early innings. And part of what we need to do is imagine that system evolving, and then say, what role can we play in helping to advance it from the stakeholder position one occupies like if I'm an employer, I can make a difference in how we hire how we recruit, how we think about skills based hiring. If I'm an educational institution, we're thinking about, how are we offering certificates, credentials, and kind of skills that actually have market value associated with them. And ultimately, I think that's going to differentiate the winners and losers in education. And frankly, the winners and losers in business who are trying to build the best workforce as they possibly can, like you can't, you can't win the game if you're only recruiting part of the population. And if that population is screened out, based on just a four year degree, we're missing a ton of talent in this country. So I'm, I'm actually hopeful and impatient at the same time. And I do think, though, that it is a one way ticket, that in our lifetimes, we'll see more change in higher education in the next 20 years, than perhaps we've seen in the last 200. And we'll be the generation that says how did we live through and lead through these changes, such that that created greater equality, in access to opportunity for those who most need it?
Great. Alison, do you have a follow up question? I have a bunch of other questions.
Yeah.
I want to see if Esther has a question after you.
Sure. I love your mix of caution and hopefulness. I mean, I feel like both messages are so real right now. But I would be really fascinated. Some of the statistics we track are about the growing inequality. And the fact that some of the jobs being created are not as easy ones to just step into as we've had before. So I wonder, I love your optimism. I think the solutions are scaling at the same time. But what do you make out of three trends that we're tracking one increasing divides right now and disappearance of some of the easier jobs the step into being replaced by, let's say, more stem related and more complex data jobs? And then the great resignation that's happening now? I mean, how do you put some of those different pieces together? And how do you come out with this lovely balance of optimist and also impatient?
Yeah, that's, I think, Allison, it's a really thoughtful question and comment. You know, I often when we read about the challenges in this country, and one I always think a lot about is when people feel hopeless, and can't see how I can get ahead. That leads to some really negative consequences or think of deaths of despair. You know, why? Why are people doing things to themselves that are so unfortunately, negative and often deadly. In ethnic when you can't see a way forward when you can't take care of yourself, when you can't provide? Well, you don't see what's next in so I think it'd be hard pressed for us to say that we're moving in the right direction right now when you just look at how people are responding how they're feeling, and often a lot of folks are feeling I feel economically insecure. I don't see a way to get ahead. So that that obviously is deeply concerning. If you then couple that with what you said is automation will chew up quite a few jobs of working nation. Started by art Bill Gates focuses a lot on trying to expose and help people understand what will happen with automation in jobs will go away. You see declining labor market participation. You know, which to me is really scary of a significant group of folks who are not at all engaged in the labor market. You know, it's funny, I keep going back and say what this country needs more than anything else. Domestically, is a true education President, that prioritizes above everything else, the education of our citizens, because without which, this is going to be a more painful transition, and a much longer term journey to get to some of the hopefulness and optimism that I do. See, and I do share. But, you know, we, we have got to take education seriously in this country in a way that we haven't in the past, mean, to see folks every day. I mean, when I was chairman of Roxbury Community College, which was an institution that had certainly as challenges, I would go to the bookstore, Allison, and I would see people crying, no joke, in dropping out of school, because they couldn't afford a textbook. Like that's abs, I can see it, I can tell you where I was what I was wearing, in the thing, that's the state of education today is the only cost it's gone up higher than healthcare is higher education. And we've convinced people if you don't do it that way, you're less than so you know, there are a lot of challenges. And I don't want to be Pollyanna about that challenges that are here. But I think a couple things are in our favor. Business is 11 point 3 million jobs open in the country today, in business, we'll find a way to fill those jobs in if you look at times in the past, when labor markets have been very tight, business did get creative in innovative around how to include more people in the labor market, I think business will get in the business of education, more and more. You know, you look at what Starbucks is done. With ASU, or what guild is doing with many corporations today, business will come to see education as a strategic asset, a strategic benefit, not just a benefit, but a strategic benefit, that is applied to support people's ongoing journeys to get increasingly educated. And so part of the package of joining a company will be how they allowing you and advancing your education over time. In accepting you may not come to them with all your degrees tucked under your belt already. But they'll support that journey as part of the benefit package. But they won't do it. They'll do it in their own motivated self interest. So what skills they need to advance their their companies, right? I think business will be increasingly in the business of education we're seeing that happened with folks like instride. With guild, I think college is going to have to get its act together to be more responsive to the needs of students, and frankly, the needs of employers in a way that many community colleges have done in the past. And I think the market forces will be there, too, from the business side, to help folks into that labor market. And I think we need a much broader public policy to make sure people get free access to community college, well supported K to 12 education, obviously pre K at preschool, universal pre K.
And I can't think of many things domestically that are more important long term for the health of our country, then making a serious commitment to become an education first country. I just don't see another way we you're right, the jobs are getting more complex. If we don't respond to that. You'll have a two to very two tiered system of those who are in and those who are radically out. And that's not going to be a fun democracy to try to manage.
Well put Gerald Esther, in Greg's Esther, do you have a question then? Love to also hear from Greg and this is long form journalism. Gerald at some point tonight love for you to share some things that maybe you haven't shared in the media on some of your thinking we got time. We also have a world champion accordion player. He's I call him the Elvis of accordion or the Simone Biles of accordion. He's trying to make the accordion cool. He's going to play a musical interlude for us around seven but Esther anything top of mind.
Yeah. So I want to kind of point out you know, your your, you mentioned the depths of despair. And there's so much going on now with people's mental health. They've been traumatized by COVID They'd be and traumatized by racial violence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, yes, we do need a lot of coders and we need secondary education. But we also need a fundamental understanding of the value provided by caregivers, by teachers, by role models by Jim coaches, and we got to pay them more. And I think the, you said, employers will find creative ways to get people back into the workforce, the best way to get people back into the workforce is to pay them more. And, you know, we need to somehow change the culture around what jobs are worth, and actually start paying people more for emotional intelligence and skills, not just coding skills. And we need to start investing collectively, as a country and as a broader community in educating people to be good educators of other people. So, you know, I think it's, it's good to have coding schools and all that, but I think we really need to focus also much more on helping people, you know, everything from training parents to be better parents to better pre K better childcare, you know, yes, we need mental health professionals at the end of this, but we also need to train people to help raise children who are not mentally traumatized. And, you know, that will pay off that won't pay off in the next three years. But there's a lot of research showing that it will pay off in 10 years, and it will pay off collectively. So, you know, focus on not just people's mental health, but on the the workforce that helps to create that mental health that will actually make this a much more successful country
faster. As always, thank you for your editorial and comment. Do you want to ask Gerald a question?
A question is Jeremy question. Are you Yeah, yeah. What do you think about that? And what are you doing about that? And you know, if you disagree, please.
And Gerald Esther's background, but she helped launch the for the first wave of technology. So there's a major technologists who saying there are other things more important to consider. As important.
Yeah, no, I, as we all know, as the Dyson your household name and appreciate the contributions that you have made. As someone who so look, we employ across goodness, 800 staff, you know, several 100 folks who have degrees in backgrounds in social work, or clinical care. And the, the reality is, I think a lot about how, how are we as a country, valuing those roles, which are about emotional intelligence. It's a good chunk of the folks I get a chance to serve with every day, who are supporting others to be their best selves into manage to challenges they may have had in the past. So I have to agree with that. And I remember being on the board of education, we had 70,000 teachers in Massachusetts, a million children, and that's system. And we never talked about helping young people become adult ready. Like, what does it mean to be adult? Ready? We talked about career college ready. And I think, is that really the aim? You know, how do we help people become adult ready? You know, so what does it mean to work? What does it mean to learn? What's the knowledge I need? Whether it's health knowledge, financial knowledge, technical knowledge, cultural competency, to be a thriving citizen in the 21st century, in our assessments in our tests, are not well aligned with helping a young person become emotionally strong and adult ready. And I think, you know, we get what we measure. And so how would we reimagine that system to ensure that every 18 year old wasn't at was adult ready? And got the support that they need to do? So? We we say our schools are very well funded, although I remember being on the Boston Foundation board we did a study on of the several billion dollars that went into high school, K to 12. After Massachusetts adopted charter schools, the bargain was you get a lot more money for public schools. And we tracked that money and found out that very, very, very few dollars if not no dollars made their way down to student Students that the vast majority of the dollars got caught up in whether it's administration or health care of pension costs. And I think Man, we're just we're not we haven't sorted out how to properly fund both teachers and students to provide the support they truly need. It's to me it's a shorter term, and it's a short it's I call it short money, you can pay now you can pay later. And paying now is a much more productive society, as you said, 710 15 years later, but we just don't, we don't seem to grasp that. Well, we think that some children deserve that not all children. I'll tell you, that's the one one story. So Europe requires some significant inputs to achieve the results we do. And we achieve great results on behalf of those 35,000 young people. And so our programs, probably 20 $22,000 per student. And so a lot of times people say Jarrell that's really, really expensive. And I always stopped them. And I say, well, against what metric? Are you using the word expensive? I said, Did you send your child to college? Oh, yeah, my child went to X college. Well, how much was that? That was 55,000 $60,000. A year as hell was that one year? Oh, no, they went for four years. Hopefully you spent $240,000 for their education. And you're telling me that it's expensive to spend $20,000 in a low income young adult from Oakland, or Harlem, or you name it, yet an investment 10 to 12 times that is not expensive for your child. So there's this, this kind of equity question of who's worthy of investment in this country. And, you know, as Paul Farmer, the late Paul Farmer would say, developing preferential opportunities for the poor, is the right way to think about this. And we don't do that we don't have the courage to properly invest in those, especially those who have had less access to resources in the past, and whether that be the quality of their teachers, quality their schools.
I would agree with you, Esther, that and I guess that asked me what do you think will give us the cultural political civic will to move in a different direction? What do you think would work?
People like you and me talking about it? Also, honestly, there's, there's we used to have home economics. And perhaps the current equivalent is things like media literacy, so that you know what to believe, financial literacy, so that you know how to deal with there's a huge percentage of student loans that are in default, because people couldn't understand what the hell they were supposed to do. The bank changed, they got a letter from some new bank, they thought it was a scam. They didn't pay it was $29.38. But now they're in default. But it's, you know, this is what John is doing. He's he's having public journalism, if you like, and it needs to spread more broadly. But these these are issues and, frankly, business people who think long term are beginning to realize that these are real problems. And yeah, yeah, I can't find qualified employees. I need to pay employees more, because actually, they're worth more they're beginning to understand that. They, you know, they can't deal with what's being asked of them at work anymore. And yeah, I think we're one good thing COVID did was it made it much more apparent how much emotional stress a lot of people are under even as it increased that emotional stress. So yeah, thank you for coming on clubhouse, and let's all keep talking.
Great. Let's go to let's go to Greg. Greg. You're very knowledgeable on school systems and data and credentialing. Very interested to hear what would comment or question you might have for Gerald?
Yeah, thanks, John, and Alison, and Esther. Appreciate being involved with this. You know, there's a quote by John Dewey that just kind of jumped out for me, as Gerald was talking what the best and wisest parents want wants for his own child. That was the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow, and unlovely. acted upon, it destroys our democracy. Hmm. Wow.
Hear hear.
Yeah, that's, that's pretty powerful. Greg, I wish I was writing. When you said that. That's incredible.
I'll send it to John. You can send it off to Joe I thank you for all the work that you've done and even more for all the work you have left to do. You know, like you, I served as a member of the State Board of Education, and I've dedicated my life to innovation in the field, you know, unlike you have also been shaped my personal experiences as a mentor with Somerville, young person and, you know, young people who have not had the advantages that my children have had. So, I guess I wanted to just get your, you know, your take on this trend on unbundling? Education. You know, you talked about quality, you know, America having the highest quality of higher ed, and although you said with a copy of it, that doesn't really serve the majority. But really, is it quality? You know, is this thin veneer of status, more like a brand like mermaids or Porsche or Harvard? Hmm, you know, what is real quality? What is the real mission? Should elite institutions that use false scarcity as a way of perpetuating class inequity? Do they have a public mission today have a public purpose? Are they out of line with their public mission and purpose? You know, you look at schools, you mentioned ASU and SNU. You know, you probably add, you know, Western Governors University isn't the kind of the third, you know, institution that is rethinking what higher ed really means, you know, but can we unbundle education? Can we put the learner at the center? Can we advance this vision of the near future in which every learner skills become machine readable data that can be held and controlled in a digital wallet app and exchange for currency? For learning and employment opportunities? And the open internet the way that goods and services Exchange today? Is this vision going to happen? Is it one 520 years out? What's your thoughts?
First of all, Greg, I think that was incredibly well said, when you say and it really kind of pushing on? Is it the highest brand? Perception? Which frankly, if you get in, you probably already were destined to be okay. Or is it truly quality? I mean, if you think of one could argue that you spend very little time often in higher ed actually, in class learning. It's a pretty expensive socialization and networking process, where you build networks, you learn about socialization. And that often is what keeps perpetuating, as Derek Bach proved in his book shape of the river, that those institutions as elite institutions produce a disproportionate number of leaders of other institutions in the country and therefore why affirmative action was important. And why I think is his book is four or 500 pages of facts around affirmative education are certainly the most influential books I've read around that particular topic. But I think your question is really interesting is is it truly quality? In how do we think about that? And can we unbundle the pieces of it that actually create value in ways in a much more accessible and lower cost? And I, you know, I think with obviously, with Blockchain, the ability to have a digital wallet, I feel like I love like stos, and others view like, when the internet first came into play, none of us had any idea what to do with it, you probably did so because you're ahead of all of us. But I certainly didn't know what would be the use cases for this. And I often feel like there's aspects of blockchain, we're in the very, very early stages of how could you know, skills and authentication of skills and competency? And how could things form part of that digital? Wallet did one held that stayed with you? And you could demonstrate capacity to that? You know, I think Greg, you painted a picture that will happen. And I wonder what would be the levers that would make it happen? Whether it's business, government, society, what do you think? What do you think would lead us towards what I like your vision? What do you think would lead us there? That's true. I think he's asking you,
Greg, do you do you want to ask, Do you have a follow up question or Greg, do you want to? You want to respond to that? You know, Greg Nadeau is you've been Greg node, he asked great questions. Very, very thoughtful. And as you think about the next few chapters of Europe, I think getting inputs from Greg could could be helpful. You also make me think of GPT three and you know, right now, one person with 100 ollar chess program could beat a grandmaster and I think with GPT If you can have essays being written that that generation prior, you know, didn't didn't have access to, and that's also going to be game changing. And I'm wondering if you have a AI GPT strategy for Europe down the road. But Greg, do you want to jump in here?
No, I think, you know, Jr. was asking yesterday, and, you know, it's a legitimate question of we have these technologies that exists today, we can use distributed ledger technology to verify records as unchanged. And you would think that in a thing like vaccination records, you know, COVID testing records that we would be applying that technology to the problems of how do I get on a JetBlue flight tomorrow, you know, but instead we have this piece of paper, you know, or a picture of it, you know, which is it's just, it's stunning, that we haven't, you know, incorporated these technologies into, and then maybe it's just a question of time.
And, you know, I was at an international event recently, and all the other countries had QR codes us was the only one with paper, which made me feel like we were in the stone age's. Esther, did you want to reply here?
Just keep going.
Yep. Alison, just going down. Do you want to jump in with a question, or should we continue on the stage?
Well, I was curious to hear Greg's answer to Gerald's question.
I thought his question was to Esther, I'm sorry.
Either one. I mean, I'm not fluid enough in knowledge of blockchain. I just just kind of think of, as you said, we have some of these technologies we probably not even can imagine today, how might they be used in ways that are going to be helpful for folks as as it relates to skill, competency? credentialing? There were years away?
There's, I don't I mean, the problem with academic credentials is not whether they're counterfeit. The problem was whether they're meaningful. And, you know, educated education, yeah, human human knowledge, human intelligence, human, emotional intelligence is hard to measure. And, you know, you can get a credential put in, but was it put in because you were nice to the professor, because you were a big donor to the educational institution. I mean, credentials are really useful for sorting large numbers of people for hiring a large workforce. But I just, I don't think credentials are the big challenge that faces us. That big challenge that faces us is creating the value that a credential is supposed to represent in the first place. And that's, again, helping people to learn, helping people to apply their learning. And the the actual enterprise itself, not the recording of it.
If I, if I might just ask you, you know, I totally get what you're saying, you know, and my first foray into blockchain and education was definitely very skeptical. How much? It's a little like voter fraud, right? It just doesn't really happen. So much like what this is a problem, solution searched search of a problem. But as we thought about, you know, in a lot of the work we do now is very international. Today, I was on a panel of people who were talking with the liquidus, which is the group that is the National Organization of medical education in the country. And if you imagine, you know, and I was working with some folks in Africa, from Uganda, and we were talking about, well, how would we know whether or not that person in Uganda has the skills that we want to employ for a nursing job here, and when we go when we unbundle education, from just Oh, you went to this prestige place, and so therefore, you know, something about your class status? And we actually start saying, Do you actually know how to do that work? Do you actually have evidence of mastery of that skill, knowledge and ability. And there's, there's hundreds of skills, knowledge and abilities, so it's hard to keep track of, then verification starts to become important, because then we start to get to the point where you can want it like when you're walking into a car dealership or a convenience store, and you say, hey, I want to buy this thing. You know, instead of it being like, oh, you know, you get to see everything in my bank account. No, all you get to see is you get to know with absolute confidence that I have the money to buy that stick of gum or that car, you know, and I if I'm applying for a job in a pop up nursing, you know, emergency then what you need to know is do I have the skills that you're looking for? Yes.
But forgive me I've spent a lot of time in Russia and in a lot of other places rife with corruption. And the problem is not the blockchain it's it's the information that gets put into the blockchain. Because you're not controlling for. Yeah. So it's money is fungible, but you actually will either get the money for the car or not but some of these qualifications. It's, it's so easy for somebody to pay somebody off to put them into a record somewhere in the other direction just for what it's worth, when Russia started enabling you to pay your traffic fines, electronically. Bribery policeman went down dramatically. Yeah. I'm not against using technology.
Do you think so? I'm just curious, given you your knowledge here is will assessment. Are you bullish on assessment becoming much more of a evolved industry where one can authentically assess things like emotional intelligence, problem solving, critical thinking, ability to be empathetic, that the whole industry of assessment is, you know, is this years 10 years away? Five years, 20 years? Do you? Are you bullish about how a assessment may help us find the value in those credentials? For real? Are you skeptical about that?
It will probably help. But I think honestly, having a more transparent market, I mean, yeah, I'd much rather check somebody's references. Then give them a test? Yeah, I mean, a test is good for some things. And certainly, but you know, we're, I'd rather go to GitHub and see what have they, what could have they written before was it used was it. You look at somebody's record. And again, you can have permanent records. And there's certainly benefit to it, but it doesn't solve.
Great. So let me jump in here. This is Imagination in Action, or Imaginator. Tonight, is Joe TV. And he came back from England a few decades ago, and decided to start a nonprofit. And it's one of the most successful nonprofits in terms of impact in terms of vision in terms of scope in terms of employing legions of leaders that have gone on to do other things, whether it's the young adults that benefit from it, or the alumni of his organization. I'm really proud that Europe was founded in Boston, Boston has a great track record of being a place of innovation. So what I'd like to do is I want to ask Jim, Dr. Jordan, Todd, and Carol, to each share their question, we're going to stack these, Gerald, and these will be to you, and you can answer them in whatever order you want. You could spend as much time on them as you want, you can even pass on a question if you feel like you're not the best person to ask. But Jim, great to see you on the stage. You are my favorite 58 year old. What's your question today?
Well, John, you're you're not very good with with numbers. Because the last time I checked 58 was really 85. But that's, that's a whole nother conversation 58 to 85. Okay. But there's been a lot of talk tonight about about college. And it seems to me that there are a lot of very large number of people, at least in the United States, who haven't had the background and developed a set of skills to let them be successful in college. And so so I'd like to, to get you Jarrell to talk a little bit about K through 12. And specifically, to, I'd like to I'd like your thoughts about charter schools. I've been involved with Kip for a number of years. And we're serving primarily underserved communities, and making a big difference with with young people there. And just like yourselves about about charter schools and what the future for them. Great, thank
you. Thank you, Jim. And Gerald being on the board. For Massachusetts. You definitely have a perspective there and a bet a bunch of KIPP and charter school alumni find their way to Europe. So looking forward to hearing what Jarrell That's to say, Jim, I bet he won't skip that one. Dr. Jordan, what's your question?
Sure. I don't have a question. Allison graciously invited me up I would comment though, and say that, if I may, that I remember my first job out of a liberal arts college actually was in the civil service. And we were we, the the agency, of course, would pay for our graduate education. Most people did not elect to go on to school, even though it was further schooling, even though it was reimbursed, because there was no incentive to be promoted. People who might choose or elect to go on for further schooling would do it out of the interest of learning. So there wasn't a whole lot of pragmatic thought put into the benefits of further education. So it's a quandary for me, and I know it's a little off topic, but I thought I would share that.
Thank you, Dr. Jordan. Tide, we always love having your question ship with Carol for this set. And we'll turn back to you, Gerald. Are the Elvis of accordion is going to play a musical interlude in a little bit. Todd, what's your question?
Yeah, thanks, John. And thanks, Gerald, and others for a great session. I've personally taught for three decades at the University of Chicago and and I've watched the kinds of students in my classes have that elite institution become kind of narrower and narrower and narrower and got fewer interesting students and students better and better at doing exactly what's required. And no more no less than, actually, I have a daughter like that, who does, you know, she's embarrassed if she gets more than a half a percent above what it takes to get an A, and, you know, she gets all A's. But then I have another daughter who's just kind of brilliant. And by the standards of perfect AC T's and ninth grade and doing original genetic research and everything. She's great, but she doesn't fit into that elite institution model. So well. And, and I guess I'm curious, you know, your Europe is a great thing, and you're kind of serving one need, it seems like we really as these kind of the internet and everything and the ability for people to become what's required to get into school X, Y, or Z. We need more options for people because there's all kinds of kids and it seems like different kinds of minds. And you know, what other kinds of avenues do you think could happen? Kind of like you're up but serving different needs?
Great. Thank you, Todd. And we've had on the show. Jonas Peters, and he was proud to have been the last kid let in to Chicago in his class, and he was a rebel rouser. He's gone on to do great things. But still, that's a very narrow group. But thank you for sharing that and painting that picture. Carol, I know you've been involved in the criminal justice world a little bit. What's your question tonight? And, Jim, you may want to view?
Well, John, yeah, as you mentioned, I spent about six years in and out of prison system. Had a, we had about 150,000 offenders in our Texas system, and I served on their board. The profile of the average offender in the system included, they dropped out of school at an early age. They had low self esteem. Young people ultimately went into gangs got had drug abuse, and, and on and on. So we decided to do a test for dyslexia and found that a considerable number of those offenders had learning differences. And it probably played a role in a lot of them dropping out of school early and low self esteem. And, you know, and all that came after that. Have, have you considered the need to address learning differences in disadvantaged kids who are unlikely to have the resources to have their learning differences addressed? That's my question.
Three, well, well put Gerald The floor is yours. Feel free to answer any of these any way you want?
Sure. And thank you. It's thoughtful questions. So charter schools. I think I'm pretty good ground in saying that. Good. Charter schools like KIPP, like up Academy, like Excel, are incredibly good options for individuals and I think been proven by research. Certainly, in Massachusetts, the research we did that good charter schools outperformed significantly, are serving children well, yet we also have to accept that across the country. Charter schools are not outperforming traditional public schools. And so you have to ask, okay, why the dichotomy? So that said, in certain places like KIPP Academy, charter schools are absolutely doing well. Yet the numbers across the country would say that They aren't outperforming on average. And I think the reason is comes down to if you look at state by state, what are the authorizing indie authorizing agents? So how hard is it to get a charter? In what do you have to prove to get that charter, and if you don't perform, then you can lose that charter. In Massachusetts, I was proud to serve in a place that had a difficulty, it was not easy to get a charter in Massachusetts. And frankly, if you didn't perform, you were held accountable. And we would ultimately take away your charter. In some states, it's literally that the mayor appoints a friend and the friend gives our charters like lollipops. And guess what, it's hard to run a good school, no matter who you are, whether you're unionized or not unionized, it's hard to run a good school. And so what it came down to me is the authorizing agent, which is really the accountability agent was critical, and lead to promoting folks like KIPP and others, I was in charge of giving, giving out a lot of the licenses for charter schools in Massachusetts. And we gave out all the seats as fast as we could, we tried to create pressure so that more seats would need to be created. Although unfortunately, Massachusetts has taken a relatively negative view of charters, yet, we're proving the Boston foundations proven charter schools, delivered really well for folks. So I am pro good charters. And I'm cautious that running a school no matter who you are is tough. And if you don't have a highly effective, authorizing and D authorizing agent involved that you can get mediocrity, even in that system of charters. To that has been kind of my experience been pretty close to it from the Massachusetts side. That, you know, tied your your question around more options. In what are they mean, if you think of 91,000 students just apply to Northeastern, right 91,000 They probably have a freshman class of 4000 10,000 people applied to Bowdoin in Bowdoin will accept a class of about 500. In the amount of pressure kids are going under today to try to figure out how to shape shift in order to meet the needs of elite education, acceptance. And then sad to tell our children that isn't about you, that 95% of students who apply to a lot of these institutions are wholly able to do the work. And so there's a lot of social engineering that goes on to try to create the right class of athletes and musicians and dancers and whatnot. So we do need more options. A well articulated Community College and a high quality community college like Miami Dade, or Northern Virginia Community College, which has really tight links to a four year college in really tight links with industry. mean, I've seen that 1100 community colleges in this country, there are some exceptional ones with great leadership, you know, whether it's you can name Nova, Central Piedmont and Charlotte, MDC Miami Dade, there are some amazing colleges. Unfortunately, that's not the norm for all of our community colleges in this country.
And, unfortunately, they're not incented. You know, they were often given money to matriculate, as opposed to earning money to get a good result for the young person who came to you. So making results based funding and incentive funding aligned with what do we actually want for a person going into that system? Whether it's they want a certificate, a two year a transfer to a four year a good job? How do we align some of the funding on a results basis rather than an efforts in matriculation basis. So when I do think, you know, the largest public, the largest post secondary system we have in the country, our Community College's that's probably 7.5 million degree granting students and another three to 4 million certificate, credential students so non degree but still a credential or certificate. It's the largest system we have today in the country. It's wholly underfunded. It is often looked at negatively by those who are employers, and they get $14 to spend on each student at least in Massachusetts on Career Services. So career readiness and Career Services $14 per student. So guess what we're getting the results we're paying for by underfunding in under loving and under appreciating our community college I think community college's most important institution we have in the country. And we've got to get serious about funding them properly, connecting them to either four year industry, and really tight ways, and give them the respect and the support that they deserve. So I'm a strong proponent of leveraging that system in changing the incentives to get the system also to move in the right direction. And, Carol, your question is, we have not at Europe been able to work with students who have a significant learning difference. Many, many of our students come into Europe with an IEP Individual Education Plan. Many students who are high school grads who come to Europe would test at US Eighth ninth grade literacy level. And so I'll tell you, and here's one for you. We placed 1000 fund accountants in State Street Corporation, right 1000 full time fund accountants into one of the biggest financial institutions in the world. And they were very, very happy with that talent, that young adults stayed for years on average, which was great. And you know what 96% of those young people, when they came to us, would have been tested into remedial mathematics. In a pretty short space of time, we could teach those young adults, how to do net present value calculations had to do the specific mathematical things they needed to do to function as a fund accountant. And it really got me thinking how many of those students would have concluded that they are quote unquote dumb in math can't do math. And we placed the 1000 people 96% would have not passed the assessment to do college level math. In in less than six months of education, we're able to prepare them so that the employer said they met or exceeded expectations. So sometimes that what we classes needing remediation may not actually be that accurate, and can be remediated with just some good proper education. But we have not been able to work with yet. I say, we don't teach to every person's learning style. That's not the fault of the individual. It's our own limitations as to how broadly we can flex our pedagogy in order to accommodate different learning styles. But we haven't, we haven't been able to really serve folks at a very broad level of learning style. I wish we could do more of that. Thank you, Gerald. John Thompson accordion?
Yeah, no, I was loved. I told everyone that you're the Tom Brady Er, yeah. Yeah. Well, what can you do? What do you want to play? What do you move by?
I just, I gotta win a couple more. A lot more world championships to keep up with them. But well, I could do a whole you know, who knows could do a couple of different things. And I never thought I would hear Cory maybe do John, can we hear some accordion? That's not something I thought I did. So thank you guys. Let's see here. Cory?
Thank you, Cory. So, Gerald, before I go to Allison, can you describe for what's a typical Europe experience for a young adult? Who comes into your program? I know six months I've heard, can you kind of paint a picture? So all on the show, and for this recording and the transcript, people can look at it and say, Oh, that that's what the Euro program is.
Sure. So students, so students go through any kind of admissions process we're trying to screen folks in to understand if this is what they want, is this the right next step in their lives? So we tried to do a lot of work upfront to say, here's what we do how we do it, here's the endpoint we're trying to shoot for is that the endpoint you want as well. So a lot of work upfront is trying to get alignment, and understand that this is the right next step for a person. And so that's usually through interviews, I mean, as to talk for about the informal references. And we interview students, we typically have pretty trained individuals to do that interviewing. In if you can imagine, 35,000 folks express interest in Europe last year alone, who were interested in the program, and it's not right for everyone, as many programs aren't. So students go through a three to six month period of learning and development, where they're learning two things. One is something that's marketable, you know, whether it's, it could be from goodness, data analytics, and cybersecurity through to project management, through to software engineering through to customer service, inside sales, business operations, so they're learning something that we know there's a market value for it, and we know their employers who want that skill in that competency. So that's kind of part of what someone's learning. And then a lot of what they're learning, or what I would call the professional skills are what there are the ABCs, the attitudinal, behavioral and communication skills needed to hold the job and many of the companies that we partner with, so imagine a three to six month period of learning, depending on the skill had hitherto been done all in person, obviously, with COVID, it was remote, it's now done hybrid, some of that learning can be done asynchronously. A heavy focus, though, is on building community, a safe, supportive trusting community, typically in cohorts of 40 students, where they are supporting one another really intentionally developing that community. And having done this now for what 35,000 folks making sure that they have a place where they can give one another feedback. They can feel safe, and comfortable and well supported. So that's really important. And we have the social workers, clinical folks, for someone who may be having a challenge, maybe dealing with a lot of outside noise, he really needs some support along the way, and that the average student does need support, we expect and we design our system that expect every student is going to have a few times during this period where they're going to get thrown off the tracks, for whatever reason, and therefore we need to be able to help them problem solve and empower them to get back on those tracks. So Majan an intense, well supported high expectation, three to six month process, and then followed by somewhere between a generally a four to six month internship, call it a work based experience, where an employer has an opportunity to see that young person in action and see how they perform both as team members as well as workers. Effectively try before you hire process or almost attempt to perm process in that we place 500 folks per year into Bank of America 500 into JP Morgan you know, Microsoft, Amazon Kaiser harbor at Stanford, you know, lots of people who are big employers. And what's happened over the years is those companies went from taking one or two people, probably to get me off their back because I was pretty persistent. To operationalizing, this talent pipeline in building into the
medium long term talent plans, so that we now sit down and plan with companies over the long term. Where are they looking to open up? What skills do they need? How do we tweak what we're training to better meet a company's needs for skills. So the success in this is working with fewer companies at a bigger level, getting to hundreds, if not 1000s, of individuals we can produce per year into those companies. And having those companies say this is a great source of talent. And so many of our partners hire full time people to manage their relationship with year up. And we're expected to deliver a great pipeline of talent happens to be 95% young adults of color happens to be 100% young adults who come from low income backgrounds. But we're not kind of selling here we work with selling talented young people who you haven't had a chance to really see before. And if you want to operationalize this talent pipeline, we can help you do that. And frankly, you're going to be really happy with the young people you hire, and they're going to help you build a great workforce. That's kind of what we do. And, you know, we now placed more young adults of color, from low income backgrounds into the fortune 500, than pretty much any other institution in the United States. In the Kenya randomized control trial that was done on our program, prove that we raise wages for low income young adults more than any program in the US history. And that 10 years randomized controlled trial done by Apt Associates on behalf of the federal government that has come back and said six years later, you still have maintained the largest wage differential for any youth workforce program in the history of this country. So we know it's possible. We know it can work, we have 30% more demand from clients than we can fill today. Because businesses certainly recognize that they may not be seeing all the talent that's out there and have to think differently about those multiple pathways that Todd had referenced in his question.
It's funny,
why don't you jump in and tickets off for the this part of the show?
Exactly. It's so funny, because I was just going exactly where you were going, Gerald, which is, I feel like there's such a sort of misplacement happening now for a lot of graduates, even who go out of some of the elite schools kind of not being able to plug and play into the job system or not feeling part of it. And I mean, maybe this would dilute your incredibly powerful and amazing track record. But I almost feel like there's a group of people who would pay for exactly the service you're offering. It's almost like even those people who are trained, but as well as young people from powerful high schools, there just is either a mismatch between our education system or a lack of that kind of affiliation, that's part of your model. I don't know if you'd ever want to, you know, set up the service that people pay for that helps to fund it. But I can just think of about 30 kids at the moment who could really benefit from something like you're offering?
Yeah, that's it. It's a really good, thoughtful question. So we we are, you know, by mesh, so you can take Yama subsidize, one by having someone paying the other, which one could do. It's so interesting, like, if you think about all the jobs you've gotten in your lives, to folks listening, how many did you get access to that interview, because someone put in a good word on your behalf. And you recognize, like 80% of interviews have gotten because of some sort of personal reference referral, someone said, pay attention to this resume when you see it. And, you know, if you went to many of our phones and looked in our contacts, we have hundreds, if not 1000s of people who could connect us to jobs, yet, the students we serve, on average, have three people that they can talk to about a livable wage job or a post secondary education. On average, they have three yet many of us would have 1000s So I think The, I'm guessing a lot of our staff would would kind of really be thoughtful about are we serving those who truly need this. And if we can fund it without having to work with a very different population, like we're expanding our age, right now, we went from 18, to 24, to 18, to 26. And I would be more than happy to extend that a few more years, knowing how hard it is for folks to connect with good jobs. But you're so right, Allison, that, you know, it's 89% of college presidents say that they're preparing their students well for the job market. And about 15% of CEOs say that post secondary institutions are preparing their students well for the job market. So you've got like, a 6070 percentage point difference between what a college president says they're doing, and what a CEO says they're getting from traditional college in terms of the readiness to work. So I do think a lot of people would pay for something that says, you're going to get a job at Google with Salesforce. So LinkedIn, three of our partners, I'm not sure mission with folks, no staff would allow us to take on folks who weren't at the center of our mission, ie, they've been underrepresented, under resourced and coming from lower levels of readiness is what we measure when we look at our students. So yeah, it's good. It's a good idea. I'm not sure how to get a staff but it's a good idea.
So what do you think after doing this for so long? is sort of the secret sauce of what happens in those 10 months? I mean, is it? Is it what you call the ABC skills? Is it the community of 40? Is it the Rolodex you built up? I mean, how would you describe some of the key elements you're building in that those college presidents don't seem to be?
Yeah, that's a good question. The three things we do really well. One we we truly teach, we can produce young professionals in a way that most colleges, and certainly community colleges aren't talking about attitude, behavior, communication skills commensurate with a livable wage job. So we nail professional skills. In fact, most companies would say our students are better prepared than a college graduate, could come in as a young professional. So we nail that we provide wraparound services for our students, manifest in the communities we form manifest in student services. So if you were going to be homeless, the next day, we're going to be right there, sorting that out with you. If lots of things happen outside the program, we have access to resources, and we will wrap those around you and do it authentically. This is why our program is not quote unquote, cheap, it takes resources. And the 30 days we speak corporate, we can understand and intuit the needs of a corporation we front, a corporate, they ask us all the time, you must be a for profit company because you talk like one. And I say no, it would nonprofit organization, but we want to meet your needs. We want to be held accountable. We want to understand what makes you successful. And then how do we deliver to that, because if we can do that we can serve our students better. So unfortunately, a lot of nonprofits, I would say don't speak corporate Well, or respond at the speed of business. And business isn't going to wait around for the nonprofit sector to figure it out, they're gonna go solve the problem one way or the other, to get talent. So those three things we do really well. And the more we do this, we recognize that the hard skill training is not necessarily the unique proposition. You know, teaching someone a specific hard skill is not necessarily the differentiator. And increasingly, like we've worked with, you know, from Pluralsight, to Southern New Hampshire University to others, to try to think about how do we broaden the the way in which a student could get some of the hard skills that either lower cost and more expedient, or asynchronous and to better meet their needs, as opposed to saying you must be in school for this length of time every day? So it's kind of been an interesting evolution of what are we really good at? And what are we probably never going to be the best in the world and how do we partner with other folks to get there?
So exciting. Thank you.
Yep. Gerald. I'm curious. What I'd asked earlier about the green economy, planetary stewardship, climate change. Are you anticipating more jobs in that space? And are you thinking that some of your graduates could be players in that space or that that's really not part of your or agenda for the near future? That's one question. Second question, what do labor economists get right and get wrong about what you know? You know, I've talked to Barry bluestone, and who's the other labor economist I know, well, and they tell all the stories. But I think sometimes economists are kind of in an echo chamber, and they may not have have the full story. And then my last question is, if you were to write a memo for the Secretary of Labor, in the US current are the next one or one in a few years? What would you want to bake in? To that advice? So three questions there. Yeah.
So that we looked really, really closely at Green Jobs, John, and part of what we try to find is, can we get an aggregated buying point, because if you can imagine, we have to go out and sell something that is non traditional, and therefore requires some leadership, some convincing some, Hey, it's okay to do this, you can hire someone to a job that typically requires a four year degree, and you're going to relax that requirement. So there's a transaction cost, and there's a sales cost of getting into a new client. Therefore, we're always looking for aggregated buying points, where someone says, Hey, If this works, guess what I hire 500, or 1000, we looked at Green jobs that may well have changed, it certainly could have changed. There were a lot of small buyers of talent, well, consumers of talent. And so you would have to be selling to each one of them, which meant you had a much higher sales cost of kind of new client acquisition cost. And therefore, it just was hard to grow that we found that in several fields and industries. So we do look for large employers who are hiring significant numbers of folks, in most of our clients, if it it should be hiring, you know, 10,000 folks a year across the whole organization, it means they probably have a need for, you know, 5000, middle skilled jobs. And so therefore, we could be relevant to them at scale. So haven't been able to figure out how to aggregate that in green jobs. Not that it couldn't be done, but we haven't figured it out yet. You know, Barry Bluesun is obviously a really smart person I respect a lot. So I'd be hesitant to say what he's getting wrong, or what economists are getting wrong. In terms of labor economists, I worry a lot, that we're not focusing on labor market participation rates.
I wasn't criticizing barrier, I was more saying that you have on the ground knowledge from your pipeline of young people that that some of the economist just may not have access to
Yeah, no, I totally get it. And I understood your question that way. I got it. I don't hear as many people talking at least labor economist talking about labor market participation, you know, that it's, you know, in the, what Hi, 50 60% of folks in this country, adults who are working, that doesn't pretend Well, you know, we we erased a lot of the gains made by women over the past couple of years in COVID. That took decades to achieve in terms of labor market participation, and then men historically, have not been participate in the labor market. So we quote, you know, unemployment rates. And we satisfy ourselves that we have a 3% unemployment rate. And I think that really masks a much more concerning trend, which is fewer people participating in the labor market who have given up on the labor market. And that, to me, is a much, much greater concern than clapping about a low unemployment rate today that's in this country. I think that's inaccurate. So I would say, talking about that without recognizing labor market dissipation, for me is a mistake because it masks the real challenge that we have in this country, which is we want more people working, there's dignity and work. folks aren't going to be retiring at 62 years old. And in we need more people in the workforce. So I would say that would be one on that front. Then, as you know, Secretary of Labor education I think I'd ask our good mayor who's now Secretary of Labor and our Secretary of Education, why have they not thought about a secretary of opportunity? Or a department of opportunity? You know, we we separate labor and Ed, and it's a bit of a false construct to separate those two, you know, you need a Department of Opportunity. And what we should be really measuring this country is aren't our citizens getting access to opportunity? Whether it is in trades, whether it is in post secondary, where there's that concept of how much opportunity people getting access to, in measuring that and holding politicians accountable for how much opportunity a US citizens getting in your district, and let's compete on that, to me would be a more interesting measure to look at. In, we thought, let's merge the two and create a department of opportunity because they really sometimes fight against each other. Or try to solve problems in ways that I don't think are complementary, in
very, very interesting. And you know, this is on the record, maybe people will quote, this show, maybe this. So this will happen as a result of this. You're using your Imagination in Action will come about Sorry to interrupt, Gerald, you were you were fishing your thoughts?
No. So kids who interesting, John, think about this. So Europe is proving the best results, we've scaled pretty significantly. And I thought 18 years ago, 20 years ago, if I can just prove it, if I can prove definitively it works, that we will be able to get a sustainable, repeatable, low beta source of government funding to participant funding in this program. And I drew up business plans around that that got if we prove it, the federal government would line up to give us call it $5,000 per person
to take the Headstart model or something.
And guess what is the single greatest mistake I've made in 20 years, is we have been unable systematically to get the government to fund a program that is lifting 10s of 1000s of folks into good jobs, creating billions of dollars of earnings, literally billions and billions of dollars of earnings. A proven two and a half times return on investment for every dollar invested two and a half dollars return to society. And we have yet been able to get any sustainable long term government funding, that tells you, this system to me is not working too well, right now, the way that workforce development in this country and where your tax dollars and my tax dollars are going could be done a hell of a lot better. And it should be results based not efforts based. And frankly, if you're in the business of workforce development, you should not get paid to try to train someone, you should get paid at least half of your money, when the person shows you a W two form, and you actually get them a job. Like if we just made that shift happen, then Darwin would take over good programs to get more money, bad programs that go out of business. And our tax dollars wouldn't be wasted on programs that, frankly, are trying to do something as opposed to getting results for the citizen who truly does need that workforce development. So you can see I don't have strong views on this one, John?
Well, you heard it here Imagination in Action. And sounds like you ran into a brick wall on that one, but your $180 million operating budget or 100 70 million and going strong, and really leveraging the resources that you're able to raise from corporations and foundations and individuals. Let's hear Pat and Yusef. Do you have questions. And I also want to turn to Todd and Esther and Alison and Cory and see if you have other questions. So Pat, would you like to pose a question? Yes,
please. Thank you for allowing me to speak, I actually have two areas of your interest and work that I would like to hope you'd be able to expand on, Gerald, because I've listened to your presentation with great interest. And you've covered many, many ideas that I have a lot of support for. And certainly your your program of Europe sounds absolutely fascinating and successful. So two things, in your opinion and your your your, your philosophy about what education can or cannot provide opportunity wise for young people. Do you see and how would you see it working that the education system, the actual teachers, colleges, who actually are then go the people who go on to teach young people? What different ways do they need to be doing it so that young people can get the greater impetus to move on to better careers, better lives and so on to improve their opportunities? And the other aspect? I'd love to hear your comments about was is have you since leaving the United Kingdom because that's where I live now. Have you been back to look at the education system here and to see whether that has developed the way you anticipated it would be developing since the time you left and in relation especially to apprenticeships, because you were talking about apprenticeships earlier on. And here I see that as one of the greatest failures of our methodologies here because apprenticeship schemes, although they have finally been been been established, I think they are rather weak and actually don't produce what they're intended to. So just those two areas, thank you very much. Great. Thank you.
Youssef, would you like to stack questions here? usif. Do you want to ask a question now?
No, I don't have any question. Now. I'm just listening to hear about your discussions with all the
great, well, thank you for joining. Allison Todd Esther, do you want to stack your question?
I just thought I'll throw in a question. Thanks, Gerald. So I think you've done a great job of outlining how to get kids into jobs. And I spent most of my life really as a CIO, so I would have loved to work with you to hire people. There's no question now. But you know, there's challenges democracy and freedom and, you know, all the all the things going on, and we'll try to elucidate them is that training citizens while you're getting kids a job, so that going forward, they can tell truth from falsehood and in how to make good decisions as members of our democracy. Great.
Anyone else want to jump in here, Esther? Quarry?
At some point, I just like to know, I, I feel your pain, the the lack of attention to verifiable results versus shiny new things? How can we help? You know, John, introducing the people in the department of education, or whatever you want to call it? The department is? It was a great term. But yeah, this sort of stuff should be scaled dramatically. So write a novel, write a book, and get on TV and
do it tick tock.
I mean, the fundamental problem is people in this country now want instant results, they want to vote on TV, instead of thinking long term and looking at the long term impact of things like your project. Yeah.
So last question, I want to jump in, I want to add is and then here for your Gerald? I feel like I remember a story about was there a cobbler in your family or, or lol or Lawrence? I'm just wondering, how has your family's past kind of informed the trajectory that that you're on? I mean, your best is ahead of you. But, you know, we're, we're, we're in some of this kind of that missionary, but evangelists, you know, you're, you're tenacious, and you're not taking no for an answer. And, and I seen you work and I see how hard you you play and you really care and you're gonna make impact. And were there any history in your family have that informs the kind of who you are today?
Yeah. friends tell me John, if I took no for an answer, I wouldn't be married right now. And in happily, so for 30 years. But no, I mean, we, like many, many folks, I'm sure. We were, my family came over as immigrants to this case from the genocide against Armenians back in the early in the in the 1900. So, you know, folks came over fleeing persecution and having lost most of their families. And came in said, no, just need to figure out how to work. My grandfather, unfortunately, was allergic to wool. So he didn't last too long in the mills in Lowell, because of that, and ended up becoming a cobbler in fixing shoes. And it just happened in the as that business. Depression hit, that business actually was a good business to be in because people couldn't afford to buy new shoes, they had to fix issues. So he worked seven days a week, he never ever took a day off who's unfathomable to take a day off. But all of his kids ended up going to college after World War Two, having served in the in the military, and then went to college in but on the GI Bill, which obviously was not avail available to all African Americans. If you had an HBCU you did. Often you could get access to that GI bill in some cases if there are enough slots, but for many People of Color, they didn't get answers about GI Bill, what my dad did, and that put him through college and it put them into dental school, because they need a dentist after World War Two. But if it wasn't for that GI Bill, there's no way I would have been where I am today. So, you know, I've had my year up from the US government called the GI Bill in my family. And I'm wholly aware that that wasn't accessible to all people. And was also aware that folks sacrificed a great deal so that their kids could do a bit better and work pretty hard and show me I didn't see my dad, ever lie down once in his entire life, never saw him once lie down, never saw him sleeping, because he worked incessantly. Because he too had to make sure his kids did okay, and could save up enough to get us to college and spend pretty much every dollar of his savings to do that. And my shares it all not unique. But I think it does leave an impression on what how fortunate were you to get access to certain things that others didn't? How many people worked hard to get you? Opportunity. And the fact is, is that any successful person is the is the result of 1000 acts of kindness, love, caring and support. I don't really believe in the self made man concept. And I think, you know, everyone deserves that opportunity. You know, no, just answer the other questions. But I just want to reflect for a minute, that the the the concept of the American dream, right. The words, the American dream, were first coined in 1931. To his right, is the depression was that was hitting it were coined by a man named James Truslow, Adams. He was a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author. And he wrote a book called The Epic of America 1931 First time, the words the American dream, you were popularized. And he said, The American dream is the dream of a land in which life should be better, in richer and fuller, for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability, or achievement. And he went on to say, It's the dream of social order, in which each man in each woman
shall be seen by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstance of birth, or position. And I think men that was 91 years ago, in we sure as heck are not living up to those words, written in 1931 of what the American dream is. And it just absolutely drives me to distraction, that we use words and ideals in opportunity for all the land of opportunity. And I know damn, well, that's not true. And, frankly, just think, you know, the good Lord, every day that I get a chance to do something about it, while I'm on this planet, you know, God knows what tomorrow is gonna bring, I'm gonna get hit by a bus. But at least today, you can try to do something about it. And that said, something, I guess, to be grateful for that you can try to do something about that. So that's definitely innovated me and kept me super motivated and passionate, is that gratefulness to try to focus on something that I think is at the heart of maintaining a democracy and a civil society? And so that, that kind of animates it quite a bit. If I just just go back to the questions that were asked. You know, Pat, you talked about what we're teaching, I think, in colleges to produce folks who can actually go back into school systems and teach properly. That, that, I guess, one of the main things that, and I think you hit on a really important point, what we're teaching in teachers colleges today is perhaps one of the big levers, we can pull by rethinking what are we actually teaching teachers, in folks who will be teachers? You know, I've seen how experiential learning can manifest in a classroom actually in England was the first place I saw it. I started teaching managing a heterogeneous classroom, and helping each student progress at their own pace. But 30 students, all doing slightly different lesson plans, all guided by this masterful teacher, in all students feeling competent, because they were achieving at the level and the pace at which they could achieve. And he was orchestrating it. It was like a conductor. It was beautiful. And this was in Yorkshire, in England. And it influenced me greatly that there is a way to think about having a heterogeneous classroom and make sure each student can learn but point that's a real skill. That's a competency to know how to manage a really diverse classroom, and enable folks to be learning at slightly different paces and how they helping one another along the way. So I do think we can do a lot to help teachers in the pedagogy of instruction of the pedagogy and how to instruct specifically how to manage heterogeneity, and how to focus on experiential and project based learning. So that would I would say in in the English system, Jim, Shep, Pat, you know a lot more about tonight in way envy, envy queues are manifest and apprenticeship schemes. And I hear you it's not perfect in England. But it's actually I think, better in many ways than we have in this country in America. Uneven placing a value on apprenticeships, we're having some structures just starting in this country, who was in the trades, obviously, but it's just starting into white collar apprenticeships. And England may not be perfect, but it actually is ahead. In many ways it where I see this country, in terms of multiple pathways into the mainstream for someone who may not have attended, you know, they got their A levels are their own levels, but they didn't go on past that. So, you know, we're often our own hardest critics in our own countries. In Todd, your question reminds me of something Esther said, about being media literate, and understanding truth from falsehood, as a 21st century skill. alongside other things that you mentioned, financial literacy, cultural competency, health literacy. They're the kind of the knowledge bases one needs in order to be a citizen in the 21st century. So we try very hard to inculcate that into some of our lessons, students have to think through what information they using, what's accurate, what's not how they think about truth versus falsehood. So we do do that as part of our project based learning. And, you know, that's not the core of what we do. But that's certainly incorporated and how we think about things.
And that, you know, I'd also say, John, just one thing is we, we've got, you know, 26 27,000 graduates, they're rising up, all over this country, they are now elected officials, they are business owners, they're multimillionaires, their homeowners, their vice presidents and big companies. In they're lifting others while they climb. And so I think, you know, we have 20,000, today, we'll have 100,000 of 200,000, going into those companies. And I've always believed, let's teach our young people how to win the game, and then change the game, such that it is more equitable and inclusive for all. So I, I kind of bet on our alums in the hundreds of 1000s, to ultimately be the ones who create the change, we need to see because they will be in the positions of power. And they will understand what it's like not to have power, or to be disempowered. And they will have the opportunity to consider the the externalities of their choices when you do have power, and how you can make choices that actually help those who are farthest away from having power. And I have great faith, because I'm seeing it happen, as we speak where some of our graduates now are in their early 40s. And they're using their power in ways that frankly, will make this country better and stronger. In in my kind of humble opinion. It's time for folks like myself to step aside to let others lead to if I can maybe be useful coaching or mentoring others. But it's time for us to start to step aside and allow those who are coming up to actually impact things in a more powerful way. So I I'm betting long term that our alumni group to be the greatest source of change that we need for this country.
In the audience who's been trying to ask a question, their hands been patiently up the whole time, but technology isn't serving us. So let me just ask their question, which is real interest whether you've ever thought of going internationally or would be open to team with other international organizations? Sure. So
we've been asked, we've been actually hosted folks from about goodness, 60 different countries. We've visited countries who have asked us to come down and spend some time with them. We didn't. So we did that, because we believe it's the right thing to do. And it's, I always say have a generous spirit. And if someone asked me to help, you know, I'm an I'm a devotee of Adam Grant, you know, to that'd be helpful in life. And that's just the right thing to do. We didn't operationalize that. So we haven't gone overseas, but there are models of Europe, several and Africa, in England, in France, in we've said, Look, we'll give away all the IP, we'll share anything you want. But we don't have a business of starting other Europe's in different countries. But if you want to come hang out with us, President McCrone from France came over and spend time with us. Every South and Central American country, every single one, we've talked to their economic minister, about Europe, we've been down to Chile that talk in Santiago about what they may do. But it's been purely to be good citizens, as opposed to that's a revenue stream something we have to resource, something we're going to raise money for. But we'll give away anything I don't I don't believe as a nonprofit, we're trying to protect IP for other nonprofits. We should be generous spirited, we should say yes when we whenever we can. And I'm proud that there are versions of year up in several countries today, although they can't use the brand. Because we have no affiliation, but we've given them whatever we can give them that would be useful. And we do it with a smile on her face. And we wish him all the best because we think the idea should spread is not necessarily trying to monetize just the the IP.
So this is Imagination in Action, where we have Imaginators, who have used their imagination to shape society in general, it's certainly done that over his decades of leading Europe. And we're the beneficiary of that as a society. Right now I'm in LA, I'm at the hotel where the Golden Globes were hosted a number of times, I think over 50 of the Golden Globes are hosted here, and the Grammys were hosted where I am. And I think that's the thing that what our society values, and I think we need to value nonprofit leaders. And I think you could run for office, you could run for Senate governor, president and use Europe as a platform. But instead, I feel like you've doubled down and just want to have have more and more impact. My before Alison kind of summarizes tonight's show, I'd love to hear from you. What's something that's on your mind that people may not know about? The journalists aren't quoting you on? That you're not doing a tick tock about us this, this forum to kind of let your imagination run? Is there something you're thinking about? Is it something orthogonal to what you've been doing? Is it you know, where you'd like to see things in 20 years, just use like two or three minutes to kind of share something that, you know, CNN wouldn't have?
Sure so. So what I would say is, over the past 2030 years, companies have started to learn how to become environmentally friendly. And around that over time, you had leaders in industry who started to adopt more of an environmental consciousness you had, whether it was recycling, carbon footprint measurement, green buildings. And then SASB, counting standards started to produce measurable, reportable actions here. So it companies had to report on the environmental friendliness. It's part of Wall Street, you know, assessing a company, it's in risk management. And so over 20 years, companies have started to learn how to become environmentally friendly. And, and I think the real next step is over the next 20 years, companies truly understanding how to become opportunity friendly, so that the same types of measurements and metrics that we're working with actually the Business Roundtable on today, the same types of reportability are reporting mechanisms. Because these are material for a company around their demographics around how they're doing to promote, advanced and retain talent from all levels, what their salary levels are, whether they're paying livable wages, as a esta talked about. I think there's a real possibility that companies could start to become opportunity friendly and compete on that. And that will attract that will be positively correlated with their performance. Their customers will start to demand that their employees will demand that their investors will demand it. And I believe that we'll be talking about employment, opportunity friendliness, similar to environmental friendliness. You know, the two biggest challenges we face today are both climate change and inequality in both need all of all of us leaning in and need our businesses leaning in, in ways that are instrumental. So I, I think, John, that's an idea that will be hopefully developed. I'm so encouraged by the one 10 initiative that we helped to start two years ago,
Americans
be evey goodness Salesforce, Amgen, Accenture, JP Morgan, tote, large target Lowe's, Walmart, a lot of big companies committed to hire a million black Americans over the next 10 years. Businesses thinking differently, they're starting to act differently. It's not just performance start of virtue signaling, there is real change starting to happen. And we want to try to drive a wedge into that, and make sure that that window not only stays open, but opens more broadly, and ultimately allows this country to live up to its ideal of opportunity for all.
Well, that's great, what a way to end. So in closing, I'd love to have Corey plays out. But before we do, and, Gerald, also, if you have any requests, Cory can play at all. He's not putting into play on a CD ROM. You know, this is him lives. You know, maybe think of something. But Allison, why don't you tell us what just happened this last two hours?
Oh, my gosh, it's not that easy. To summarize, it was such a moving evening. And I think the depths of your vision. And as John described it, Darrell, you're tenacious and evangelism and practicality are just extraordinary. So we were lucky enough to spend this evening with Gerald to tvm, the founder and CEO of year up one of the most impactful nonprofits, it's training 35,000 young adults at a cost of 22,000 per student to enter the job world with serious jobs, and with a goal of helping everyone.
He Gerald talked about coming back to this country and being inspired by other nonprofits like Allen kz, who started City Year and talked about the importance of investing 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell style, I think you're now well above the 10,000. Gerald was inspired at the age of 25. By being a big brother spending three years getting to know David on Saturdays, who grew up in public housing, but became part of Gerald's family. He really asked the key question in his work, which is on our watch, do we need to live with global in inequity, and he's dedicated to closing the opportunity divide that exists as a gulf in our nation, he described in super powerful terms, the problems with her current approach to higher education. He has the shocking figure that only 9% of adults between the ages of 18 and 20 to get a college degree now, and points out that even if we could quadruple that number, that's not high enough. He described community colleges as the most important and largest institutions in this country, but severely underfunded, and said we spend $14, there per student on Career Services. He pointed out, there's an urgent need to connect community colleges to jobs and to four year schools. He predicts that we're going to see more change in higher education in the next 20 years than we saw in the last 200. And then we started talking about the employment world, Gerald points out that the 3% unemployment rate, mass how many people have chosen not to participate at all in the workforce. And he had a wonderful suggestion that we need a Department of Opportunity, sort of a merger of Department of Education, and Department of Labor, which really starts asking which citizens are getting access to opportunity? How much does that happen in each district? And what are we doing to make that happen at a faster rate. He has a sense of both urgency but also hopefulness, which is pretty impressive, given the work he's doing. He says the jobs are more complex. The government's not funding programs that are creating jobs. And his amazing program has a 2.5 times return on investment. But he points out we need to be results based not efforts based, so that you should get paid as a career enhancer when you actually have someone who's graduated who's got a real w two. He predicts that we need to take education seriously, and urges businesses to get creative and get more into training, as Starbucks did with ASU or instride did with guild. He we have this very rich discussion with lots of interesting questions. Esther talks about the need to pay workers more and to change the culture around what jobs are worth paying people for their EQ and not just their coding ability. Greg quoted John Dewey, who said what the best and wisest person wants for its child the community should want for all It's children. Jim Young asked about charter schools, Todd talked about the need to have more options for different types of young people. Carol talked about serving on a prison board where dyslexia plays a key role in who gets disadvantage at a young age. And then Gerald shared the secret sauce of year up, it's got at least three critical pillars, nailing professional skills, providing wraparound skills like community and belonging, making sure nobody gets lost. And then speaking corporate language and understanding the real needs of corporations. So the specific formula he shared is that students who come in have a three to six month period of learning and development where they pick up marketable skills that employers want, then they have four to six months of work base internships, and then major employers use Europe to operationalize a talent pipeline. He's built an incredible track record placing more adults of color into fortune 500 companies than anyone else, and also creating the largest wage differential for disadvantaged youth groups. He left us with a really powerful vision, that real change is starting to happen. So the country can live up to what was described as the American Dream back in 1931. And he points out that any successful person as a result of 1000, plus acts of kindness. And really, if we want to operate operationalize James trust, Lowe's Adams vision of the American dream, it's going to take a lot of people coming together and really supporting each other. He says he feels very, very hopeful from the alumni network, they now have 26,000 alumni, who are now elected officials, lifting others working in business at the highest levels. And he left us with this powerful vision that companies could become opportunity friendly centers, so that we really work together to address climate and inequity, two of the biggest needs we're gonna need to address to lead us to a better future. Thank you so much. It was an incredible evening,
Gerald, urine Imaginator. And now that the show is about to conclude all the 300 other Imagineers, who will get a copy of the transcript. These are thought leaders like David Rubenstein, and tech innovators. And some people who may want to get on board with Europe, if they haven't, or people you can engage in this dialogue. So I'm excited not only for you and your team, and you have a great communications team to share this recording this transcript around. But I also want to get some of the Imaginators on in this network to help help further your great work. So thank you for taking this timeout tonight. And, again, your best is ahead of you and we look forward to watch it and you're welcome back is like Esther, be a on stage or do a future show. Cory? Let's see if Gerald has any musical requests. Otherwise, you're on your own. Cory or Gerald, do you have any suggestions or requests?
Let me just say first, John, thank you so much for having me and really timed Alison, you're brilliant. Just hearing you categorize that was like wow, so thank you. Inquiry, I promise you, you know a lot more about music than I so Tuesday way, my friend and we're grateful for your talent and really amazing to listen to you. So thank you so much.
Well, you said, Gerald, you are our minium. Yes, that's correct. Ah, okay. Because I have quite a few Armenian friends. And actually, I mean, some of the topics that are talked about certainly, how do you decipher the truth from different you can't go to a concert or get a coffee or a turn on the news without Of course, hearing something about Ukraine today seeing something about Ukraine, people are talking. I have no idea in 2020, about what was going on in Armenia, until recently with the ongoing war with Azerbaijan and funded by Turkey and all that and I was never taught in school about 1988 to 1994 with what happened in Armenia, until I was researching and it's like, how come no one ever talked about that one? It's
a Jarrell. Just so you know, Cory showed up at NEC, which is like the Juilliard of Boston said, I'm here to learn. And they said, well, we don't teach accordion players and he said, You're gonna teach me so that's the kind of guy you're dealing with.
But I'll do an Arminian tune for Wow.
Wow, great tears. So and I recommend Korean plated presidential inaugurations. Joe Gerald at your next Europe graduation in any city. I bet Korea will come if you if you want if you'll have to help celebrate the great, great work and the great futures. Alright. Goodnight, everyone and see you next week. Is Imagination in Action signing out.
Thank you, John and Gerald.
Yeah, thanks so much. Take good care folks. Be well
