United on a Way Forward Transcript

More Elephant Intro

[00:00:38] Jason Rudman: Welcome to the latest More Elephant podcast. And, I'm delighted to welcome Brian Gallagher, the CEO of the Leargas Group, to join me in a wide-ranging conversation around economic and social issues, racial justice, equity, and having an impact. Brian, welcome to the More Elephant podcast.

[00:00:58] Brian Gallagher: Thanks Jason, great to be with you.

[00:01:00] Jason Rudman: So would love to jump right in. Brian, I don't want to steal your thunder other than to say you're the former global CEO of the United Way, and then you started Leargas. If you could take the listeners that are not familiar either with the United Way or Brian Gallagher, through your journey, that would be a great place to start.

[00:01:20] Brian Gallagher: Happy to do it. I used to say to people that I'm a United Way lifer. I was a social work major at Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. I did my senior year practicum at the local United Way in Muncie. I heard about a management training program at the national organization at United Way of America, applied for it, and became the first alternate. Somebody turned down the job.

So, I said yes and drove my 73 Nova to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for my first placement. I just, you know, I didn't think of it as a career. I just, you know, I was a social work, a community organizing person. I wanted to have a social impact and I realized United Way was a fundraising organization.

So, I started getting fundraising jobs and, apparently, developed an aptitude for fundraising. I always think because I tied it back to social change and community impact, but I went through five local communities in United Way, almost always taking on a bigger fundraising assignment.

But that's never what I wanted to do. I actually wanted to be about social impact. And so, I started working on my MBA when I was in Rhode Island and met the person who was running the United Way in Atlanta. He asked me to come down to run their, turn around their fundraising. And I said, I would do it if he would give me the opportunity to develop the experience to go be a United Way CEO or go do something in social impact.

And we entered into what we call the social contract. We had no written agreement. I moved my family from Rhode Island to Atlanta, turned around their campaign. He lived up to his part of the bargain, gave me great assignments outside of fundraising.

I went on to be the CEO of the United Way in Columbus, Ohio, and in 2002, became the CEO of the United Way of America. And it's interesting, I think I got that job because we had done what I would refer to as innovative work in affordable housing in central Ohio. You know, we had learned about the Times Square Hotel and service supportive housing, and we were like done putting more and more money into emergency shelters. And so, we made a pivot into housing and had some real success with it and kind of brought that thinking to the national organization and started moving the whole enterprise to an impact model versus a fundraising model.

I got my MBA when I was in Atlanta. And I've always thought of myself as being in the business of social impact. I like to live in both the marketplace and in the community. And I grew up as a person, and in a family, that quite often lived on public welfare and food stamps and so forth. And it was much better to have a job than it was to see a social worker. I've always embraced this idea of kind of jobs and my ability as a family and an individual to sustain myself is really the goal; social services should be the way to support me in doing that.

So I've always looked at my career in that regard. So, and I did that for almost 40 years. Left as the United Way Worldwide CEO in what was that, two years ago, so 2021. We had merged the US organization and the international organization together. And I'm happy to talk about that at some point because I think there's a real lesson in that.

We actually flipped the model; International was always a division of United Way of America. We flipped it to create a global governance board and make the US organization an operating entity within the global organization. And that was not an easy task, but that was the right thing to do.

Left a couple of years ago and started the Leargas Group. So it is an economic and social impact firm. I work in giving advice to corporates and nonprofits. I do project management, working on an impact investing project right now with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and others, and doing some advising and consulting work in racial justice and equity.

And the last thing I'll say is that what's interesting after working for a big organization, a 100-year old organization for almost forty (40), years, is when you have to restart. I knew I wasn't done working, but I had forgotten what I personally cared about. And so, I had to start with what is it that I care about? And what is it that I want to work on? And with whom do I want to work?

And I'll tell you what, that's hard. That took me a full year to get really grounded in my new direction but I'm wildly happy with where I am now. And it's allowing me to work with social entrepreneurs, business leaders, government leaders, and working on systems and transformation, kind of like the ideal of More Elephant. How do we think about this stuff very differently? And how do we approach it in new and different ways?

[00:06:05] Jason Rudman: So Brian, what an opening, right? I could, to your point, your bookend there was why I wanted to have this conversation about More Elephant —thought leadership for today's world, and how we listen, learn, live, better. And you've spent your entire career trying to help people in some regard live a better outcome with social services and the need for the social contract to be at the core of how we help people who may not have the means or the privilege or the access to be able to live the life that you and I live.

So many, so many places to go. I do want to absolutely touch on how you changed the model. I think there's also some learning in the pivots. Your pivot in your career from fundraising to, I want to show up and I want to have impact. And how do I listen to my leader and learn from the people that I'm working with and therefore have this great career at the United Way for four plus decades.

However, where I'd love to start is where you ended. One could argue, four plus decades Global CEO, Worldwide CEO of the United Way, I'm good. I kind of sail off into the sunset. And that's not you. And then you said you've been on this year's journey, which is essentially a series probably of More Elephant moments, when you think you know what you know, and then you dig deep and you listen to self, listen to the environment around you.

I loved what you said, which is, I wanted to get back to the work or continue the work that I'm incredibly passionate about, but I had to go through discovery in order to really, really isolate. And again, Leargas Group focuses on building social capital using digital technology, racial justice and equity, and impact investing. Those are the three tenants.

So could you take our listeners through that year discovery period that enabled you to effectively say, here are the three pillars of the Leargas Group, and also give some folks insight, as I know, into Leargas. How did you come up with the name?

[00:08:10] Brian Gallagher: Yeah, I'm happy to do it. It's, you know, it's funny because I said it took me a year to really get clarity on what I wanted to do. I hate the term next chapter, but what I wanted to do next.

And I, in my experiences, quite often, whether it's yourself as a person, an organization, a government, whatever, especially in times of real change, the future can be found way more in the distant past than in the immediate past. And what I mean by that is, I went all the way back to, you know, why did I get into this to begin with?

And, I realized that I've always been motivated by trying to work on behalf of the underdog, the marginalized folks, the folks who got bullied in school. Maybe that was the middle child of six in a very dysfunctional, violent family, but it was, that was just my instinct. And then I became very institutionalized over those 40 years, not in a bad way, but you become a creature of the institution.

And so, I had to strip all of that away and go back to what is it that I care about? What am I worried about? And I went back to where are we as a country, and as a world?

And, I was working on this at United Way as well, but, our helping systems, our nonprofits and our governments, and even the role of corporations, was really built for an old economy, was built for an industrial national economy, where all boats rose with the rising tide and even if I didn't have a college education, I'd get a factory job.

I came from ‘Steel Country’ and everybody worked in the steel mills and you had great benefits and great pay. Well, those jobs are gone. And so, you know, so the contract was I'd get a job, I'd be able to sustain myself, I'd get good benefits, I would retire. If I fell off that upward economic spiral for a while, government would give me a floor to make sure I didn't fall into poverty. And all those things were broken.

I've tried not to internally or externally blame anybody for it. I just think the economy changed. Globalization of the economy, digital technology, the speed of commerce, and I think government has gotten a bit dysfunctional in a lot of places, including the US.

And so, I kind of went back to that and said, what is it that I care about? And what is it that has to happen in order to create a new social contract, a contract where everybody succeeds, not just the wealthy, or the privileged, or the lucky. I know a lot of people, their eyes glaze over when I use this term, but I think what's missing right now in the U.S. for sure, in a lot of places, is social capital. The rooting interest that we have in each other. And I just read a column the other day by David Brooks that was entitled, How Did We Become So Mean?

We just don't seem to care about each other anymore. And I think it was because institutions like nonprofits, service organizations, churches and employers were the connecting tissue for us. That's how we came together. We met in those places.

And so, one of the things I'm working on is what's the role of digital technology? How is it that we're connecting right now? And how do we go from a world of data points to facts again and norms, and so forth? So, I kind of went back to.the social contract where everybody succeeds because that's why I started in United Way. I didn't start as a fundraiser. I thought it was the way that we all came together to try to work on stuff that you could only do together.

And so to me, that was social capital. It was, I think of all the -isms out there, and there are a ton of -isms, racism is the starting point for me. And we've got to deal with the scourge of racism. And if you do that, I think it builds the muscle to get into other biases and bigotry and so forth.

And then I made the point that, you know, I think at least federal government in the US is not going to be a big part of the solution in terms of recreating this, this new contract. I think it's the marketplace. And so, I'm not just focused on impact investing, but how do you get social return on par with financial return? What's the new role of, of companies in this, in this new contract? So that, and it took me a year to figure that out.

And last thing I'll say on that piece, before I go to Leargas Group, is one of the biggest struggles I had was in some ways, I allowed myself to be defined by my job and my position at United Way. And so, the first few months I was in search of what's my new title? How am I going to be remain important? Who still cares about me? Those kinds of things.

And man, that is a, that is a painful fool's journey. and some great advice I got from a friend in Bogota, who now is a partner on this impact investing project said, don't go down that path. Work on the things you want to work on, with whom you want to work. You've built a career, you don't need to do it anymore. I hated the advice at the time, but he was right.

[00:13:38] Jason Rudman: That advice, incredibly freeing though, Brian, right? Like over time, it's come to reveal itself. I so align with what your colleague in Bogota shared with you in terms of don't chase the title, chase the work, right? Work on what matters.

[00:13:53] Brian Gallagher: And you know what's interesting about that is I got the big title because I chased the work initially in United Way. And then you get it and then you get institutionalized by it and you forget why you chased it, why you even started the trip.

Anyway, like you said, I'm not done. I don't know when I'm going to be done, but hopefully never. The way you contribute, I think, changes.

And so, if you go Google search [the term] ‘insight’ or ‘insights’ when you're looking for a domain name, you're going to find that they're all taken. And so, I'm first generation Irish. I carry my Irish passport. I thought, well, I'll search ‘insight’ in Gaelic, and Leargas is insight in Gaelic.

There's this group of young people in Dublin in Ireland that are doing this thing called Leargas, but if you put in Leargas Group, there's nobody doing that, So that's how Leargas Group came about.

[00:14:46] Jason Rudman: There you go. So connection to you. I love it because it's connected to who you are as well. So, it's authentically you.

So much to unpack, right? Where I'm going to start is you mentioned earlier in our conversation in our intro about the pivot that you made, because I think life is a series of pivots, right?

And I do believe that the essence of More Elephant and what I'm trying to curate with these conversations is that (a) you're not done until you say you're done, (b) it may cause you to pivot. And in order to pivot, I think you just eloquently described it. you've just got to actually sit back in the pocket, listen, that's when the revelation comes. And then that's when you can start ideating and creating.

One of the biggest pivots you talked about was how you changed the relationship between the U S and international at United Way. So, would you walk us through that journey? What? Why? And what did you learn in the process? And what was the impact that it had on the United Way and what it seeks to do on behalf of the people it serves?

[00:15:55] Brian Gallagher: You know, when I came into the United Way of America job in ‘02, every job I had in United Way was a turnaround job. And I had developed this reputation as the person you bring in to turn things around, get things moving fast again in a different direction.

And there were great local United Ways around the U S and some around the world, but the United Way, writ large, was adrift. When I came in, we surveyed all local United Ways in the US and asked those locals, what business are you in? Literally 50% said fundraising and 50% said community impact. So, we were divided on purpose.

Financially, we were not strong at United Way Worldwide. Locals didn't look to United Way of America as a leadership organization. We had governance issues, we had brand issues. We had to fix all that. And so, we made the pivot to impact and we changed the governance rules and went through some really hard, basic operating stuff that we had to do. But then, we needed to turn to strategy.

One of the things that was interesting to me was, we always had something called the Global Corporate Leadership Program at United Way of America – 100 corporations that were really tied tightly to United Way, and they obviously now were global organizations. And we were not. We weren't just a US-centric organization, we were a local-centric organization. And these companies, UPS and FedEx and HP and so forth, were global. And, and at the same time, we had affiliates in, at the time, I guess, about 45 or 50 countries, but it was so poorly resourced and it wasn't really a part of the United Way brand and enterprise, that we had no line of sight into these affiliates.

And one of the things that you become acutely aware of when you come into the national organization is United Way of America at the time, owns the brand United Way, and then licenses it to local groups. So you become very keenly aware that you have responsibility for the brand. And we can't see into these affiliates in Mexico and Moscow and, and Caracas and so forth.

So there's a huge risk and over here, this huge opportunity – if we're going to keep the relationship with these big corporations that are providing one quarter of all of our revenue, we're going to have to help them achieve their CSR goals wherever they are. And so we headed down the path of globalizing the United Way.

We had access to some of the best thinkers, academic, corporate and otherwise, non-profit thinkers in the global space. And two things hit me as we were going through it; one, nothing is truly global. Nothing is global. Everything is local. Everything is national, which is why we chose the term worldwide; the other is that it's really got to be a network of like-minded partners in creating that.

Having said that, we had great United Way’s in Canada, in Korea, throughout Latin America, in a couple of legacy United Ways in India, and we needed to knit them together. And as we started, Deloitte Consulting helped us with the process, and it became super clear to me early on that we couldn't just recreate an international division of United Way of America. We needed to be a worldwide organization.

And what that meant was we needed to give rights and responsibilities to these affiliates outside the US. And the only people who could vote that in were members in the US. So, they had to give up some responsibility to others in order to create this worldwide organization. And so, we went through 18 months of just listening across the world, did a lot of work with, United Way’s in the U S trying to convince them. And I think it was trying to convince them – that look, you'd be better as the United Way in Erie, Pennsylvania, to be part of a global network versus being on your own.

It just so happened that the vote that we took was in the middle of the financial crisis in 2009 which was a terrible time to do it, but we did it. And we won that vote, 60% voted yes to become worldwide, 40% in the US voted no. And so, we don't do anything in nonprofits that are 60-40, but we did that. And I think it turned out, and I think most people would say, it turned out to be the right move because we now had a global network, where not only you could manage those corporate relationships, but some of the most innovative, effective social impact strategies are happening outside of the U.S.

So, this reverse innovation coming back into the U.S. became a big part of that. But there'll be a whole chapter in the book on surviving that worldwide vote at the national conference in Detroit in 2009, for sure.

[00:20:55] Jason Rudman: Awesome. So you mentioned the book. So what are you working on? Is it a memoir?

[00:21:00] Brian Gallagher: It is a combination memoir/leadership book because, and here's why. I've talked to a bunch of publishers over the years. And honestly, the only thing that a publisher is ready to say, yeah, we're good, let's go is if you're willing to write dirt about your organization. And I said, that's not what I'm going to do.

And then for somebody like me, the more kind of predictable path is writing a management book. You know, how do you create vision in a nonprofit? How do you blah, blah? And so there's stuff to write about that. And then, as I was thinking about a memoir, quite honestly, I go back and forth between ‘yeah, well, yeah, my life's somewhat interesting, but I don't know that it's that interesting.’ And so who cares about that?

And it was really when I was running the United Way in Columbus, Ohio, I was, I spent my whole life before that trying to keep my personal life and my professional life separate. Never let them come together because I thought that was protecting me. And increasingly, as my responsibilities increased, it was negatively affecting my personal life. And I needed to connect those two parts of my life.

And what that meant concretely was bring our young daughters to events over the weekend. You know, introduce them to what I'm doing and vice versa and just be your whole self, all the time. And so, that's why I'm going to write the book the way I'm writing it. What I’ve learned is that everything I've learned in my personal life has affected my professional decision-making and vice versa.

And so, this is a book that's going back and forth between what my experience has been as a human and what it meant to be the Global CEO of United Way for almost 20 years and how those two things intertwined, and when it's beneficial and when does it almost kill you because sometimes, it almost does kill you.

[00:22:57] Jason Rudman: Isn't it amazing, Brian, you know, you've got four plus decades in nonprofit, corporate organization, right? I'm, you know, 25 plus years in, and just listening to you and how our experiences are similar, where we entered the workforce. And even though you were building a family and I build a family now, for the early part of our career, we didn't show up as a person in the workplace, right? And especially from a leadership perspective, right?

I talked recently with an author, Melissa Romo, who wrote a book, ‘Your Resource is Human,’ and the need for empathetic leadership in the workplace, now more than ever. I just find it fascinating that if we talked to 100 people, the majority of them would say that early on in their career, and even maybe today, there is a belief that you have to act a certain way in order to climb the ladder or survive at work, which is not who you are outside of the office.

And it is a struggle, I think, that we still face today and we should probably have much more conversation about we say we want people to be authentic and bring your authentic self to work. Does the organization actually value and allow that? And do the employees of the organization have the tools to know how to navigate that, and feel a true sense of belonging and comfort in showing up as the whole and not these two parts. I find that fascinating. And a conversation that I think we still need to have, especially in this environment of remote hybrid work.

[00:24:36] Brian Gallagher: 100%. And sometimes, I think we kind of misinterpret what it means to be your whole self. So, one of the things that I learned is, once my daughters and my wife started getting more engaged with what I was doing in real time, then they had opinions. I would be thinking about something a certain way, and my 13- or 14-year-old daughter would see it completely differently than me.

And as I became willing to hear that and listen to that, I became better. And sometimes, I think the misinterpretation is, like I'm going to test corporate policy by pushing on my personal beliefs or the opposite, I'm going to make sure my corporate policy is adhered to so you can't do this. It's like, I'm not sure that's exactly what we're going for here. I think what we're going for is just let people be who they are. And, that really is mostly manifested through, you know, opinions and,perspective and experience. And, it's not about challenging each other's guardrails. And maybe that's just part of the culture we live in, but we are not there for sure, we are not there.

[00:25:51] Jason Rudman: No, for sure, for sure. And then I think what we're talking about here is design thinking for the organization. Right? It's human-centered design where you solution with everybody at the table.

And I do think that you and I, again we had this conversation. What gets us frustrated, if I can go there my behalf, is that we are always having to explain the minority position and why the minority position has value. And that to me is one of the biggest challenges that we have, right? Is that the minority position, I'll call it that, is the one that always has to be explained and justified. To your point, we are so far away from true equality and equity and so much work to be done.

[00:26:39] Brian Gallagher: I, you know, in my experience, when sometimes, when you're unable to make progress against a big question or a big pivot or whatever is because you framed the objective incorrectly or imprecisely.

And, I think if we were to go back to framing the idea of equality around the idea that an economy, a community and a society can only be successful, long-term, if everyone in it is successful, most especially, those with the least among it. And so it's not about labeling those folks who aren't, but it's like, look, you can't be successful unless in this, whatever it is, this neighborhood, this company, this, this community, this country is successful.

And I think, in large part, we've gotten to where we've gotten because the middle class just essentially got decimated in the U.S. and in a lot of places, politicians followed it. Now culturally it's not good enough to hold my own opinion, I have to attack your opinion because I see you as a threat and that's why I think, you know, getting back to framing the objective around everyone's got to succeed. And I do think that as we've gotten more polarized in the country, more divided in the country, and now more culturally divided, as always, those that are easiest to attack or blame are getting attacked and blamed.

[00:28:24] Jason Rudman: Yeah, I mean, we, yeah, we see it, right? Look, I, we have moved our family from a mean state, mean in quotes, because to your point, I think there is, I think you're absolutely right, there's a spirit of meanness and opening the opportunity for everybody; we will succeed if everybody succeeds.

And yet, we're two white presenting guys talking about the challenges that we see in terms of racial justice, social justice, equity, right? And the challenges that we see and what we have to do, because we have to be part of the solution. We can't sit on the sidelines. And part of the challenge that we have is we've got a minority that are holding on to all of the keys and there's an unwillingness to let that go.

And I think you said it well, and I think you saw this in the United Way, your responsibility, my responsibility, our collective responsibility is to keep pushing to provide access to those that have less, in order for everybody to have more. And it sounds so simple when we say it. And yet on a given day, it feels like that work will never see the light of day.

[00:29:36] Brian Gallagher: You know, two thoughts in reaction. I agree completely in this idea and, you know, I'm very conscious of being a white straight boomer, male. And I wrote an article once for CNN called, forget what it was called, but it was essentially when I became really conscious of my white privilege.

And so at best, what I can be is an ally and a voice; by and large, in the US, it's white men that are trying to hold on to the way things have always been done. You know, who’s morality? Who’s norms? Who’s politics?

And so I think my responsibility, our responsibility, is give voice to it and support those who are trying to change it. The other is, and maybe it's, it's kind of connected to it, is as we look for a way out, silence is, silence is super destructive.

Silence in, in many ways, in my view, is just as damaging as overt acts of hate. In that, you know, there's a silent majority out there in the country who, if you stay silent, you're actually reinforcing the hate and the behavior. And I'm not putting this on all corporations, but what's interesting is, you and I talked about this in leading up to this – if you look at the Bud Light ad campaign using a transgender spokesperson and the hate that it created, like we're supposed to care that Kid Rock shoots a part of Bud Light Can with his automatic weapon.

And unfortunately, I think most often the corporate response is to go silent because I think the risk people inside companies are saying, look, better to let it blow over, when I think just the opposite. That right now, the public is focused on this and this is your opportunity to do a few things.

Restate your DEI policies and why you have them. Take back the narrative, defend the constitution, say why it's good for the business, talk directly to your consumers, use social media. In other words, trust the silent majority out here. Because look, when you go silent, you lose 30% of your business, in terms of Bud Light sales. Why not try something different?

[00:32:03] Jason Rudman: Yeah. Well, I think let's unpick that, right? I immediately thought as you were talking about silence, right? I wouldn't even say you reinforce, you're cosigning, right? You're actually cosigning with your silence.

You know, the early 80s and in the AIDS epidemic, silence equaled death. I don't want to get morbid on it. But in the height of the AIDS crisis, when this government was not talking about it, ACT UP and other organizations in the LGBTQ community, I mean, their slogan was silence equals death because that's what was happening.

And, and I think it, you know, there's a corresponding theme here as you and I were talking about that, I don't think, you know, this is not the place to take companies to task, right?

however, what I'll do is we'll talk about the response since you brought it up. Target and Bud Light, they actually weren't silent, they pedaled backwards, right? So, on some level as a member of the LGBTQ community, I looked at their response and they pedaled backwards, they shrunk in the face of critique. And what's surprising to me is after they had built up brand equity being truly focused on equity and equality, right? I mean, they should be able to, at the same time, serve the Kid Rock’s of the world and members of the LGBTQ community, members of the Latin community, there should be enough room at the table for everybody.

Target said, well, we're going to take down displays in certain stores. Well, that's not the first time that you put up pride displays in those stores. So, I think to your point, it's just fascinating to me that the immediate response was what I call kind of like a backpedaling.

Right. And I, again, I'm responding to what I'm seeing. I want to be really, really clear to everybody listening. It felt like a back-pedaling. And you and I talked about this – if we were to do an audit of companies and what they said their commitment was going to be post-George Floyd and what their commitments have been.

And then we saw recently, so much regressing on the DE&I front from the George Floyd moment to the point where, you know, in the recent past,four heads of entertainment studios four people of color that were heading DE&I have exited the organizations, right? And on one weekend, it would seem!

So, where would you go with this, given your experience serving the social contract, building social capital using digital technology? [With] racial justice and equity is one of those three pillars at Leargas, what are your thoughts on how we, and we're all in this together, all of us, regardless of color, sexual orientation, gender, who care passionately about this, cannot sit on the sidelines…

In this moment, where are you in terms of how do we restart, reengage, reignite the post-George Floyd necessary focus on building a more just and equitable platform such that, ultimately, people can live better regardless of what their station is in life?

[00:35:06] Brian Gallagher: Well, let's use racial justice as just the palette to paint the picture. So, after the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of millions of dollars poured into racial justice causes. And, the destination of those gifts found what was there, which were institutions that were doing certain things, some of it very good, most of it very important, but in total, was not going to change equity and justice in the country. It just wasn't.

So, I say that to say, it's not an indictment of anybody doing great work on the ground in and around racial justice and equity, but we've got to rethink what is it that is actually going to create equity. And I think it's around ownership and decision-making, and governance and who's actually making decisions, who actually owns assets.

And that's why the places I've been spending my time are around those players in the racial equity and justice space that are focused on black-owned and restorative capital in governance, in capital investment that pulls government with it. Economic policy and workforce development that recreates and restarts economic mobility in minority communities. That to me is what's going to have to happen.

And we have to change the flow of money and we have to change the decision-making constructs in government, business and in communities. And that's where I choose to spend my time, with both startups and established organizations, because I just think we have to change the definition of success.

Putting $250 million into established organizations that have their own institutional needs to be funded, absent a very different way of thinking about what does success look like and what does the future look like, when decision-making and ownership isn't minority-owned, as in white minority-owned, but is truly diverse in its ownership. That's where I'm spending my time.

[00:37:27] Jason Rudman: I think that I'll build on that. So much agreement with what you said, which is nothing wrong, to your point, of putting money into existing programs. A functional resetting which builds generational wealth which is lacking in many marginalized communities

the lack of wealth that black and Latin communities have, vis-a-vis the white population at large. I also want to be thoughtful here because I think it's embedded in the work that you did at the United Way, because the United Way does not, it's not about seeing color, right? It's about helping communities in need.

So, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that, you know, marginalized and under-represented communities, they come in all hues, right? But there is an acute need for sure in black and Latin communities to address decades, one might even say centuries, of course, from a black community perspective, of this lack of focus on structures and programs that build generational wealth, whether that be through things like home ownership, or helping people start and build a business.

And to me, as I listen to you, those are two areas where we've got to have more of a key focus on helping people understand the paths to owning a home, building a business, because those are true levers of wealth creation, and dare I say, generational wealth creation over the long term, as much as you can pump money into existing programs.

[00:39:07] Brian Gallagher: And to take it a step further, for me, even being more concrete. So, I've spent a couple of years now working with a startup foundation called the Southern Reconstruction Fund, which is essentially trying to [determine] how do you find capital to put in black-owned, restorative capital in the American South?

And now spending more time with a fairly new initiative called the Southern Communities Initiative, that was started by Robert Smith, one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the country and the person who was giving the commencement speech at Morehouse and forgave everybody's student debt that was in the audience and so forth, PayPal and Dan Schulman's involved.

And I'm spending time there, I'm probably going do some work with them because one half of all African-Americans in the United States live in six Southern communities. So, there's racism everywhere, there's inequality everywhere. But if you're going to deal with this, you’ve got to deal with it where it is most pronounced and where most folks live. And without question, there's been great opportunity for the Black community in Atlanta and Houston and so forth, but it's also where the biggest challenges are.

And so I think we all have to lean into this work of reframing success, but actually go where the opportunity is most difficult and most fruitful, if you make progress.

[00:40:38] Jason Rudman: I get it. We shouldn't underestimate, again, the passage of time and the institutional hold, and dare I say, like the political, small p, like the political hold, where you say one half of the Black community lives in six southern states, and there's a perennial challenge in creating mechanisms and lifting that community out of what has been a persistent malaise, the best words that I can describe in terms of what I see.

But the work is so necessary, right? And I think that that's what brings you and I again back to not sitting on the sidelines and figuring out how we can be part of the solution. And that's the beauty of this conversation that we've had. I was excited to talk to you and I'm even more excited to keep talking to you about what we can do to continue the march towards true equality and equity in this country and indeed, I would say worldwide, right?

We could probably have a fascinating conversation. And I might bring you back. What do we see in other parts of the world that on some level we could attempt to learn from? Because there are experiments that I'm sure we can learn from. So, I'm going to bring you back.

[00:41:59] Brian Gallagher: You know, 100%! And Jason, let me say one word about what you just described. And it's this – so I grew up in a place called Hobart, Indiana, which is on the East side of Interstate 65. Across Interstate 65 in Northwest Indiana is Gary, Indiana, and then Hammond, Highland, East Chicago and Chicago.

Gary, when I grew up, was 90% Black. Hobart, small town, was 100% white. The steel mills, US Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Inland Steel, Standard Oil, were tens of thousands of jobs. There were, I don't know, at least half of the people I grew up with went to work in the mills. And then some of us went to school.

And when I came home in the summertime to work construction, to pay my way to go back to school, a lot of my friends were, they had new cars and new boats and they had great jobs in the mills and so forth. And if there was a white guy working next to a Mexican guy working next to a Black guy at US Steel, nobody cared, because everybody had a job.

And then all those jobs went away and I don't know what the percentage is, but US Steel used to have 30,000 jobs there. Now they have 2000 jobs. And so these boomer friends of mine, when I go back there, they were making, in the early eighties, $30 an hour. They're now making $18 an hour driving a truck and they're pissed off. They're pissed off.

And so, I say all that to say, two things can be true at the same time. We need to lift folks that have been marginalized forever into the mainstream of decision-making and asset ownership and so forth. And we need to make sure that white middle-class and lower middle-class folks who lost a lot of these manufacturing jobs come along as well. Because again, if the majority of us don't succeed, none of us are going to succeed.

I'm much more focused on how do you make sure everybody succeeds, not just some, but you do have to call out when some are structurally held back. And that's what makes the conversation with a lot of my friends from high school difficult, but I have them because you have to have them.

[00:44:22] Jason Rudman: You do, you have to have the uncomfortable conversation and I think that's a perfect book into this conversation because I usually ask if there was one thing you want the listeners to take away and I believe you just said look we we will only succeed if everybody succeeds and we should acknowledge we cannot walk blindly into this environment of.changing the way that we think about this, because I do think that we've still got to change the way that we think about this, without acknowledging, structural, institutional racism that is persistent, and is, to your point, the first of a number of areas where we've got to get incredibly serious about thinking differently in order to show up differently.

[00:45:07] Brian Gallagher: That's right. One, one hundred. So that would, that would be my, it's like, we don't succeed unless everyone succeeds the other end. The sub note to that is more than one thing can be true at the same time. More than one thing can be true at the same time. Stop allowing yourself to get pushed into a hole.

[00:45:28] Jason Rudman: Well, and that requires the art of listening, saying less and listening more, right? Because if you listen, you learn, and then you're on a path to living better. So, you did not tee that up for me, but that's ultimately what it is. And that's what we're here at More Elephant trying to do.

Brian, great conversation. How do people connect with you? Learn more about Leargas? Where would you point them to?

[00:45:52] Brian Gallagher: The best way to do it is go to leargasgroup.com. All lowercase, all one word. Feel free to email me directly at bgallagher@theleargasgroup.com. And Gallagher for those listening is G-A-L-L-A-G-H-E-R. So, bgallagher@theleargasgroup.com. Yep, the Irish spelling has the h.

[00:46:14] Jason Rudman: There you go. Brian, awesome talking to you. Thank you for your time today. I knew this was going to be a great conversation. We're going to invite you back. I think there's a whole international realm to this, based on your experience, in terms of examples internationally that we could point to, that we can learn from as we try to change the path here at home in the United States.

So, thanks again, really appreciate it.

[00:46:44] Brian Gallagher: I look forward to it, Jason. Thank you.

[00:46:45] Jason Rudman: All right, talk soon. Thank you.

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