Speaker 1: We are in the final weeks of the year, and
Speaker 1: if you are a small business owner, an entrepreneur, a
Speaker 1: startup founder, I highly suggest you listen to my recent
Speaker 1: episode Evaluating your Tech Stack because at the end of
Speaker 1: the year, you want to start thinking about what systems
Speaker 1: have you been using that no longer serve you? Because
Speaker 1: on January one, for many people and for many processes,
Speaker 1: you need to clean break, and a fresh calendar allows
Speaker 1: you that clean break so that you can go in
Speaker 1: the year and do things more efficiently, more effectively with
Speaker 1: better tools that suit your needs. That's episode one forty
Speaker 1: three Evaluating your Tech Stack. I highly recommend it for you. You, yes, you,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it for you as you close out
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Did you know you can get your
Speaker 1: daily dose of black tech news at afrotech dot com. Well,
Speaker 1: you can like this new story up about Terrence Howard,
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Speaker 2: As everything always about business with check class out of
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Speaker 1: That story's up and it's brand new right now on
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Speaker 3: Paul Pierce settles with the SEC.
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Speaker 1: dope technology, risky proposition. Find these stories in more at
Speaker 1: afrotech dot com, bookmarket in your web browser. I'm well,
Speaker 1: lucas Black Tech Green Money were here with another episode.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for this one because this one actually
Speaker 1: recorded live in person in my studio back at toe House,
Speaker 1: and so you're actually gonna see the video of this recording.
Speaker 1: I believe it drops next week on YouTube. So makes
Speaker 1: you subscribe to Black Tech Green Money on YouTube. But
Speaker 1: John Villard is programmed.
Speaker 3: Lead of this SAYRE task Force at.
Speaker 1: Northwestern Mutual, which stands for Sustained Action for Racial Equity
Speaker 1: Sarah Sarah encompasses an accelerator in Northmester Mutuals ongoing commitment
Speaker 1: to fight racism, prejudice, and social injustice in all forms
Speaker 1: and focuses on making BOWLD long term positive impact within
Speaker 1: Black communities. Through SAYRE, they're focusing and supporting black entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: black small business supplier diversity accessibilities for clients and other
Speaker 1: important enterprises initiatives. So prior to Sayer, John was senior
Speaker 1: director of Centralized Supervision at Northwestern Mutual. And Northwestern Mutual
Speaker 1: actually recently committed one hundred and seventy five million dollars
Speaker 1: to reduce the wealth gap and support businesses and entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: as they continue to grow and create positive economic momentum
Speaker 1: within local communities. And as we reported in October, they've
Speaker 1: made a total of sixteen investments nationally and local to Milwaukee,
Speaker 1: which has led to further investments of nearly fifty five
Speaker 1: diverse businesses, the majority of which are black owned. Enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation with John Vard. John's good to have you here.
Speaker 3: Willis an honor pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So you are program lead for Sustained Action for
Speaker 1: Racial Equity task Force at Northwestern Mutual, and I want
Speaker 1: you to talk a little bit about how you came
Speaker 1: into that role, a little bit about your personal story.
Speaker 4: Sure for sure. So I am a first generation American.
Speaker 4: My parents both immigrated from Haiti in the late seventies
Speaker 4: and met in Chicago, and so I grew up in
Speaker 4: a small household of five but with a deep, deep
Speaker 4: connection to a Haitian community that was based in Emison.
Speaker 4: So titaned Haitian family all about kind of uplifting each
Speaker 4: other and making a way for ourselves in the country.
Speaker 4: So fast forward, I started working at Northwestern Mutual and
Speaker 4: have had an amazing journey throughout my thirteen years with
Speaker 4: the company. But in the summer of twenty twenty, was
Speaker 4: finding myself really sort of having an identity crisis around
Speaker 4: you know, what am I doing in this kind of
Speaker 4: corporate space, not really being as much part of the solution,
Speaker 4: you know, certainly post George Floyd and everything that happened
Speaker 4: that summer, and I was thinking about my wife was
Speaker 4: that was nine months pregnant at the time, and I
Speaker 4: was thinking about what would I tell my son about
Speaker 4: our roles to play, you know, during this really trying
Speaker 4: time for the country, and like what do we do
Speaker 4: about anything?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And this Sareah role came up in terms of like
Speaker 4: how do you align the mission and objectives of a
Speaker 4: corporate entity with actionable impact.
Speaker 3: Outside our walls.
Speaker 4: And so I went from very much being on the
Speaker 4: brink of like I don't think this is this corporate
Speaker 4: thing is for me anymore. I think I need to
Speaker 4: like really step out to now. Not only can I
Speaker 4: have a meaningful career here, but I.
Speaker 3: Can drive like real impact.
Speaker 4: And I would argue, maybe even more so than some
Speaker 4: local politicians or what have you can when you can
Speaker 4: channel millions of dollars of corporate resources to moving the needle.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, so I'm interested. Twenty twenty was a
Speaker 1: year that a lot of corporations were making promises, you know,
Speaker 1: around what I want to talk about impact funds and
Speaker 1: why it's important to Northwestern Mutual because you know, you
Speaker 1: guys committed a hundred and seventy five million last I
Speaker 1: looked to your impact fund designed to you know, help neighborhoods,
Speaker 1: to small business owners and et cetera. There's ultimately no
Speaker 1: entity outside holding people accountable. So how do you guys
Speaker 1: hold yourself accountable to the promises that you guys have
Speaker 1: made to you know, these communities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. It's a really important one.
Speaker 4: And so what I love about the way our CEO,
Speaker 4: John Schlisky has kind of set this all up is
Speaker 4: we treat this as though it's any other business imperative. Right,
Speaker 4: This is not like a nice side project. We have
Speaker 4: a budget with oversight, executive oversight. We have you know,
Speaker 4: regular cadence of meetings with our CEO at the table
Speaker 4: saying where is this and why isn't this moving fast enough?
Speaker 4: What are the impediments unless clear them? And we've had
Speaker 4: that really since its inception. And the other thing that
Speaker 4: I think is really cool is we have very specific
Speaker 4: measurements again like you would any other say, sales strategy
Speaker 4: or growth measure right, and we're held accountable littles on
Speaker 4: a monthly basis. So stuff is not looking right or
Speaker 4: moving at the pace that folks think it should, believe
Speaker 4: you'll have to answer to that at the literally senior
Speaker 4: most level of the company. And that's what makes it
Speaker 4: a game changer is that you have CEO investment in
Speaker 4: presence basically day in and day out for the last
Speaker 4: three plus years on this.
Speaker 1: One of the things I love about what you guys
Speaker 1: are working on not only funding you know, things externally,
Speaker 1: but also incorporating small businesses, minority owned businesses, black owned businesses,
Speaker 1: and your vendor profile and so often you know, because
Speaker 1: I've have small businesses and you hear this term about
Speaker 1: capacity a lot. You know, we don't work with them
Speaker 1: because they don't have the capacity, And so how do
Speaker 1: you clear that hurdle and what kind of responsibility might
Speaker 1: you feel to help people build the capacity so that
Speaker 1: they can do more stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that question.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I love about what
Speaker 4: we did with the supplier diversity or business diversity spaces. Okay, uh,
Speaker 4: the large, tried and true suppliers that we that just
Speaker 4: maybe do have the capacity that we've relied on for years.
Speaker 4: It's holding them accountable to as the experts in that
Speaker 4: particular field, how are you building up other small like
Speaker 4: smaller businesses or more nascent businesses. And so we changed
Speaker 4: our contract language and our expectations of the those bigger
Speaker 4: vendors that we are in a position to kind of
Speaker 4: jump away from right away to how are they building
Speaker 4: up others and certain targets within our spend with them
Speaker 4: that need to go to those smaller, newer businesses. In addition,
Speaker 4: we're doing things like a mentor protege relationship where Okay,
Speaker 4: your business may not be ready for a fortune one
Speaker 4: hundred supply chain today, but how can we dig in
Speaker 4: your books, dig in your pitches, dig into how you
Speaker 4: present you know your business, proposition your value, and help
Speaker 4: coach you up so that you're ready and we'll go
Speaker 4: first and bring you into our portfolio. But then not
Speaker 4: only that, you're ready to go compete for others, and
Speaker 4: so recognizing that there's there's a heavy front investment to
Speaker 4: get people to that point of maturation. Everybody's not ready
Speaker 4: for this for fortunate one hundred and what comes with that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like it's your responsibility to help people
Speaker 1: not only get them in and vet them to see
Speaker 1: if they can do their work, but also to help
Speaker 1: them Do you feel like that's your responsibility one percent?
Speaker 3: Hundred percent?
Speaker 4: I think specifically as it relates to like a place
Speaker 4: like Milwaukee, which has been our home for oh, I
Speaker 4: don't know, one hundred and fifty plus years, there's definitely
Speaker 4: this this this ownership of what are we doing as
Speaker 4: a huge corporate citizen, as one of the biggest corporate
Speaker 4: citizens to uplift others and invest in others in our
Speaker 4: own backyard first and foremost. So you'll see, even as
Speaker 4: you talk about like the Impact Investing Fund, we have
Speaker 4: a whole sleeve that is just dedicated to what's going
Speaker 4: on in our backyard at Milwaukee. Right, So we can
Speaker 4: be doing all these things on the national sleep, but
Speaker 4: if we're not making those investments in our community to
Speaker 4: build those businesses up down the street, yeah, that's not
Speaker 4: really worthwhile.
Speaker 1: You know, I was doing some research on the Grow
Speaker 1: Gather Against the Gap conference and I found this quote
Speaker 1: from you, and you had said, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a small army dedicated unapologetically to accelerating progress and not
Speaker 1: just with today in mind. Everything we do at NM
Speaker 1: is with the next one hundred years in mind, not
Speaker 1: just the next quarter. So like, talk up because you
Speaker 1: mentioned some of the those that you guys hold yourself
Speaker 1: accountable to talk about some of those goals that you're
Speaker 1: measuring against to see if you're actually making progress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 4: I think if you can think about our work in
Speaker 4: say as sort of being like within our house, get
Speaker 4: our own house in order first and foremost. So it's
Speaker 4: what's the representation look like across all levels of the organization,
Speaker 4: So not just frontline you know kind of folks answering
Speaker 4: the phones, but what do we look like in the
Speaker 4: executive ranks. And I think our best sort of barometer
Speaker 4: for our measurement for successes, Does.
Speaker 3: It look like the nation that we operate in? Right?
Speaker 4: If we're a national company and let's just say black folks,
Speaker 4: for example, are thirteen and a half percent roughly, well,
Speaker 4: we should at least be reflective of that thirteen and
Speaker 4: a half percent, Not that it's a quota per se,
Speaker 4: but that's a good starting point to say, do we
Speaker 4: even look like the nation we're trying to serve?
Speaker 3: Right? So we have that, So that's kind of getting
Speaker 3: our own house in order.
Speaker 4: And then one of the things that we're doing externally,
Speaker 4: it's all about the goals of you know, one, helping
Speaker 4: to close the wealth gap. So how are we putting
Speaker 4: the hundreds of billions of dollars that we, as an
Speaker 4: enormous institutional investor have putting it to work in building
Speaker 4: small business, building black businesses of varying sizes, right, narrowing
Speaker 4: that wealth gap through investment, access to capital, et cetera.
Speaker 4: And then the last piece is what our company does
Speaker 4: is leave people off better off than we found them
Speaker 4: with financial plans, you know, risk mitigation strategies, right, things
Speaker 4: like life insurance that black folks folks may not know,
Speaker 4: have a higher propensity, they have a higher desire for
Speaker 4: life insurance than any other segment in the country. There's
Speaker 4: this like this, this notion of legacy and paying it
Speaker 4: for it. How are we reaching more black households to
Speaker 4: help give them access to that, to those critical products
Speaker 4: and strategies to help protect their family for generations. So
Speaker 4: we talk about more black households, We talk about putting
Speaker 4: more billions of dollars to work. We talk about, you know,
Speaker 4: diversifying our supplier pipelines and things of that nature, and
Speaker 4: then of course getting our own house in order. Uh.
Speaker 1: You previously mentioned Milwaukee, which I love. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the work I'm passionate about is about the middle
Speaker 1: is because I recognize that most of us who are
Speaker 1: interested in tech and et cetera don't live in New
Speaker 1: York at LA. We live in these other cities. And
Speaker 1: so what is unique or important or an advantage of
Speaker 1: being based in Milwaukee? Then a lot of other places
Speaker 1: that you guys could be Yeah, yeah, are their advantages?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 4: I think as somebody that is raising us his son
Speaker 4: in Milwaukee, I definitely think so. I think when I
Speaker 4: think about Milwaukee, I first and foremost think about like
Speaker 4: the value proposition to like live and just have a
Speaker 4: wonderful life. And actually I was talking about this with
Speaker 4: a colleague of mind even today. The accessibility, the the
Speaker 4: the access to to culture, to to just good hard
Speaker 4: working people, like there's just all the things that you
Speaker 4: would want in a place to sort of raise a family.
Speaker 3: So that check there.
Speaker 4: I think that there is tremendous opportunity as you think
Speaker 4: about Milwaukee being a destination for talent, that we might
Speaker 4: have some work to do in terms of the external image,
Speaker 4: but once you actually come and experience it, it is
Speaker 4: a really special place with I would argue world class
Speaker 4: amenities that are kind of a best kept secret, if
Speaker 4: you will, so that when people get there it's.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, wow, this is dope. Milwaukee's dope.
Speaker 4: Come people walking into summer, come in the winter, coming
Speaker 4: this summer, and you'll say, wow, I never would have
Speaker 4: envisioned this about you know, Wisconsin or specifically Milwaukee.
Speaker 3: And so I think as a place to live, it's huge.
Speaker 4: When you're talking about building tech talent and things of
Speaker 4: that nature, I think what you have are several really
Speaker 4: really strong corporate entities, strong partnerships across you know, government,
Speaker 4: and things of that nature that are really trying to
Speaker 4: create an ecosystem that fosters that kind of creative growth,
Speaker 4: if you will. So you have a bunch of leaders
Speaker 4: in the area that are really invested in making it
Speaker 4: a destination a choice for talent, for tech talent in
Speaker 4: particular of them.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the Impact Fund again, and
Speaker 1: so I imagine I don't know this, but I imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of the bet you're making or funds that you're
Speaker 1: exporting from your bank counts to other folks, is put
Speaker 1: into organizations who are doing the work in those communities.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna let you speak to that, but
Speaker 1: I want to talk about how organizations who are doing
Speaker 1: the work reach out to you guys to say, we're
Speaker 1: doing this great work in whatever city. Can we be
Speaker 1: part of this thing? How does the fund work?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So I would start by saying, impact investing in
Speaker 4: Northwestern Mutual is the way to kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: reach out and download sort of what it is that
Speaker 4: we do, what it is that we offer in that
Speaker 4: particular space. And so our fund is really divided into
Speaker 4: two sleeves that I think I mentioned earlier. One is
Speaker 4: a local sleeve that is very much focused on local
Speaker 4: impact investing in Milwaukee business owners and Milwaukee businesses. And
Speaker 4: in that space, we've made some investments that we're really
Speaker 4: proud of in CDFI, so Community Development Financial Institute and
Speaker 4: what those are.
Speaker 3: Think them as like local.
Speaker 4: Community banks that have the sort of ground game to
Speaker 4: do the kind of like smaller scale lending and investing
Speaker 4: that our community needs. Right as a huge corpord entity,
Speaker 4: we're looking at money in pretty big terms, like in
Speaker 4: the millions, right, but everyone doesn't need a million dollars
Speaker 4: plus to get invested to get their business off the
Speaker 4: ground are accelerated. So these cdfives have the ground game
Speaker 4: to say, let me get really intimately familiar with Will's business,
Speaker 4: his books, et cetera, make the right sort of lending
Speaker 4: and investment decisions to help him be successful, and then
Speaker 4: also do other wrap around services to help consult on
Speaker 4: things like taxes and all these other things that you
Speaker 4: may not necessarily be familiar with starting a small business.
Speaker 4: So that's kind of the local sleep. On a national level,
Speaker 4: we really partner with a number of strong financial national
Speaker 4: and global even financial institutions that have a really good
Speaker 4: pulse on a number of different sectors that advance sustainable housing,
Speaker 4: that advance educational priorities in all the sort of pillars
Speaker 4: that we have, and so they're really looking at how
Speaker 4: can they put larger swats.
Speaker 3: Of money to work on a national sleeve.
Speaker 4: So we're parted with folks like Black Rock and others
Speaker 4: that that had that sort of ground game too.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a little bit about your CEO and his involvement,
Speaker 1: and so often these efforts aren't led by somebody in
Speaker 1: senior leadership, and yours is, and I wonder can you
Speaker 1: speak more to how serious you guys take this, because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, sustainability is what matters.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. I will say so from day one
Speaker 4: and to this day, our CEO has been at the table.
Speaker 4: He chairs our Sustained Action for Racial Equity, the task
Speaker 4: force that we talked about. We have six of our
Speaker 4: senior leaders So think of these are folks that are
Speaker 4: responsible for huge portions of our business, that are directly
Speaker 4: accountable for the results that that that we set out
Speaker 4: to accomplish, and so we have executive oversight, we have
Speaker 4: we have rigorous reporting metrics and and real accountability in
Speaker 4: the sense that like if we don't hit some of
Speaker 4: these things.
Speaker 3: Some of this is out of our control, but the
Speaker 3: parts that are it.
Speaker 4: Will have direct impacts on people's performance and myself included
Speaker 4: performance in a very very real way. This is no different.
Speaker 4: I cannot emphasize enough. It's no different than any other
Speaker 4: growth priority that we would have as a fortune one hundred.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's treated with that same level of intensity.
Speaker 4: I would argue in some spaces even more leadership investment
Speaker 4: an investment in terms of like their physical presence, their
Speaker 4: physical they're like engagement in a meaningful way. And then again,
Speaker 4: what gets measured gets done, and you know, success is
Speaker 4: required for folks to accomplish their their personal goals and
Speaker 4: their performance goals.
Speaker 1: I want you to share some information about your Black
Speaker 1: Founders Accelerator program. You know, I think about some of
Speaker 1: the issues I've experienced and heard about through black entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: where they might get invited to expos and conferences where
Speaker 1: people want to hear about their business. And what I've
Speaker 1: heard and often many different spaces, is we come and
Speaker 1: do we do these expos that we present and it's
Speaker 1: a big it's a dog and pony show, but nobody
Speaker 1: ever walks away with a deal or they never walk
Speaker 1: away with a meeting to actually get a serious look
Speaker 1: at what they do, talk about how yours is, how
Speaker 1: yours works, and how it might be different.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely so super proud of this.
Speaker 4: So our Blackfounder Accelerator, we choose ten businesses per year.
Speaker 4: We typically do two cohorts of five each year. And
Speaker 4: that might not sound like a lot, but it's intentionally
Speaker 4: very very selective. So I think we have upwards of
Speaker 4: seven hundred and fifty applicants that we like, thoroughly vet
Speaker 4: and go through that process with. And essentially what we're
Speaker 4: doing is we partner with a company called Generator that
Speaker 4: has a really strong sort of development game for early
Speaker 4: stage entrepreneurs and mid stage entrepreneurs as well, and we
Speaker 4: go through a twelve week program with them where we're
Speaker 4: helping them or find their pitch, their business, their you know,
Speaker 4: every aspect of their business. Really we invest one hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars, so this is not like a get. We
Speaker 4: are very much investors, and we also open them up
Speaker 4: to further investment in other parts of our business. And
Speaker 4: then we appoint an executive mentor to sit in with
Speaker 4: those founders and really provide particular guidances unique to their business.
Speaker 3: Excuse me.
Speaker 4: So you might have a business with some strong regulatory concerns,
Speaker 4: So we're going to try to find somebody from the
Speaker 4: Northwestern mutual ranks that's an expert in regulatory you know,
Speaker 4: fintech regulatory considerations, and try to pair that founder with
Speaker 4: them so that they could really get C suite level
Speaker 4: insights on how to build their business in a way
Speaker 4: that will ultimately be attractive to the big both further
Speaker 4: investors but companies that might want to use that service
Speaker 4: into the future. So we do that, We bring these
Speaker 4: cohorts in, we really try to build a sort of
Speaker 4: spirit of family across the cohorts and the alum and
Speaker 4: then what we do after that is try to really
Speaker 4: keep them as a part of this ecosystem and introduce
Speaker 4: them connect them to as many resources and further opportunities
Speaker 4: to raise more capital. In fact, going back to our
Speaker 4: dashboard and in our metrics for results, one of our results,
Speaker 4: one of our metrics is are we helping our founders
Speaker 4: raise a particular amount of capital? Right, So we have
Speaker 4: targets to help graduates of our program meet certain fundraising criteria,
Speaker 4: so that incentivizes us to really be diligent about how
Speaker 4: can I introduce Will to as many people in that
Speaker 4: lane that can help him further grow that business after
Speaker 4: he's left our program. So we're specifically very choose, like
Speaker 4: we're particularly picky and very very much kind of overweighted
Speaker 4: in the not overweighted, but very much leaned into how
Speaker 4: do we make this a very very thorough partnership and
Speaker 4: be close with them?
Speaker 1: And speaking about partnerships, you guys partner with Kellogg, which
Speaker 1: is like a leading business school in the world. You
Speaker 1: partner with them for Gather against the Gap a lot
Speaker 1: of your initiatives. Why is that partnership important in what
Speaker 1: do you hope that it lends to success?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think thanks for the question.
Speaker 4: So our CEO is actually in the lum of Kellogg
Speaker 4: and so that's sort of where the initial idea came.
Speaker 4: But the thought being that Kellogg is a world class institution,
Speaker 4: like you mentioned, I think, top two or three in
Speaker 4: all business school rankings year over year. And what's so
Speaker 4: special about Kellogg is they have you know, many many
Speaker 4: decades of shaping business practices successfully. And so we think
Speaker 4: about one Evanson is but an hour away from Milwaukee.
Speaker 4: So there's that proximity too. We had the connection with
Speaker 4: our CEO being in lumber More importantly, they have sixty
Speaker 4: five thousand executives across the globe that sit at the
Speaker 4: helm of real, real capital like organizations and dollar amounts
Speaker 4: that can change the makeup of this country and even
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not Oh, it doesn't sound too part this.
Speaker 4: Guy, but the world like they can do that. They
Speaker 4: have that in their alumni ranks. They have nineteen of
Speaker 4: the Fortune five hundred CEOs or Kellogg alumn Wow. So
Speaker 4: the thought was, Okay, this is a world class research institution,
Speaker 4: world class alumni bas teaming up with them and using
Speaker 4: ourselves as a case study to say, look, Northwestern Mutual
Speaker 4: doesn't have all this figured out, like we're learning. We're
Speaker 4: still learning every day. People have been at supplier diversity
Speaker 4: and things of that nature impact investing for much longer
Speaker 4: than we have. But we're here, we're fully invested. What
Speaker 4: can we learn from you as an academic institution, and
Speaker 4: then what can we learn in and how can we
Speaker 4: inspire others within your alumni base to steer their organizations
Speaker 4: towards driving impact as well? And by the way, you're
Speaker 4: also pumping out and cultivating future executives of tomorrow that
Speaker 4: need to have this this as a part of their game, right,
Speaker 4: they need to know how their organizations are making an
Speaker 4: impact beyond just shareholder return.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Gather against the Gap. I've been touching on this and
Speaker 1: lot people don't know. Let's talk about first. What Gather
Speaker 1: against the Gap was? Yeah, speak to that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Gather against the Gap was this idea of Okay,
Speaker 4: again in the spirit of us trying to get better
Speaker 4: at doing this work. We don't have all the answers.
Speaker 4: We're proud of what we done, long way to go.
Speaker 4: How can we convene other leaders, other you know, large
Speaker 4: corporate entities leaders at the helm of these massive amounts
Speaker 4: of capital. I think we had in the room more
Speaker 4: than a trillion dollars in assets under management.
Speaker 2: And that was just you, That was just We had
Speaker 2: two hundred I think it was like two hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five, two hundred and fifty something like that in attendance,
Speaker 2: physically c suite leaders.
Speaker 4: Okay, and you know, kell Loogg brought this academic lens
Speaker 4: of Okay, if we removed all barriers and thought about
Speaker 4: what are the levers that corporations can pull that the
Speaker 4: business community can pull to legitimately begin to narrow and
Speaker 4: eventually close the wealth gap.
Speaker 3: Like it's possible.
Speaker 4: But what it takes was essentially investing in black businesses, right,
Speaker 4: So black business development. It's getting more corporations to open
Speaker 4: up their supply chains and start to bring in black
Speaker 4: business as a part of that. So grow business through
Speaker 4: through leveraging the supply chain, and then that's access to capital.
Speaker 3: And then when you.
Speaker 4: Combine all those things over time and you really can
Speaker 4: create a sort of like a multiplier effect, we.
Speaker 3: Can start to move that needle.
Speaker 4: And so everybody in that room was aligned on that
Speaker 4: vision and came to get actionable, like practical when you
Speaker 4: go in on Monday, here are three to five things
Speaker 4: that you can do from your seat, and I think
Speaker 4: we accomplish that in space.
Speaker 1: Your CEO had this to say about one of the themes
Speaker 1: that came out of the conference. He said, sustained action
Speaker 1: requires sustained leadership. When leaders show up consistently for their
Speaker 1: impact initiatives, they create a multiplier effect to your point,
Speaker 1: within their organization. What do you hope other businesses in
Speaker 1: your vertical takeaway from that conference and then you know,
Speaker 1: how do you continue because you said you guys kind
Speaker 1: of want to be a representation like this work is
Speaker 1: possible if we collectively do this together. Like what do
Speaker 1: you hope they take away from that initiative and that's
Speaker 1: the work that continues.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think what's been most impact I think to
Speaker 4: folk so like obviously if you got like literally skin
Speaker 4: in the game and this is something that you know,
Speaker 4: this is just so you're so passionate about this topic,
Speaker 4: Like that's one thing. There's sort of the there's the
Speaker 4: moral imperative to to close the wealth gap because it's
Speaker 4: gonna help benefit the country undeniably. But then there's also
Speaker 4: a real business case for doing it too. So let's
Speaker 4: just say that's not enough for you as a leader, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that sounds good, but I've got I've got shareholders to
Speaker 4: worry about. I think what our CEO would argue, you know,
Speaker 4: not to be his ambassador necessarily, but there's real growth
Speaker 4: potential and business value. That's what we wanted to do
Speaker 4: together against the gap. And in many respects, what we're
Speaker 4: doing with say is how can we do both? Right?
Speaker 4: It's not an either or when you put these things
Speaker 4: together you'll see tremendous growth like our company has enjoyed
Speaker 4: since we've started this work, unprecedented growth and our advisor
Speaker 4: force and the productivity of our advisor force. And that
Speaker 4: growth didn't come from you know, middle aged white man.
Speaker 4: It came from the diverse segments that we've been more
Speaker 4: intentional about bringing on.
Speaker 3: It's powered unbelievable growth for our business over the last
Speaker 3: couple of years.
Speaker 4: So I guess what I would say to take away
Speaker 4: is this isn't a charity case, right. This is a
Speaker 4: combination of obviously the right thing to do that will
Speaker 4: benefit us all, but then also it's good for your
Speaker 4: bottom line too when it's done right.
Speaker 1: For the people who when you think about doing this work,
Speaker 1: the people who may never own a small business and
Speaker 1: may never come to you know, be in your pipeline
Speaker 1: of future employees, but they just work normal.
Speaker 3: Everyday jobs.
Speaker 1: How does this work benefit them potentially?
Speaker 4: I love that question. That's a deeply personal one for me.
Speaker 4: So I mentioned earlier this goal of trying to reach
Speaker 4: more Black households, more American households, period, but in particular
Speaker 4: black households, and I think of my own family, right,
Speaker 4: So I mentioned family came here from Haiti, built up
Speaker 4: from the ground up, gave three kids a college education,
Speaker 4: what have you? And I watched my parents work very,
Speaker 4: very diligently to rise in their own spirits. My mom
Speaker 4: did own a small business. It was a home daycare owner,
Speaker 4: had kids at our house every day. My mom my
Speaker 4: dad worked for a variety of banks, worked up from
Speaker 4: the mailroom to manageagement.
Speaker 3: Will have you? So really a career company man.
Speaker 4: And at the end of that, I think about, well,
Speaker 4: what did all that get them?
Speaker 3: Apps in a financial plan?
Speaker 4: And so right now we're at the stage of their
Speaker 4: lives where they're looking at a retirement.
Speaker 3: That it's not looking so great because they didn't.
Speaker 4: Have somebody that sat down with them and got them
Speaker 4: on a game plan early on. There were things that
Speaker 4: I wish they had the right advisor. I wish they
Speaker 4: had an advisor to expose them to things really really
Speaker 4: think things that would be seem like really small investments
Speaker 4: at the time that could have been paid dividends for
Speaker 4: them in their retirement years. So now we're trying to
Speaker 4: figure out how do we supplement that and give them
Speaker 4: a respectful retirement.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of late in the game for that.
Speaker 4: So what I would say is, as much as our
Speaker 4: folks can get get a financial advisor to help you,
Speaker 4: and you know, I happen to believe that we have
Speaker 4: the best in the industry at Northwestern Mutual, but get
Speaker 4: somebody to sit down with you and.
Speaker 3: Talk through a plan.
Speaker 4: Talk through things like disability insurance if you happen to
Speaker 4: be disabled and not able to go back to work,
Speaker 4: talk about how you're putting money away thoughtfully before it's
Speaker 4: so late in the game that you know you're really
Speaker 4: trying to play catchup, which is tough.
Speaker 1: So you've guys said which I imagine Gather Against the
Speaker 1: Gap falls under that, this relationship with Kellogg falls under
Speaker 1: that Black Founder Accelerator falls under that, the Impact Fund,
Speaker 1: I imagine falls under that. When you think about Kellogg,
Speaker 1: like that's an important relationship. Just from externally, I can
Speaker 1: know that that's an important relationship. What does the future
Speaker 1: hold for? What the direction you guys want to take that,
Speaker 1: How do you want to grow that relationship.
Speaker 4: I think we learned so much with Gather Against the Gap,
Speaker 4: and the key being we need to be able to
Speaker 4: provide the business community with actionable, like tangible, practical takeaway
Speaker 4: steps to make any of this stuff actually happen. And
Speaker 4: so I think we've only begun to scrape the surface
Speaker 4: of how do we take the learnings from these in
Speaker 4: person convenings of the different conversations or research that Kellogg
Speaker 4: is doing, and then how do we partner together and
Speaker 4: using them as a case study, Like we'll be that
Speaker 4: case study, how do we partner to is still more
Speaker 4: of that down and spread it across the business community.
Speaker 4: So we'll look forward to looking at, you know, across
Speaker 4: the different dimensions of say procurement and supplier diversity. How
Speaker 4: do we get the best of the best together to
Speaker 4: talk about those and distill those action steps down you
Speaker 4: talk about access to capital, impact investing, things of that nature,
Speaker 4: how do we get the best.
Speaker 3: Of the best there, pair it with the research and
Speaker 3: distill that across the business community.
Speaker 4: So we're really looking at not just hey, we did
Speaker 4: this nice event, A bunch of people came, it was great,
Speaker 4: we took great pictures, check out the video and turn
Speaker 4: it into tangible a campaign of academic and sort of
Speaker 4: like business facing communications on how to go put.
Speaker 3: That stuff to work.
Speaker 4: Right. It's not just it's not trying to be a
Speaker 4: commercial like, let's actually get this stuff done.
Speaker 1: So people want to learn more about what Northwestern Mutual
Speaker 1: is doing, what the founders, the Black Founders fund and
Speaker 1: so if they want to learn more about this stuff
Speaker 1: dive in.
Speaker 3: Where should they go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would send them to Northwestern Mutual dot com.
Speaker 4: And then if you have any any questions or your
Speaker 4: business you think might.
Speaker 3: Be a good fit, you want to learn more about
Speaker 3: impact investing, impact investing in Northwestern Mutual. And then we'll
Speaker 3: make sure we'll get your right folks to hear that
Speaker 3: via due We'll have you man Pleasure, Pleasure. It's so
Speaker 3: much that was fun.
Speaker 1: Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Speaker 1: Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and I Hire
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Speaker 1: The additional production support by Said and Rose Lucas.
Speaker 3: Special thank you.
Speaker 1: To Michael Davis, Vanessa Serrano, Mayam Moltdrew. Learn more about
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Speaker 1: to somebody, we'll get your money.
Speaker 3: Peace and love five