Spring is a pretty cool season. There is always a feeling of renewal – i mean it’s so encouraging to learn that all those flowers were not really dead, they just headed south for the winter (like i should have). First up are the daffodils. This photo is pretty cool – a gentleman who lived until 103 recently in Redding, Ct. planted 40,000 daffodil bulbs for his wife. I admit I only counted 10,000 and then just extrapolated, but I’m willing to take his word for it. Now my wife is looking at me like “really? you complain when I ask you to put in 200 every fall?” so inadequate, i am.

I have to admit though – as much as I love spring right now, my favorite season is still fall. It goes back to when I was a kid and it was soccer season here in the US. I can almost hear that smack of toe against leather when the leaves turn, the air is still warm but not hot, and school starts.

I recently read The Color of Money, by Mehrsa Baradaran, who is a Professor of Law at UC Irvine. It was recommended to me by my friend Steve Rogers, recently retired Professor at Harvard Business School. Steve knows that I am an avid consumer of #blm books and he said that Professor Baradaran is a unique scholar.

I find that I am incredibly interested in #blm. I mostly keep it to myself as I fear that it would sound odd in some way, as if I’m trying to be on a bandwagon of some sort, or tring to establish myself as some sort of unique white person. Frankly, I am just truly interested in the many explorations of race in America. The history is incredible – racism is in fact a key element in the establishment and growth of the United States of America. There are some excellent books that treat this and demonstrate that the era of racism is really not behind us.

The Color of Money is highly unique. Professor Baradaran discusses the history of racism and the treatment of black people. She does it largely through the lens of our banking system. She proves that the main issue is in fact ‘the economy, stupid!’ Banking provides a multiplier effect, and is the central agent of growth in our economy. By taking in deposits and lending out a multiple of this money (keeping only a fraction on hand for depositors to access as they need), they enable business to have access to credit and grow. Black communities, however, are rarely served by ‘white banks’ and therefore need to bank with locally established ‘black banks.’ That may seem like the answer to the problem, but even these black banks end up providing their multiplier outside the black communities they serve.

There are some ‘wow’ stories in this book. Take Maggie Walker, for example. Walker was the first black woman to own a bank and the second woman of any color to do so in the US. She was born in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother was a former slave and her biological father an Irish Confederate soldier. Maggie and her mother lived in extreme poverty after her stepfather was murdered. Her mother earned a living doing laundry for the wealthy white women in Richmond. Maggie turned out to be a brilliant student, graduated high school at 19 and became a teacher…until she was forced to quit after getting married. Married women, after all, were not permitted to teach.

As a member of something called the St. Luke mutual aid society, she established a newspaper, a printing press, an insurance company, and a college education fund. In 1903 she established the St Luke Penny Savings Bank with $9,400 in deposits from member of the society. The story of Maggie Walker goes on, as she becomes well known as a successful banker. Incredible.

Other fascinating personalities in the book include Wisconsin Senator Proxmire, who tried hard to support policies to address inequality. Baradaran explains redlining crisply and clearly and demonstrates how it was in fact government policy that would never allow most black people to make it out of poor neighborhoods that were established because of a lack of credit available to black people.

The book moves through history from the Civil War all the way to modern times, pausing to examine policy decisions made in the Nixon, Johnson, Obama and many other eras. It is an incredibly researched book, but her writing is so crisp and interesting that I enjoyed almost every page and every interesting fact – for example, did you know that by the year 2000, almost 800,000 blacks were in prison, as compared with 600,000 who were in college?!. Thus, there were more black men in prison than there were in slavery in 1850.

Professor Baradaran concludes by asking if we Americans would like to continue to embrace our history of racial tribalism, or shed these divisions and finally become one people indivisible and all created equal. She tries to explain that what can benefit the minority will also benefit the majority. W.E.B. Dubois wrote in 1948 that the problem with American democracy is that “we have not tried it.” Baradaran asks if it is now time to try.

Read this book.

In my first two posts on this topic, i explained where my interest in serving the non-profit world came from (my parents, natch). In the second I spoke about my longstanding involvement with Junior Achievement, Now that I am on the ‘back nine’ of my commercial career I have been doing more work than just supporting JA. I did spend a couple of years on the board of A Better Chance (ABC) in Westport, CT but that ended when I moved to London and it became difficult to stay involved.

Last year I joined a group called the National Executive Service Corps (NESC). NESC is a non-profit that serves other non-profits. It is made up of consultants who work pro bono to help the leadership of local non-profits on things like strategy, organizational alignment, fundraising strategy, board governance. The consultants are all very interesting people who have had long careers and senior roles in a wide variety of industries. We work in small teams of 3-4, do analysis of data, interview our clients and develop recommendations for how they might improve.

I have worked on several engagements since beginning with NESC. My first was in support of the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport CT. When asked to help out on this project my first instinct was to shy away – i would have a hard time coming up with a subject I know less about than the catholic church. I didn’t know how they were organized or their strategy for serving the community, but I joined the team and learned a great deal. The Diocese serves their community via the churches, catholic schools, charities and food banks and their community centers. They were specifically looking for help advising the boards of their community centers on how to work together. I realized that I could help the team – this was about strategy and partnerships and I know how to help organizations with issues like this.

My next project was one I was asked to lead, performing an organizational assessment for the foundation organization supporting a large community college. Foundations are common vehicles that operate as 501 3(c) non-profits, raising money to support their college, enabling them to provide financial assistance and grants to needy students. These Foundations have their own Boards and this group wanted to ensure that they had the right leadership and team in place to support the college in the future. We performed 25 interviews, of all staff and a number of board members as well as the college president, and provided thoughtful input to the Board, which they ultimately adopted as a plan. I am now starting a new project with another community college foundation, helping them assess the effectiveness of one of their important programs supporting their neediest students.

This is work that I enjoy because it uses my experience and brings value to organizations that help people in a wide variety of ways. I don’t know yet if I will go back to the commercial world, but even if I do, I will work hard to keep my hand in the non-profit world, as I profit greatly from that work.

In my last post I mentioned how I developed an appreciation for ‘giving back’ when I was a child, thanks to my parents, particularly Dad, who founded the Radnor, Pa chapter of A Better Chance (ABC).

I eventually grew up (so to speak) and looked for ways to get more personally involved than writing checks each year to our favorite charities. For my biggest step, I have to thank my former boss, Phil Lynch, at Reuters. Phil was on the Board of Junior Achievement of NYC and got his staff involved in teaching at a middle school in Harlem. I bought in, and haven’t looked back since 14 years ago.

Junior Achievement (JA) is an organization made up of chapters (like the one in NYC) that organizes volunteers from the business world to do volunteer teaching at school around the country. JA provides the curriculum and so when you teach you have ready made materials to use. Of course the best teachers read the material and the ‘make it our own’ by modifying it and looking for ways to leverage our own experiences. There are courses in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, career readiness, and they teach at all levels K-12. I started out teaching some financial literacy (which kids learn at school what a budget is, how to manage credit card debt, and the like? very few). I then found a class that I loved, called the Global Marketplace. I could tell stories about all my international travels and what people from different cultures were like. Kids loved it.

I was commuting to NYC from Connecticut back in those days, so I would get off the Metro-North train at 125th street rather than Grand Central Station. I’d then walk west to Harlem and find the middle school where I would teach middle-schoolers. Most of them came from incomplete homes and 96% were below the poverty line. I loved it.

Eventually I joined the Board after Phil moved on. When I left Reuters and moved my place of employment to Connecticut I called the President of the local chapter, Jan Ursone, and asked if I could volunteer teach out there. She asked me to join their board and I said okay “as long as I can keep teaching.” I have taught in Norwalk, Bridgeport, Stamford and several other places with need. Most recently I have taught a class at high school in Bridgeport about career success.

Aside from teaching, the board work is also important. Many non-profits rely on expertise from their board to help with business issues around governance, development strategy, marketing, strategy. There are two basic types of board members, I have found. The first are those who were chosen to represent their corporation after donations were made, but don’t really have much time to give. They dial in for quarterly board meetings, and ensure the $ flows from their company, and that is appreciated. Then there are those who have time and expertise to give. These are the people who support the President and the staff by getting involved and helping with the heavy lifting. As Board Chair, my job is to cultivate as many of the later as possible and put them to work productively. To accomplish this I have set up a series of standing committees that board members can choose from in order to take best advantage of their interests and skillsets. They include Finance, Strategy, Development (fundraising), Marketing, Programming and Board Development.

This work sounds a little like bureaucracy….but if done properly we provide extra hands and a lot of expertise to the staff. Our JA team has a marketing person, for example, but the board members are great advisors esp as the chair of that committee is a Chief Marketing Officer.

JA provides outstanding value to kids around our state. This is important work and I am pleased to be associated with it. (we can always use more people who want to get involved with non-profit board work!).

I thought I would write a little about my efforts in the non-profit world. Having spent 39 years in the commercial (for profit) world, mostly in the IT Sector, I have spent the last year and a half focusing on my non-profit activities. People like to say ‘giving back.’ Okay, if that works for you. My appreciation for ‘giving back’ started when I was a kid, of course. It’s usually one’s parents who sponsor the development of values such as these. My dad, who worked for a bank and then a benefits consulting firm, spent an enormous amount of his free time building an organization called A Better Chance (ABC). I can only now appreciate how much of an effort that must have been. ABC still thrives today, of course. Dad founded the chapter in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Sounds like a small thing. What he had to do was recruit a board of directors, raise enough money to buy a house in Wayne, Pa that the kids could live in. Then he recruited a ‘Resident Director’ which is the young family who resided in the house and looked after the kids. ABC kids were identified as high-school age boys and girls with potential, but with tough circumstances based on where they live and their family life. ABC gave them ‘a better chance’ by inviting them to move to Wayne (or a number of other chapters), live together and go to school in our rich kids’ town.

Wow, what an impact this made. As a youngster (maybe I was 10-12 yrs old?) I caught on to what Dad was doing and got to know the kids – all of whom were black or brown. On the weekends, one of them would stay at our house and we’d shoot hoops together in the driveway. I still keep in touch with one of the graduates. His name is Steve Rogers. Steve came from Chicago – not the nice part of town – and he went from ABCs Radnor High School to Williams College. He got his MBA at Harvard, made a reasonable fortune as an entrepreneur and then became a professor, first at Northwestern and then at Harvard Business School. Professor Rogers was a very cool guy. And he loved my Dad (who has passed away now, sadly) and gives him some credit for sponsoring a means for getting his life together. Steve has just written a book –

So that’s how my appreciation for ‘giving back’ started out. More about what I have actually been involved in as an adult in the next post…

Today I successfully scheduled an appointment to get a covid-19 vaccine. Its interesting how good I feel about it – more than I expected, frankly. Like everyone else, I have been careful throughout the pandemic, though we did see our kids, got tested, quarantined, wore masks, etc. I have not been lobbying to get the vaccine. There are so many people who i felt deserved to get it before me. Health care workers, elderly, teachers, and many many others. I am 61 years old, but healthy and fit and rarely get sick. I’m not a dummy so know that I could get the virus and can’t predict how I will react to it, but I never thought about working myself into a frenzy to get the shot, or cutting in line somehow to get it early.

Last week, the Governor of Ct announced that those 55 and older would now be eligible. Seems like we are (one of?) the first state to go that low in terms of age eligibility. Some friend stayed up until midnight on 3/1 just to log on and get a test appointment; some spent hours and hours on hold on the phone waiting to connect with someone who could help. It was clear that the authorities were overwhelmed as none of the relevant websites (VAMS, CVS, Walgreen, MyChart) were responsive in any way. I know because my wife nagged me all day on 3/1 to try them all. I just didn’t see the need to panic over it. So what it if it took days, or weeks or even another month to get a vaccine. It wouldn’t change our lifestyle would it?

I get up early each morning (it’s a blessing and a curse). I got up just after 6 and logged into the cvs website and lo and behold it was responsive and offered sites for vaccine appointments. I took the 5 minutes to fill out their form and book both the first and second vaccine at a CVS about 10 minutes from my house. So this weekend I get my first shot.

Curiously, I feel really good about it. Almost like a weight will be lifted. I don’t kid myself that the world will get back to normal, but I can feel okay about flying to visit my daughter. I will still have to wear a damn mask while playing tennis, but my risk assessment has changed. It almost makes me feel like we will all turn a corner, once we all get this feeling, one at a time.

*By the time my wife woke up and made it downstairs, CVS was all booked.

Most people head south for a break in the winter, and that is perfectly understandable. We too like to feel warm again at some point during the long cold winters in the northeast. On the other hand, when you have a chance to visit Maine in the winter, it’s a wonderful beautiful place. I’ll try to insert a few photos but you can’t really appreciate it unless you are up here. It’s quiet (yes, very quiet), clear and cold. Outdoor activities are hiking and snowshoeing….unless you are up for driving to Sunday River to ski (see my earlier post on skiing). I couldn’t imagine being here without the dogs either. They run and jump and fly through the woods, chasing real and imaginary enemies and prey….relishing the ‘no leash’ environment we have, on 30 acres of woodlands.

We have 3 dogs – all rescues and all just full of love for life and for hanging out with us. Aren’t dogs great? After a hike in the cold, it’s time for a cuppa tea or hot chocolate. If we wait long enough it will be time for a nice glass of red.

Winter can be nice. (maybe next week we will go find a warm place).

It’s now been enough time since the inauguration of President Biden and VP Kamala Harris, that I can reflect on ‘how it feels.’ If I try hard, I can leave behind the policy questions of how much effort is being expended to undo what Trump worked on for four years – things like immigration, handling of the pandemic, positions on climate control and international relations.

What I notice most is the sense of relief. I don’t wake up each day to tweets from Donald Trump with an unquestionable lie or a questionable claim about something…always the something had to do with him. I know it’s not all gone – I know that there are bozos out there like Marjorie Taylor Green – but the volume is now low enough to ‘feel’ different. I place a lot of stock on how things feel. Decisions can feel right. Relationships can feel good. Some things make me feel bad, particularly stupid decisions I have made, or dumb things I have said that I just cannot get out of my head even years later. (i can’t bring myself to talk about them now).

Whatever you may think about Joe Biden as a politician, a leader, a Democrat, or whatever other tag we can apply – he seems to everyone to be a decent human. He talks about doing the right things and seems be trying to do so. He doesn’t tweet about himself every day, and I am not detecting a load of lies. One can dislike what he says, but rarely call it an untruth.

I used to lead according to a mantra – DTRT I called it. Its silly but it means ‘do the right thing,’ and I let it guide how I treated people, customers, colleagues, employees and business questions. I always figured that if I tried to do the right things, it would show, and inspire others to recognize I was trying and to try to DTRT themselves as well.

How did we get to this point – where the sense of relief from not having our nation’s leader spout nastiness every day about someone or other is noticeable and real. If you don’t feel a sense of relief from this, I’m sorry but your values are a worry.

It feels better.

Well this seems to be the new most popular word in the US of A. Now that we’ve seen the back of Donald Trump (sorry, but I’ve no patience for those who don’t at least feel a sense of relief on that point), everyone seems to be talking about how to ‘unite’ or how to eliminate all the ‘divisiveness’ or how to establish ‘unity.’

Is it even possible? Trumpees think that the liberals have no right to trumpet about unity after bitching about the Donald for 4+ years. Many of those on the “other” side are sure that Trump needs to be punished (impeachment, jail, take your pick), as justice needs to be served for his contribution to the anarchy on 1/6/21, amongst other things.

Why does there always need to be ‘sides’ or ‘teams?’ Those on one team always have to root only for their team. This is so different from sports though – I love Manchester United, but accepted that Liverpool were champions last year and still love my Liverpool friends (most of the time). Of course their differences are not as pronounced as mine are with those of the people who still believe in Emperor Trump. I have a hard time sympathizing with them.

I think democracy is messy….necessarily so. People will disagree…no, people NEED to disagree. It’s what makes our way of life better in the long run. If I need to be labeled, I guess i characterize myself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal. (woah, can you have both tag lines?). I have plenty of time for understanding my more conservative (or more liberal) friends. I do, however, want a government that can accommodate diversity of input but provide appropriate leadership. Can we find a way to disagree, yet accommodate that level of diversity?

Good leadership in fact brings unity! When a strong leader has a vision and creates trust, people will follow. (um, you can’t really lead if nobody will follow, ya?). Yes, Trump has lots of followers, but sorry, you can’t just tend to your own flock when you are leading a country. If you are leading a company, you can exit people who don’t buy into the leadership vision and strategy. Maybe you can tend to your own flock if you are leading a church, but a country like this is BUILT on diversity and necessarily needs a big tent. People at least need to feel that they belong. I didn’t agree with much of what President Bush did, but I never felt like I didn’t belong or that he wasn’t a legitimate President. I wonder how many people feel that badly right now.

I’m rooting for Joe Biden; I think he’s a decent guy, and is going to try to do the right things. To me, that’s a heck of a start, and earns my trust for the time being. Unity will be in degrees and will be evaluated over time. (hard to figure it can get worse).