Higher Education, Social Mobility, and What's Wrong with DEI with Timber Smith

Welcome to BC's Corner episode 21. Hey everybody, welcome to BC's Corner. I am super excited and glad that you decided to make this one of the podcast in your circulation. I really want to say thank you because this entire year you all have been so supportive, so engaged. I'll tell you there are about over a thousand people who have subscribed to the show. I won't say y'all listen to every episode, but you do listen, you do engage and it's truly been affirming to this work, to the effort that's put in this work. And if you love the show, if this is something you enjoy watching, feel free to go on Spotify, give me us five stars and even go on to Apple and review and you can actually write a review there as well. But for all of you who have done it up into this point, thank you so much. I'm excited to continue this journey with you all. In today's conversation, today's episode, there's one more coming in this year, but I wanted to talk about this tension that arises when race relations are discussed. Will you be saying the right thing? Are you approaching the conversation in the right way at the right time? For me as a black man, will they say that I'm using the race card? The tension that we all feel when addressing racial and cultural diversity, it's completely legitimate, but that should not curtail us from having those necessary discussions to begin with. As we approach 2024, I have reflected often about 2020. A year that will forever live in infamy. A global pandemic, a presidential primary, an eventual election, and most notably the surprise of the summer. I don't know if it should be considered a racial reckoning because it's more of a racial festering in my view that was finally legitimized by the majority population in recognition of the murder of George Floyd and a myriad of other acts of injustice and tragedies in their own right. But since that time, the national narrative on race has evolved. One party has promised legislation to protect voting rights, affirmative action, and police reform with no action to date, while another party has used semantics to levy attacks against the teaching of black history, the corporatization of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the form of ESG, environmental, social governance, while also attempting to root out DEI from higher education and education completely. What I desire in this episode is to discuss DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, from the perspective of someone who has championed this work within higher education and within a municipal system for their entire career really. Specifically, I wanted to do this from a state that is in contention during the 2024 presidential election that state being Wisconsin. Today's guest is Timber Smith, the diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator for the city of Appleton and special assistant to the mayor of Appleton, Wisconsin. He is the producer and co-host of the city of Appleton's podcast, Appleton Engaged, and in addition to his role in the public sector, Timber also is the creator, producer, host of the Koch podcast, where he facilitates conversations with a diverse array of Oshgosh and Fox City's community members and stakeholders. Prior to his current position within the city of Appleton, Timber served as the veteran's resource coordinator and admissions counselor and senior equity coordinator at the University of Wisconsin, Oshgosh. He has done so much work throughout his career really in service to his communities. He's also served, he's a veteran served within the Army Reserve himself, and truly I am excited to bring them on today. He sat on numerous boards, including the UW Oshgosh Fox City's foundation Board of Directors and currently serving with Celebrate Diversity Fox City. It was recently voted on to the Board of Directors of the Building for Kids, Children Museum, and Appleton, Wisconsin. Timber holds a very special place of recognition and honor in my life, and we talk about that a bit in the episode. But we take on the question, what is wrong with DEI? What are we getting right? And in today's climate, how can we progress this work rather than get caught up in the semantics? Without further ado, let's just dive in today with Timber Smith. I'm so glad to have you on the show. I'm so inspired by the work that you do for the city of Appleton and Appleton, Wisconsin, which for those listening, it's just south of Green Bay, north of Oshgosh, which is north of Milwaukee. If people are familiar with that way, north of Chicago, and how you exist in an area that is largely conservative, that is largely white, that's very much when people talk about those evangelical Christian areas, it's definitely dominated by that. It does have arising Asian population specifically among there are some Latinos, I believe, about 3% block. But my question here, what drew you? What inspired you to go and to work in an area where you were going to be an outright minority? Well, what drew me initially to the area was college and having the opportunity to go to college at UW Oshgosh and what made me choose going to college at UW Oshgosh was actually being in high school and going to their pre-college program. And so their pre-college program was something I got to attend and it gave me the flavor of what Oshgosh had to offer, but in my strategic mind, my thought process was, you know, since I went to pre-college here, I already know campus, I already know individuals on campus, I'm not going to really walk in as a freshman. I'm going to walk in as somebody who kind of knows the campus. And that's actually what it kind of felt like. So that's how I ended up getting here. I think the real question might be, why did I choose to stay here? That was the follow-up. Right? Yeah. Because why do you choose to stay exactly what you list at predominantly white, overwhelmingly white, pretty conservative and by most viewpoints region? And I'm coming from Milwaukee. So what made me stay was there was something about this place that I really liked, the pace of life, the quality of life you got for the cost of living, aspects of safety, the opportunities that were being afforded to me. This region at the time was like, they were curious is what I'm going to call it. They were curious about professionals of color, workers of color. And actually would give me opportunities, the opportunities that I wasn't even sure I was ready to receive for the most part, the people were good, really good. And I have a background where I've never gone to a school that was predominantly anything but white. And I have consistently throughout my entire educational career been one of only or one of few in classroom settings or in the entire school for that matter of fact. That does not mean that I didn't grow up in a predominantly black area. It just means that was my educational experience. And so making that shift to this region, it wasn't that big of a leap for me. I had a similar experience to that and to speak to how we know each other in our relationship. You are the reason why I attended the university of Wisconsin Ashkosh. Similar experience, but I forget the specific program that it was that brought me up a day while I was still in high school to visit campus. I believe it was probably my junior year in high school. And I still remember crossing the bridge and seeing the Scott Halls. And there was something inside of me that said, this is your next step. And ideally, you know, you look at the other options. And it was like, okay, this is your next step. But I really felt that. And I held onto it. And you became someone that guided me not only around campus, but through the admissions process. There was a hiccup because apparently like half of my transcripts didn't get sent in. And I I knew I was getting into this school like just off the first application. But there was a hiccup there. And so you were my guide in that scenario. But when we were going through that hiccup, because I remember coming to you because you were visiting my high school in recene. And I came up to you and I said, Hey, I should have gotten accepted like right away. I don't know what's going on. And you said, well, let's try to figure this out. We ended up figuring out the transcript problem. But then you handed me this pamphlet for the Titan Advantage program. And you said, but you should do this too. And then I was asking you about it. And what it was was this program designed for first generation college students, specifically minorities to come to campus pre fall semester. But to have a seven week session where you were able to essentially get six credits for free to end up, you know, coming to college with that 4.0 with a strong GPA, but with an understanding of campus, the working of campus, the diverse staff on campus who were there to help you to move you along. And I have to say that that experience set me up for success. And the success that I had because I graduated. I have nightmares sometimes where I wake up and I wonder if I graduated. it because I was the first to do it. I'm one of four. I'm number three technically, a four siblings, the only one to attend and to graduate. And when you look at the work that you've done, not only now in the city of Appleton, but to attend a university and then usher other students into that university and then to see them off living and thriving in their lives, how does that make you feel? I get humbled all the time. What a privilege. What a privilege that I got where I was blessed with this opportunity. It's very funny. When I was young, I always said what my professionally, what I wanted to do was I wanted to go back to Milwaukee and do positive and great things for the Black community and uplift us. And I didn't go back to Milwaukee, but I still got to fulfill that wish because I recruited heavily. I brought talented individuals to this university that I served as a resource. I made sure that they stayed. I retained them by being there for them in all facets. If I needed to talk to grand mothers and aunties, I talked to grandmothers and aunties. If I needed to call home and say, I saw them walking around without a winter coat, I called and I snitched. I did whatever it took to keep people there and to keep them engaged. And then because of the relationships, because of the great educators, because of great administrators, when you're doing that kind of work, they also join you in that work. And they gave attention to my students. All I can say is when I see the people now who have masters degrees, people working on their doctorates, people who have branched off in all sorts of directions, people from your high school, I know that I brought up later on. And even watching your trajectory, your professional trajectory, you never know what kind of impact you're going to have. And I'm so proud of the people that I just got to be a little piece of that journey. A little piece, I think you were the hinge that swung the door open specifically for me. I'm not going to get emotional, but the relationships I have, me traveling across the country all the time in leisure. I'm going on a trip in about a week. And the only reason I have that relationship is because I came to the university of Wisconsin, Ashkosh. And so when I look at my life and I look at, you know, did I go to the right university? I'm equivically, I always say yes, because if I didn't go to Ashkosh, I probably would have never started acting again. And that's been such a large part of my life. When you look at the role of higher education and the role that it's played in your life, and then also in the lives of successive generations of people of color of black individuals underprivileged first generation college students, what is the role of higher education in our society as it pertains to our communities, minority communities, individuals from underprivileged backgrounds and giving them a trajectory to the middle class and above? You know, when your first generation in particular, you don't have somebody that shares the secret sauce, the blueprint, right? But what I've learned being on both sides of it, being in it, recruiting for it, and being on the opposite side of having, you know, advanced degrees and stuff like that. What I've found is like education, what it really does for marginalized communities and what we need to be taking away from it. Number one is networking. It is you are who used to round yourself with. And college is the place where there is a concentration of individuals who are going to affect our futures. These are a concentration of people who want better, whether societally or personally, right? And to be in the presence of a concentration of these individuals and those individuals, you know, will shape you, but you shape them, but they also are part of your network for the future. They're the future. When you go to college, which you realize, and you don't realize this until your more mature, a lot of times those people are the future leaders of everything. So the people I went to college with ended up running businesses, becoming CEOs, starting nonprofits, becoming people in our state legislature, educators, and all sorts of things that they've become on all different levels. But without college, I would have met none of them. And would not have been as the ability to be as influential or be influenced by them. The other thing I think that colleges does for our marginalized communities is to, well, we know it opens doors of opportunities. But what it does do is it puts you in environments to critically think. Like, there's one thing to learn from a book, but there's another thing to know how to work as a team on certain things and to problem solve things. The education you get in college isn't all about classroom. It's about learning how to maneuver within a really big bureaucracy, which is something you know, we all need to learn how to do. And that's a huge takeaway. But I mean, the classroom aspect also is huge. How do you work in a team? How do you come together? Because I mean, how many professional environments now? You're not just out there solo in your cube. You have a team of individuals. You at least doing some team meetings. And when I mean teams, I mean, Microsoft teams and coming together and having to produce outcomes for whatever business or organization that you are representing. And then I think the other thing, the last thing I'm going to bring up that higher ed does for marginalized communities and needs to do for our marginalized communities is to provide a safe environment for young adults to explore themselves and opportunity. You know, if you are a traditional student, you are such in a growth stage at that point. Just trying to figure it out. Most students that I worked with had no idea what they wanted to do or what they wanted to be. They just knew they wanted to be something better. And college is a pretty good place to figure that out. Those are the things I think fundamentally that higher ed has to focus on and does do for the most part for our marginalized communities. And do you think with the way we're standing with student debt? Is it still something you highly recommend or is it more so based off the individual? I'm going to say that's a tough one because I'm very sensitive to student debt. Higher ed isn't for everyone. I will say this, I do believe it was oversold because I do think higher ed was oversold as the answer to all things. And it was really hard core sold to marginalized communities. And the thing that wasn't done well is they didn't tell us what's next. We were presented education in a way that you get your degree. And then all of a sudden the clouds part, a rainbow comes out and the magical jobs paying six figures come trickling down on your head. And it's all good. And it doesn't even matter what you get your degree in because you got a degree leveling the playing field. I mean, I don't know about you, but growing up in a black household. And I'm not saying this is what my parents said, but these were other individuals in my community that, you know, we're you need to go to college, just let's go have a new and they really sold this thing and oversold that thing to me. Where once I got my degree, I was waiting for my rainbows and my six figure income. And then that just didn't pop up. Did you hear these same things? I did. I did. It was going to solve everything. But coming from a family, none of my grandparents had received a college education. So really first gen first gen. And it's like, I tried. I failed. You go for it. And for me, it was really impressed upon me that that was going to be my gateway to go out into accomplish what I always thought I could. And so I wasn't mistaken though in that my degree mattered. I never outright only did a theater degree, a theater performance degree. I did political science because I thought that gave me reading that gave me comprehension that gave me writing. If I would go back, I'd potentially do, you know, do the business school because it's about perception and how people perceive those degrees in the market. And specifically in the Fox Valley, a lot of the individuals end up working locally in the community, but some of us go and leave. I think it's really important to have a strong business acumen to understand how an organization works where you fit on a PNL. And a lot of that I luckily got from my first job out of college, working in a startup and working with a really great CEO where I was led in on those meetings. And it equipped me to where now I can sit in a business development function and help build a global company. And so I definitely see the error in that it solves everything, but I also don't think that the discipline element was communicated enough. If it had hadn't been for the Titan Advantage program. I don't think that I would have excelled as much, because as diligent as I was at times in university, I can also be equally as distracted and uninterested depending on the subject. Absolutely. And I think that's for everyone, but I think especially for us, we kind of get caught up in our own world and we don't miss the opportunity. A lot of people can screw up in school because they have mom and dad to cover the next semesters or to help them balance it out. I was going to go back to a three-bedroom apartment with like five people living in the same house. I'm like, I just couldn't do it. And so I think that fueled me, but I also think that understanding and seeing people around me flail out as the semesters went on reminded me of the discipline, but then also the goal, which was to get out. And I struggled in university, as you know, I had a military phase. I don't think people knew that where I was getting up and working with the ROTC people in the morning. And yeah, I was so ready. I was so ready because I was thinking, what is next for me? I can't pay back. I don't want to pay back this debt. I can't pay back this debt as I see it in the moment. How am I going to advance in life where I know I can make a difference? Does this set me up in the right way to like to serve my country? Ultimately, went on a different path, but I would have to say that those DEI programs having that function within the university helped to go into this DEI program specifically in Wisconsin, they've been the target of state legislatures for quite some time. They're holding up raises because they're trying to get 32 billion, which they perceive will be I think 32 million my apologies. That will be spent on DEI programs on the next two years. And they want that eliminated from the budget. You can relate that to the Rhonda Sanctis and the VEG Ramaswamis of the world who are very anti woke, but I don't think if you talk to them on a person to person level that they would really espouse some of these views that they say on media platforms, but from someone who's worked within the university system for over a decade now working in a more bureaucratic seat, but you sat and you advocated for those programs and you've seen them work. What would you say just wrapping them kind of in a generalization? What is the goal of those programs in our universities? But then also do Republicans have a point that universities should not focus on those things and should more so focus on equipping the next generation of the workforce? My first question would be what makes them believe think that DEI isn't developing the future workforce of our state? Like that's just a bad misconception. And the other part about this is DEI has a purposeful, significant business argument. And so I'm going to reference back to when I was in admissions. And the one thing we figured at one year, you know, emissions was chucking along and we were doing pretty good numbers as far as recruitment and things. And then one year we realized like and it was like all of a sudden what's going on with the numbers? And then they went and did the study across the state and there was 2000 less white seniors that year than the year before. Well in the UW system, usually that's traditionally most of the students are going to come from the state population, right? We're fishing out of the same pool together. Well that's a lot of less individuals in that pool. Then as they studied the trajectory of the demographic shift more, it was going to continue. And there was no growth in that demographic. So their bread and butter, which was traditionally white seniors across Wisconsin, was shrinking and shrinking steadily, right? So the one thing is they can't sit back and say, well, I'll throw up my hands. I guess we're just going to have to do with a smaller student body because the thing about it with particularly college admissions is when you have a one year blip, we'll call it a blip. That's not a one year blip. That's a four to six year blip because that blip follows that whole course of that graduating year. So you never make up those students. You're never going to add in so many transfer students to make up the initial amount of students that you get from freshman year, right? So you have to find other students to fill the void. And the one thing that we came up with quickly for the most part is your opportunities where there was growth was international students out of state students and students of color. Those were the pockets of growth. Well, then there's that's your business argument to our legislature. You're trying to defund programming that grows the part that helps university self-sustained. So it's like you're chasing off the actual constituents that are going to get the bills paid. It doesn't make any sense. That's one way. And then I would also want to ask what do our legislature, what do they think our future workforce is actually going to look like? Right. So you're creating a situation where you know people want to brag about the great university system. And we should brag. It is a great university system. Their whole thing is they want something that's preparing them for the workforce. Well, the workforce will be diverse in the future, whether you like it or not. And you're basically trying to defund programming that's going to actually help the students be prepared in these work environments to work with their diverse colleagues. Something else I just don't understand. There seems to be more concern over, you know, this isn't a dollar and a sense thing because our state currently has, I believe it's a nine, yeah, nine billion dollars surplus. So they could easily fill in these holes. This isn't a thing and should want to because the UW system has traditionally had a history of fulfilling not just talent pools, but helping technological advances nationwide or worldwide. But there seems to be this concern over identity versus the recruitment and retention of our state's talent. That makes help me understand. How does that then connect now moving into your role working with end government serving as the DEI coordinator for that city of applicant and special assistant to the mayor? What made you make that transition over? There was just this great opportunity. And when it comes down to I really enjoyed working in higher ed, I would think higher ed environments are amazing professionally. I students keep you young. There's an energy about campus. I'm not saying someday I won't make it back there because I hope to. But what I was this opportunity came up on the radar and one was who the leader was for this opportunity, which was Mayor Woodford. And Mayor Woodford is this really strategic and brilliant 32 year old mayor. And there was something very appealing about that. And through our conversations, I could tell that he got it and that he was going to give me the freedom to kind of figure out how to move forward and do DEI, how I best saw. He did not come with a list, a checklist of things that needed to happen, which I greatly appreciated. The other thing was is the community of applicant. You know, if you don't know our region, Apple 10 is the city in what is a Northeast Wisconsin, which is surrounded by what I would say is very, you know, traditional and conservative views. And not that Apple 10 doesn't have that. But there is this underlying social thread, liberal thread in there where they really take things serious as far as wanting to create a community where everybody belongs, actually being proactive instead of reactive to things such as demographic shifts in their region. The other thing is this particular position, unlike most positions of these DEI roles, this position actually for the city of Apple 10 and just to show who they are has been around since 1997. So I'm not the first or the second DEI coordinator. I'm the eighth. Think about that. Any other organization you talk to for the most part, not all, but most of them are in their first and second. Most of them started looking into this after George Floyd. The city of Apple 10 has had this position since 1997 to be the eighth said that what I didn't have to be was a trailblazer that there was actually already, there was work that was already done. There was already great foundations built by the people before me who held this role. There's something to be said for that that also told me where the community was at and and how the role would be received. And I knew about the role because I had had interactions with the role from when I was at the university. This role for this community actually has influence. Yeah. People want to interact with this role. People call the person in this role to be part of their conversations, to do strategic planning with their organizations on how to diversify their board. diversify their workforce, how to be more inclusive. And what to do when discriminatory things happen in their setting. People look to this role and call and ask you to show up. And that's powerful when you don't have to force yourself into the room in the conversation, but rather you're invited. How have you come to because you mentioned it with George Floyd, DEI was like one of the phrases that really flew to the top. Everyone knows what it means now. And it means something different almost to everyone to every organization. We're seeing some organizations kind of phase out a lot of this programming and a lot of this language. But what does diversity, equity and inclusion mean to you as it applies to your work? And when I work personally, I focus on the inclusion and the belonging portion. So you do recognize the inclusion and belonging, DEI. Yeah, the diversity portion is the way I look at diversity because it's become such a polarized word. So it's not used as what the true definition of it is anymore like it's just triggering words. I mean, if you can avoid using triggering words when you're trying to actually accomplish things. It's a great thing. I try to whenever you know people get question and I always try to remind people that diversity really is just a measurement of difference. No matter what it is, there's a diversity of jelly beans. Right, you got a bowl with a whole lot of different colored jelly beans. That's a diverse bowl of jelly beans. And it's a measurement of difference. It isn't this scary thing, right? And then as far as equity, and I mean, I'm taking a minute to just kind of do some definitions. Equity, I think that's the conscious effort to provide equal experiences or access regarding of one's identity or difference. And inclusion is the part where we do our best to try to create spaces, environments, and opportunities where people are embraced, accepted. And hopefully we can empower and remove barriers, not always possible, but it is we put some effort into that. And since I brought up the word belonging in there too, because I do think that's where it's at. Belonging, you know, because belonging is what helps attract and retain. When you feel you belong somewhere, you don't hear many people say, oh, I got to get out of here because I feel like I belong. That's not it. So I actually think it's one of the most powerful part. And belonging to me, you know, that's, it centers around. And I think these spaces where people feel they're valued, we recognize their accomplishments and their talents. That they're able to be authentically who they are. And they can express that with acceptance. That's what I'm going for in this environment and in the city of Appleton. Looking at what you've lived through in your life, because you have such an optimism about you. You've dealt with, you know, your fair share of bigotry, specifically I know from being in Milwaukee. But then to live through Barack Obama becoming the first black president of the United States to go through seeing a wave of our civil rights heroes, Coretta Scott King, a lot of others pass away, specifically, you know, in the early to mid-Auts. And then moving over into what we've seen kind of this peak in 2020 of social justice, while also having the nearly at the top of the world of the trade on martens of the Michael Browns. Do you feel we're moving in a progressive direction when it comes to DEI or have we been stagnant? And are we just chasing our tail? I think personally, I might have a microscopic point of view because like I'm going to have to talk about what I know. And I can't speak nationally how things are moving nationally. I'm going to have to look in a way with your micro point of view. It gives perception to other areas across the country, specifically in battleground states. I actually think we're not running in circles and I actually think we're moving forward. Because I think there is a lot more empathy out there. And I think we're going to have to look at what George Floyd that really did it because the world had stopped because of COVID and they really had to look at it and recognize it. And they couldn't come up with a good answer that made sense. Right. Normally those situations get ignored because of the pace of life. You hear about it. You go, that's horrible. But then you forget about it about three seconds later in this. And then you have to think about it. And you didn't have nothing else to pay attention to. So you paid attention to this. And then you had to actually probably have to have conversations with individuals and try to come up with something for that. No matter what, I don't think we're going to go backward from that point. I think that there is organically within organizations within our educational systems. We understand the shift of demographics that's happening. We understand the bias that happens to our marginalized communities that we understand the hurdles that they face. No one doesn't acknowledge that those things exist. No one saying, ah, that's not real. That didn't happen. If you think otherwise, there's only one question you ever need to ask to me to figure out if people understand it, particularly people from our majority culture. And that is, would you be willing to trade your privilege to be filling the blank black Latinx Asian, whoever I have yet to find that individual who is willing to make that trade off. No, it's not a secret. And I do think at the end of the day, most people are good people and they want to do what's right. And they want to feel good about interactions with other individuals. So what I see happening is the work continues to move forward, but it just continues to move forward without the need for. Let me get out here and puff my chest out and say we're doing all of this and we've got these initiatives and we brought in these trainers and did it because that now comes with consequence. And that now comes with the possibility of some conservative think tank coming in to say we're you're being discriminatory and we're going to try to sue you and blah, blah, blah. And you know, I think people now are just putting their heads down and what you're looking for. How do you know the work is still getting done. The events that are happening in your community, the initiatives that are happening inside of your schools, the programming that's being brought in, whether internally externally, community wide or within your organizations. I still see all of that happening. I still get phone calls. I have not become pariah. I've actually I still get more phone calls for how do we do these things. We want to do this. Where are the resources? How do we connect? How do we move forward? How do we do better? Would you say the misconceptions about DEI or mostly a concerted effort by conservative think tanks by those who are opposed to it for political ends or do any of them have legitimacy. I think misconceptions of DEI are that's tough. I think both sides of the coin are to be at fault. I think that there's those who for have created the need because they need an enemy. This was an easy target to create that us versus them for the need to create polarization and therefore drive, drive up the energy and bait in their base. I also think where where has DEI faulted is we have not always done a good job of meeting people where they're at. And what I have seen happen sometimes is you get people who are little apprehensive but really good-hearted people show up in spaces. And they're just like they're brand new, right? But they showed up and rule number one is if they show up the key is to try to keep them there. But what has happened sometimes is we drop them in the wrong space and instead of them being at like DEI. I want to one, hey, this is some definitions. This is why this is good for the greater good of people in our community. Instead, we drop them off in like anti-racism and we're telling them, hey, you need to teach yourself and I'm not saying that there's not space for that, but much like any education you get when you are in a growth place, you can't take a kid in a gardener and drop off calculus to them and say, do math because they're going to quit math. And that's what I've seen happen where we did not do a good job of meeting these people. Now, they were willing, they were vulnerable, they were willing and they showed up in spaces to learn more, to try to, they're putting themselves out there. And then they get thumped. Well, guess what they're not going to do? - I'm not. - Exactly, they're not coming back. And we lost what I think is some really, some potentially really good allies, not meeting them where they were at. We can get them to DEI college level, DEI grad level, DEI doctorate level, but we got to meet them at grade school, elementary school first and walk them along and help them feel safe in their ignorance and get them there because it's about the long run. That's just me personally. I know there's going to be a ton of practitioners out there who are going to totally disagree with what I have to say. That's where I operate from. - And you spoke of diversity as a measure of difference. And I want to specifically call out the difference economically because as we rise, as many of us come from lower income backgrounds and we rise up to middle class, upper middle class and beyond, I think it can be easy to surround ourselves by others in our economic class and never reach down to give back. What would you say is the importance of not just diversifying the color of the people that you're around, the sexual orientation of the people that you're around, but those of different economic standings beyond the grocer, beyond the Instacart shopper, beyond the door dasher. - I just think it's important to have a circle of very diverse individuals from all sorts of walks of life just so when the time comes, you have a reference point. You have somebody that's constantly saying, "Hey, have you thought about it like this?" This is why we do it like this. I keep a pretty good diverse circle of individuals, not just culturally diverse, but economically diverse. And that's part of the work. The work is, I'm in a lot of different spaces, so I get to meet a lot of different people. And there's certain people who have things to teach me. So I gravitate to those who I feel I have lessons to learn from. And that has nothing to do with a formal education or credentialing of degrees or anything like that. Like I just gravitate towards wisdom. And those willing to share the wisdom because I run into wise people all the time and they ain't gonna tell you nothing. (laughing) So I have to find those who are willing to put you on game. I do think that that's like super important, including socioeconomically. Like how are you going to tell people who are economically challenged? How to maneuver? How to do better if you don't have any understanding or reference point of what they're dealing with and the cycle of poverty. And how poverty is actually really expensive. And the system of poverty is set up to keep you in poverty. You do have that. You do have to go out there and have understanding and that just be a person of assumption. - And I think a lot of what a component of this work is also storytelling. And I think it happens a person at a time you were mentioning gleaning wisdom from individuals but you've been able to do this in a larger scale with the Koch podcast. I'd love for you to tell us more about what is surprised you about your community as you've sat down with individuals from the Fox Valley and hurt their stories of impact. - The thing that has probably surprised me up the most is like just the breath of their stories, who they are, where they came from, their struggles, what were the things that happened in their lives that defined who they are today? What are the things that are important to them that felt important enough to get on this podcast and be vulnerable and publicly put it out there and share? I have been blown away by people's good. Just full out, simply put, without using fancy vernacular, just people's authentic good. That's powerful because you know, I think sometimes we can get in our silos and we see the same thing over and over. And if you're in a silo that has some type of negative thing in there that keeps replaying or going around this narrative or whatever, and like you forget to see the good, like it's something I think that happens just from having conversations with people who work like in corrections. And when you go into this space all the time and you're seeing these individuals who are maneuvering within that space and hustling and trying to outthink and do these things and you forget, sometimes you forget about the humanity of each other and that this isn't the norm and that these individuals don't define a demographic. Like there's a lot of stuff that happens in those scenarios. So that's what I've been most pleasantly surprised is like every person that comes in front of the microphone surprises me with their willingness to be vulnerable, their authenticity and that they want better for the greater good of man. In my case, specifically the community are region. And then in closing, I love to ask every guest thus because it's different depending on their season, the work that they're doing, but what are you most looking forward to as we go onward? - What I'm looking forward to right now in this stage of my life is just continuing to interact with amazing people to make, I don't know, I don't have a clear cut game plan for it, but what I'm hoping is like I'm gonna continue to just meet good people who want to make, who want to do impactful things. And I just hope that I'm allowed to be part of the plan and whatever that looks like, whether it's just a little consulting in there or showing up and volunteering or being a huge part of me and part of the full strategic process and the implementation. Like I just want to continue to do good for the people and for our community. This community particularly has given me a lot, I want to give it back a lot. I care deeply about the community, all my communities. And I have a lot of cross section of identities. I care about this Fox Valley. I care about being a Titan at UW-Age College. I care about the city of Appleton. I care about being a veteran. I care, I super care about being a black man. - I can't stress that enough 'cause I should've said that first. I care about black people. I care about people with colors, the whole and how we're progressing. 'Cause I'm kinda at a point where I'm not worried about me so much anymore. Now I'm worried about my daughter and my future grandkids. That's what it's about for me now. It's up to us to set up the best situations, the best environments, the best professional opportunities, the best personal opportunities for this next generation. That excites me. They excite me who they are. - Thank you for listening to this episode of BC's Corner. If you love this conversation, feel free to like, to follow, to subscribe, and also to share. And if you really liked this, feel free to go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Thank you so much for being a part of this community. And we'll see you soon. (upbeat music)