That Made All the Difference - Season 2

Vincent Stanley Quote:

What I've learned from the company that I wouldn't have learned otherwise, is how much difference a small group of people can make.

 

Alicia Burke VO

That’s Vincent Stanley, the Director of Philosophy at Patagonia, the world renowned and sustainable outdoor clothing and gear company, started by a small group of climbers and surfers. How cool is it that Patagonia has a Director of Philosophy? Vincent tells us about his role -- why it’s so important to him and the company, and he shares why its founders and employees are guided by one mission: ‘protecting our home planet.’ It’s a treat to talk to Vincent. Not only because he is a great storyteller—Vincent helps us understand what it takes for a company to manufacture, market and manage itself responsibly.

 

Before we get started, we wanted to dedicate this episode to the memory of Jim Mahoney, a special person and leader at Bank of America who passed away recently. Jim was an environmental pioneer in his own right. He was a champion of the Bank’s environmental initiatives, supporting clean energy and lower-carbon financing solutions. A true family man with a killer sense of humor. We all miss Jim—and I think he would have really enjoyed this conversation.

Alicia Burke 

I thought Vincent, we might begin with how you're doing, are you in California as we speak?

Vincent Stanley 

Yes, I'm in California. I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking. I hope you're doing okay. It is the oddest of years. So I've been home since March 8. I was in Yokohama in February looking at the Princess Cruise liner from my hotel room and then in New York when everybody was buying out all the toilet paper at the beginning of March. When I came back to California they said, don't come into work for two weeks, and then a week later they shut down. During the real lockdown those first few weeks, the sky was a shade of blue I had never seen before in California because of the reduced traffic. And what we've been doing while not traveling is going to places locally. There's a spot within an hour and a half that's at 7,500 feet with old growth Ponderosa pines and these amazing views and in all the time I've lived here, which is all my adult life, I've never been there. So there are those kinds of compensations. But it is weird to be having a monastic routine, but not a monastic life.

Alicia Burke 

It's like you're taking it all in in a different way... 

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah. 

Alicia Burke 

Vincent, shall we go to Patagonia and where it all began when you first started, I think 1973, would you talk a little bit about that?

Vincent Stanley 

So it was a little tin shed making the world's best mountain climbing equipment. There were 10 employees, sales of less than a million dollars and everybody who worked there was a climber and a surfer and they had this strong love of wild places. The education for me was to begin to spend time outdoors. 

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And to learn from the people who really love to be in the wild. They were among the first to start to really sense the degradation of nature. So if you're a climber and you go back to Kilimanjaro and you see the glacier receding, if you're a skier and you’re in the southern Sierras and you could see the thousand year old sequoias being killed from the smog in the 70s. 

Alicia Burke 

So your love of the outdoors really coincided with you working and building.

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah, you know, they dragged me along on a ski trip, I got on skis for the first time. They all went off, left me to die on a slope and I got back on and went down the hill. I was a non surfer so when the waves were firing and the dealers called up to place orders, I was the last person in the office. So I would take the orders and then ship the box. And Yvon tapped me on the shoulder and said, well, how'd you like to be sales manager? And I said, I don't know what that is. He says, no, nobody does, you'll figure it out. So that's what I did for 20 years, I ran the wholesale business. 

 

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And when I approached 40, I had always regarded myself as a writer. And I thought, well, if I'm gonna do that, I better get serious and I can't, can't do this big job so I left sales. I supported myself by writing copy for Patagonia and then kind of came in through the back door, involved in some of the environmental efforts and ran the editorial department for a while ran, marketing two different stints. 

Alicia Burke 

And you ended up writing a book with Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard

Yeah. We wrote the book together, Responsible Company, Yvon and I. And it came out in 2012 and I, I wanted to be free to go around and talk about the ideas in the book. So I gave up operational responsibilities. And we came up with this job of Director of Philosophy. And what it actually has evolved to is, I spend about a third of my time, teaching company history and values to employees, about a third of the time talking to other businesses, and about a third of the time dealing with business students. I’ve had a gig at Yale for the past six years.

Alicia Burke 

That’s wonderful. Can you talk a little bit about when you helped transition Patagonia's supply chain to organic cotton, long before others were doing so? 

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah. We discovered quite accidentally how harmful conventional cotton is to the environment because of the intense use of pesticides. Yvon really sat everybody down and said, you know, I don't want to be in the sportswear business if I have to use these chemicals, is there anything else we can do? And that's when we switched to organic.

Vincent Stanley 

When we started down the road, we really thought okay, we'll do our homework here. We contracted actually, for most of the organic cotton being grown in the San Joaquin Valley. We started dealing directly with farmers, we broke our connection to the global supply chain. So the farmers had no relationship with spinners who turn the fiber into yarn. They had no relationship with the mills that weave or knit into fabric. And all of a sudden, we're having to go out and establish these relationships on our own, we go to the spinners and they say, oh, I hate organic cotton. I have to clean my machines and it gums things up. And our employees who had loved the idea of going to organic, but they start to say, listen, you want me to find an entire new infrastructure for creating cotton sportswear that doesn't exist on the planet and not a single customer has ever asked us for this. So why are we martyrs? Why are we going to blow the successful business? What we ended up doing is we ended up taking employees and buses to the San Joaquin Valley. And the first thing you notice when the bus pulls into the cotton fields is the smell.

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Because the organophosphates that are used to prepare the plants they were invented as nerve gases for World War One and they smell the way you would expect. There'd be no birds, anywhere near the fields. What actually happened with the conventional field is the soil was actually not alive. And you had to keep feeding it fertilizers, you had to keep feeding it water or nothing would grow. Because it was a totally artificial environment, even though it was outdoors. And at the end of the day, we’d take people to an organic farm. And you could dig your hands in the dirt and you could feel earthworms which take three years to come back after you stop spraying. You could feel vegetation, you had birds overhead. It smelled like a field and not like a factory. And so people would come back from those trips saying, you know, this is a royal pain but the company's doing the right thing and I'm going to help make this happen. So it meant it became a collaborative activity rather than something that was imposed. The lesson for me, ever since, is that when you're talking about environmental problems, they have to be tangible. When you when you see the outrage, and you feel and you say, no, this is wrong. I, you know, I don't care if this is widespread, this is not good. That's a very different feeling than just going through the abstractions.

Alicia Burke 

It's amazing. So you took the employees on the experience with you and then they were able to come to their own conclusion.. And It was the opposite of top down.

Vincent Stanley 

Exactly. Yeah. And then what happens is you start to create a culture. Once people feel that they've done this, feels that they've accomplished this successful switch from conventional to organic cotton, which nobody else had done. And not many people have done since. It's almost as though if you're a surfer, you want to surf a bigger wave. If you're a runner, you want to do faster time, and it becomes the same thing at work. People want to tackle the next challenge. And that becomes something that is directed from within rather than an instruction from without, and it's really made a big difference to the company.

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Alicia Burke 

Do you look back now and say that was sort of before and this is after or you know what, we just keep breaking new ground?

Vincent Stanley 

No, it keeps evolving. The next big inflection point for us was in 2005, we really liked the work of William McDonough and the whole idea of cradle to cradle and creating a circular economy. 

 

The idea of a circular economy is basically nothing goes to waste. When a product at the end of its life is remade into a new product of equal value. I think every major economy is looking at the potential of the circular economy to reduce pollution and to mitigate climate change. 

Music IN

And so we started to look at how our product affected the environment at every stage of the way we discovered, you know, we were making products that had zippers that couldn't be repaired and the zipper is the most vulnerable item on a jacket so then you render the jacket useless. Into any piece of clothing, so much social and environmental work and cost has gone into that garment. So that's when we expanded, we increased our capacity to repair clothing. 

Alicia Burke 

You have, I think, the biggest repair facility in North America.

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah, we do and we want to expand that. Going into the COVID crisis and surviving so far, and coming out the other end, I think we feel recommitted to making fewer styles, making them more functional, making them last longer. The one thing that the extended lock down and the trials of this time have taught us is to make our real life ship to the products and to the customer is even more real than it was before. Much less dependent on this whirlwind of consumer purchase and abandonment and waste.

Alicia Burke 

People are very sentimental about their Patagonia. My dad had a beautiful fleece that I love that I now have and I wear. I don't feel like that about a lot of clothes.

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Vincent, you have been the unofficial chief storyteller at Patagonia and storytelling is such a big part of the fabric of Patagonia. And I'd love to ask you how you feel that's come to life there.

Vincent Stanley 

Well, it was easy for me as a writer to come up with great stories because of the people who were associated with the company and the things that they did. What I find is the more people tried to invent a story about their enterprise or their company to cast themselves in a good light or to drum up business, people tend to lose their creativity and they lose their ability to connect with the customer. I think the main test of a story is how often it's told and how consistently.

Music IN

And that's what creates credibility and trust. There's an awful lot of people who talk about the value of storytelling and then they change the story pretty rapidly. What you're trying to do. So many companies go wrong, when they start to succeed, and they feel that they have, they can go in so many directions, they have so many opportunities, so I'm just gonna do this. And then when they do this, it doesn't reflect their real strengths. This is kind of the story of large American businesses. When I referred to strategic discipline, it means the ability both to honor your values, build on your experience, create something of value for the world at large.

 

Alicia Burke 

Yes. So, sustainability is a word we hear and we use a lot. But you've said that responsibility is a more valuable term. It would be great to hear from you a little bit more on that.

Vincent Stanley 

Everything we do in the clothing business tends to take more from nature than we know how to repay. Sustainability was an effort that in some ways couldn't succeed. We didn't want to come across as though we could be sustainable. So we use the word responsible. The difference now I would say is that we're starting to see the possibility through regenerative, organic agriculture, of creating products that actually help bring the soil back to health. And if you bring the soil back to health, you're actually giving back to nature, more than you're taking, that's the potential. And so this word regenerative becomes kind of interesting. I think it will be misused as words tend to be after a while. We have the environmental crisis that is now really coming to a head. Pope Francis described one crisis that has two sides, social and environmental. And on the environmental side, we look at the challenges of climate change and what that is creating for communities. And we look at the loss of the web of life, and the challenge that that presents for the future to those of us who remain. And then on the social side, you look at an economy that created a tremendous amount of wealth, but I think we're now at the point where eight people actually control the same amount of wealth as the bottom three and a half billion people on Earth. So we're now at the stage, where I think we can't really avoid either the social or the environmental crisis and that means that it's going to take all of us to work on this.

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Alicia Burke 

And when you think about the private sector, what do you think we should be doing more of? We're obviously on our own journey.

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah. It means that business is going to have a strong role to play. We have to pay attention both to what we're doing as companies and then how we do it. So for a company that makes things, we have to be concerned about whether what we make is of use and of quality and then how we make it and what are its environmental and social impacts. For services, I think the same questions apply. We're going to have to get serious about cooperating as NGOs and governments and the private sector to bring communities and the environment back to health. And that's got to be a part of everyone's work. 

Alicia Burke 

And do you think given everything we're going through now, with the pandemic. Do you feel differently about now in the kind of opportunity we have before us to create real change?

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Vincent Stanley 

I think there are certain times where you have tectonic shifts and change always happens that way. It looks like nothing's happening for a long time and bingo, gay marriage is legal. Nothing happening for a long, long time and all of a sudden nobody's smoking indoors. I think with the shift to the world, we've seen that everybody has had to, rather than change their thinking, everybody's had to change their behavior in a way that then changes the way we think. And psychologists are telling us that, you know, people don't change their minds. Their experience changes them. I mean, that's what we learned with organic cotton. We didn't change anybody's mind and our employees, their actual experience changed their minds. So I do think that there's an opportunity, opportunities can be wasted but you know, what I've learned from the company that I wouldn't have learned otherwise, is how much difference a small group of people can make. And if you had asked me in 1995, would this group of people at Patagonia be capable of doing what it turned out that they did in 2005, 2010, 2015? I would have said you're out of your mind. That's been a real lesson for me that people working together in a common cause can do things that you could not predict would be possible.

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Alicia Burke 

What I've noticed about people whose personal philosophy is very intertwined with the work they do and the company they work for, that seems very highly correlated with success. What is next for Patagonia from your perspective?

Vincent Stanley 

The Northstar for us is to create products that are actually solving problems. 

Music IN

We're actually working on a certification for regenerative organic agriculture with Rodale's and Dr. Bronner's And we're hoping to produce cotton and hemp, with regenerative organic practices within 10 years. We're also planning to get out of fossil fuels. Nylon and polyester, even when they have strong recycled content, come out of an oil well, and what we're working on now is the ability to use totally recycled plastic without loss of quality or to use it from natural sources. So those are our two most ambitious goals right now. We're buying credits and we're doing offsets. But we feel that for us as a manufacturer or company that causes things to be manufactured that the big thing is to reduce the actual footprint.

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Alicia Burke 

So a lot of current and future inflection points that are continuing to pave the way for everyone. 

                  

Vincent Stanley 

Yeah. We stumble into virtue. We see something we don’t like and we make a change but now we’re also anticipating major projects. I think it’s a sign of our maturation. You know, the only other thing I might mention that we're really focused on now as a company is we really feel that this election is very important. And we've been part of a campaign to give employees paid time off on election day so that they can get to the polls and at this time, supporting civil society and supporting democracy really becomes important.

Alicia Burke 

Yeah, and we're doing the same Vincent.

Vincent Stanley 

Oh, cool. Great.

Alicia Burke 

When we're through all of this, Vincent, and it feels safe to travel again. Where's your, where's your first destination because I know you’re usually so on the go? 

Vincent Stanley 

What I miss most of the summers is being in Maine and being in a sea kayak. 

Alicia Burke 

That first trip in that sea kayak is going to be the most delightful thing ever when you finally get to it. Well, Vincent, it's been such a wonderful experience talking to you.

Vincent Stanley 

Well, thank you so much and thanks for the thanks for the conversation. It was great talking to you. 

Alicia Burke VO

Vincent and Patagonia don’t avoid challenges, but face them head on, and this approach has been vital to the respect customers feel for Patagonia and the admiration showered their way by other businesses. I feel inspired by the example they set to act responsibly, take care of our planet and one another.

 

You've been listening to “That Made All the Difference”. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to check out Bank of America’s other original podcast, Merrill Perspectives, where you'll hear insights about the coronavirus, the markets, and their impact on your financial life.

 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.

Music Up 

Lisa Quote

This is my moment to step up and say, “Hey, I'm not thinking necessarily about our profit right now, I want to focus everything that we've had that's gotten to us to this point on serving our neighbors.

 

Alicia VO

Take a moment to think about your favorite neighborhood restaurant, and then the people who run it. Without a doubt, the past few months have been particularly challenging for them, faced with navigating sudden changes—to keep us safe. For Detroit baker Lisa Ludwinski, despite these new limitations, she created an opportunity to pivot to support her neighbors in new ways.

 

Since she first opened Sister Pie in 2015, Lisa has built a following beyond her city-limits through a best-selling cookbook, two James Beard Award nominations, and outspoken values.  Last season, we learned about the roots of her business. Now Lisa’s managing the current moment by looking inward and doubling down on her progressive mission. Lisa took a brief pause from serving her neighborhood and snuck away to talk to me from the basement of Sister Pie.

 

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Alicia Burke  

Lisa, it's wonderful to see you again. I wish I was seeing you in the West Village of Detroit. First off, it would be wonderful to hear from you what the experience has been like these last few weeks.

 

Lisa Ludwinski  

For sure, it's been a crazy couple of months. Really. I mean, back in March, Pi Day, 3/14, we had a line out the door at Sister Pie, 30 or 40 people deep. And I remember reflecting on that and thinking, I'm so grateful to be getting this last surge of business, but I also feel really irresponsible for bringing all of these people together. We were able to use a lot of that funding to give our employees some of their payroll before they ended up going on unemployment. We did a GoFundMe, and we've done a couple of special fundraising projects and also just tried to keep them in the loop about everything. But still, it's hard to look back on that time and wonder what it would have been like if we had not stayed open that weekend.

Alicia Burke  

It felt like we were on the cusp of things changing. And then all of a sudden, everything changed. And then everyone did some Monday morning quarterbacking and looked back and said I’m not sure I would have done it that way. 

Lisa Ludwinski  

Absolutely. We transitioned right after Pi Day down to a team of five. And for two weeks, we ran kind of like a takeout situation.

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And it was really exhausting because I was getting there at six baking everything. Suddenly, I was doing the job of five employees or six employees. Not only were we exhausting our resources but it was also becoming very clear how bad it was in Detroit specifically. I was going to just kind of close things all together. But we had started to put together grocery orders of eggs and butter and flour and sugar, things that we already had in house for our neighbors. And then I kind of realized, well, if there's anything I can do during this time, with the resources I have, as a business owner, I could at least present a grocery option to our small community so that they can avoid leaving our community as much as possible, and I can utilize the connections and the, the space that we have and run a safe grocery operation. And that's mostly been me and one other employee, her name’s Lana, working here in the bakery. At the very beginning of the pandemic, she actually lost her grandmother to COVID-19 and I remember she didn't even miss a beat in coming back to work. And I tried to say, “Hey, hey, take some time,” but I think she's like me and the way that we process hard things through working a lot. And then one employee, Angie, who's kind of like my, my right hand, she's been working from home as her husband works in a hospital here. So she's been quarantining herself and been kind of our back end of operations.

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Alicia Burke  

So the show runner, behind the scenes.

Lisa Ludwinski  

The show runner, yeah.

Alicia Burke  

So, you decided to pivot within the pivot, how do we serve this intimate community with a grocery service. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it works?

Lisa Ludwinski  

Sure. I remember the first week of all of this, because it was probably one of the craziest weeks in my, in my life recently.

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We started to do two grocery pickups on Wednesdays and Fridays. The very first time we did it, we just said to the customers, “Come between 12 and four. And we'll have your order ready.” So about 20 people showed up at 12 and we had only packed maybe the first 10 orders out of, you know, 40 or 50. And so these people were standing around waiting at these crates that we had set outside for them to keep social distance, forever. And so you know, that was an example of like, “Wow, I feel like I'm, this is the first time I'm running a business again.” I'm making this ridiculously embarrassing mistake and having all these people wait in line for these orders. You know, that was a moment too where there's like, humility involved. Like, I'm not used to standing outside Sister Pie and feeling embarrassed in front of my customers. We usually are pretty good at running a smooth operation. So, it was painful. 

Alicia Burke  

Did you find your community and the customers to be patient and appreciative even in the first bit as you were sorting things out, and there were bumps in the road?

Lisa Ludwinski  

Yeah, I put all of the anxiety and stress on myself about it. I mean, I'm sure that there were moments when they were slightly annoyed. But, they want their groceries and they want to be able to get them safely. And so there's a trust that's built with us already. But also, they're invested in our success, just as a neighborhood. They want Sister Pie to succeed because it's part of their neighborhood and it's a business that they love and we've really felt that love throughout this time.

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Alicia Burke  

Were you talking to a lot of business owners at that time, Lisa, just comparing notes and what others were doing in the Detroit area?

Lisa Ludwinski  

Not a ton. I think sometimes in moments when things feel really stressful and uncertain, that's usually when I kind of channel my thoughts and energy inward. And I try to focus just on the present moment and with the people who are closely connected with me. This particular moment was a moment in which I said, I have to do what's right for Sister Pie, and our employees and our customers right now. And so then after the fact and as the decisions, you know, started to be made and go into action, that's when I started to connect with some more business owners and see where they were at, especially in those first couple of weeks. I remember doing a Zoom call with maybe five or six other bakers and cooks that I'm friends with in the city and we just sort of compared notes and commiserated together. And so I've kept in touch with, with them on and off as these things have happened and transpired and that's really been helpful because I've always found the Detroit community to be super collaborative in that way, and that feels good.

Alicia Burke  

I think that's so interesting, in the moment of something you look inward. I think that seems to be a key ingredient to your success. I think I saw on your Instagram, there was a quote you had posted. “If we become fixated on a plan, we lose touch with the moment. When that happens, we lose access to wisdom.” I love that. 

Lisa Ludwinski  

Yeah.

Music Up

I have gazed upon that quote. It hangs above my desk in my apartment, I think there's a peacefulness in that quote that I've been able to connect to, which is, I don't have control over what's going on right now. This isn't even my fault, I think that's the thing as a business owner, you're expecting that anything that's going to happen to your business that's bad if you go bankrupt or you lose employees or you know, anything bad happens your association is that it's going to be something that you did wrong. Like that's kind of always been my fear that I'm going to mess something up. I think what's so significantly different about this is that we're all experiencing this it's, it's nobody's fault, really. And so how can I be easier on myself about that, while making sure that I'm, I'm not necessarily dwelling on what's happening to my business because of it, but that I'm moving forward and improving and thinking about what this means for the future of the food industry and my business.

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Alicia Burke  

As complicated as the pivot was for people to go home, it seems much more complicated right now, in terms of what's next and the phased approach to be able to get things going again.

Lisa Ludwinski  

Hmm, yeah, I'm definitely feeling that today especially, as we are working on bringing some of our employees back. Basically, they're going to be entering into a completely different workplace. It's not just different in; in the way that they’ll be wearing a mask and getting their temperature checked when they arrive. But we're running a different business; we're actually going to start into our sort of third pivot. 

Customers can go on our website in order anything from five pound bags of flour to a can of beans to a sleeve of Sister Pie cookies, and maybe cold brew coffee. I mean, there have been so many times during this where I felt like I'm starting my business all over again, and right now it definitely feels like that. And there's definitely got to be this element of trust between the employee and the employer that I'm doing my best to make this place as safe as I possibly can. And that's a heavy burden to hold.

 

Alicia Burke  

I can't imagine how tough that is. I think that it's a really hard time to be a perfect boss or a perfect employee and the best we can do is work with intention. 

 

Lisa Ludwinski  

But again, if I'm working with intention, like you say, then I know I'm headed in the right direction, but it feels like the work is just beginning. I spent the morning of Memorial Day painting red hearts on our sidewalk, and they're spaced just about six feet apart. And that's where the customers will go stand when they're ready to pick up their order. 

 

Alicia Burke  

Yeah having been there, I can attest to there is a soulfulness and a good karma that emanates. The unbelievable smells oozing out, which I would assume will remain and be a huge, huge draw. 

Lisa Ludwinski  

Yeah. Wow, you've got me thinking though, I've got to create some sort of tunnel where people can still smell what's coming out of the oven right onto the street. So I'm going to get to work on that later today.

Alicia Burke  

Is there anything that’s happened during this time that you say to yourself we're going to change this portion of what we're doing, we're going to apply that going forward no matter what.

Lisa Ludwinski  

I think there have been a few. One that comes to mind right now is that we're using this as an opportunity to eliminate tipping.

Music Up

We've agonized over this for years now, because, you know, tipping is an inherently discriminatory system that makes employees rely on other people's opinions of them to make their rent payments, and it's not something that I've ever felt great about having in my business. And so what we want to do now is increase our prices by a certain percentage that will then go into the employee's paycheck based on an average of tips versus sales that we've had over the past year. So that's something that I'm feeling really positive about because you're always waiting for the perfect time to do something. And sometimes that time just doesn't happen. So let's just make it happen now when it seems pretty essential for our employees well being.

Alicia Burke  

That is very significant and there will be a new appreciation for the essential nature of the work that your employees and you are doing. 

Lisa Ludwinski  

Yeah, if I've thought about anything that you know could really create some lasting impact and change in the food industry from this pandemic is that value that I think people might be feeling anew for their food workers and their grocery store workers and their farmers you know, these people who do provide for us an essential service. The people who are struggling the most in the world of income inequality or inequity in general, are massively representing the food industry as workers. It's this weird cycle, right? Like, we need to be able to pay the people who are working in the food industry enough so that they can buy the food where they work. And that is so often not the case. I don't think that should be the case anymore. I don't think that it's just as simple as, “Oh, you get a free meal when you work here.” You know, it has to go bigger than that. It has to be more systemic. I have no answers to it necessarily, but I'm certainly feeling invigorated to become more active about that.

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Alicia Burke  

So let's not let this time go to waste for some of the systemic changes that we can make.

Lisa Ludwinski  

Well, because I think this has exposed those problems more than anything. And I, you know, I feel complicated feelings about being involved in that system, even as a business owner that's trying really hard to, fight against that I'm still complicit in it to a certain extent. And so I'm figuring out how can I live with intention, do my best work, but also not ever get lazy about these changes that need to happen and the opportunity that I have a lot of the time to use my voice.

Alicia Burke  

And speaking of that, Lisa, you know, you've done something very cool and unique in your business around the ‘Pie It Forward’ work that you do there. 

Music Up

I wondered if you could just share a little bit about how you're thinking about that now.

Lisa Ludwinski  

That was the process where our customer could prepay for a slice and then someone else could come into the shop and get the slice. That whole idea kind of changes now that we're not allowing customers into the store for the time being. But during the grocery service, we started something called the neighborhood grocery fund because we had so many neighbors who said I want to help someone who doesn't have the money to pay for groceries right now, or I want to help supplement the 15% discount that you might be giving someone. In the West Village, it's a diverse neighborhood in a lot of ways. So diverse income levels, diversity of race and age. It's always important to us that we're both serving as many of those folks as we can and that we're hearing from them as much as we can. So now when a customer places a grocery order, they can opt to add $1, $5, $30 to the neighborhood grocery fund, and then we can actually reach out to the community and say, hey, we've got $200 worth of groceries that we can give to families that you know, and so we've had people send us grocery lists and then we're able to support those families in that way. Every Monday for the past few weeks, we've been giving out produce bags and we just send an email out to the neighborhood. And before you know it, there's eight to 10 people there to pick them up. I always think it's great when we can give donations and support people. But that still doesn't change the systemic problems of inequity. No longer do I want to talk about ‘Pie It Forward’ or donations without also mentioning that it's not just about that. It's not just about the, the good feeling you get when you pie it forward, but it's about what is this making me think about why I'm pieing it forward in the first place? Why does someone else need this to happen?

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Alicia Burke  

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that has also come during this time. And I wonder if you can describe how you've been able to maintain that drive amid the exhaustion.

Lisa Ludwinski  

I think there was a moment for me that was really significant when I realized that as I made this grocery pivot, I was operating my business as an essential business as opposed to a “for fun” business, where you go get pie for fun and that really shook things up for me. Like this is my moment to step up and say, hey, I'm not thinking necessarily about our profit right now or making the coolest pie that's ever been made. I want to focus everything that we've had that's gotten to us to this point on serving our neighbors. As soon as I thought about it that way, there was a different experience with waking up every day to go to work. I did go to a Catholic high school and one of the one of the values was, you know, based on a lot of service. And that always really stuck with me like, wanting to be of service. And I think that's why I ended up in the food industry. 

Alicia Burke  

Can I ask is there something you've been able to do for yourself to keep that perspective and that equilibrium that you bring?

Lisa Ludwinski  

Does drinking lots of wine count?

I mean, I will say it's been very difficult to do that, especially in the first few weeks. One thing that has been helpful is taking a bath like pretty much every night. That's been like my, my me time for sure. That's self care. But what I've actually felt the biggest need for during this time is care, like care from someone else for me. I remember one day a customer picking up groceries just dropped off a single can of beer, for me. And it was just like, dude, thank you. Like, this is all I need. I just need these tiny moments of care. And it goes so far. 

Alicia Burke  

My daughter and I made your lemon meringue, the honey pie this weekend. Yeah, it was excellent. It was excellent. Are you finding any go to’s for yourself, or are you completely depleted? So in fact, you're, you know, eating pop tarts.

Lisa Ludwinski  

The very first couple of weeks of quarantine, I was baking more than I've ever baked at home in the past eight years.

Music Up

I did get serious, like everyone else in America, with sourdough. And so I've had a sourdough starter since March 23. And I've made probably 10 or 12 loaves. Bread was always something that I felt like, you know what, that's for some kind of bakers, I'm a pie person, and I can't do bread. But then I actually realized that there's a lot more in common with the process and practice of making bread, as with pie, is that like, you have to do it enough to really understand the instincts and intuition that goes into making it. So then I was able to start making a focaccia at Sister Pie that we will sell with the grocery orders. I'm interested in taking what I've learned at home and kind of applying it to Sister Pie, which feels kind of like an ideal situation. I'm grateful for that opportunity.

Alicia Burke  

Conan O'Brien had a great tweet, the number one person of the year this year will be sourdough. 

 

Lisa Ludwinski  

For sure. Yeah.

Alicia Burke  

Yeah, I have not gotten into bread yet. So I feel like there's time.

Lisa Ludwinski  

Oh, yeah, I mean, it's very satisfying. If you could have seen the dance I did in my kitchen after the first successful loaf came out of the oven. Probably one of the highlights of this time.

Alicia Burke  

I'm really happy to know that you're still dancing. That is actually very consoling to me. So it may be in a different room, it may be about a different thing, but we still need it. 

Music Out

Lisa Ludwinski  

It is very true and it’s helpful.

Alicia Burke  

Lisa, I don't think we can thank you enough for taking the time to talk to me and talk to us. You are inspiring all of us and teaching all of us and thank you for everything you're doing.

Lisa Ludwinski  

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to be able to reflect on everything that's been happening. 

Music Up

Alicia Burke  VO

Lisa’s commitment to service shines through in every aspect of her business. I know she’ll continue to be a beacon, setting an example for the food industry and promoting a more equitable world.  

You've been listening to “That Made All the Difference”. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, be sure to check out Bank of America’s other original podcast, Merrill Perspectives, where you'll hear insights about the coronavirus, the markets, and their impact on your financial life. 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.

Cold Open

Theme up and under

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

We all need to take this pause that has been given to us to recommit to what we think is important and to our ideals and I think if we do that in earnest, especially the young people, I think that they will come out of this much better much stronger, they will be a golden generation in many, many ways.

 

Alicia Burke VO 

All of us – everywhere – are grappling with hard questions about the society we live in, and coming to terms with uncertainty about the future. It’s also a moment to reflect on what individuals and organizations can do to bring about positive change. 

In season two of That Made All the Difference, we’re going to explore how people are responding to the events of today, and what they're doing to better themselves, their community and the world.

I had the opportunity to sit down with the incredible Dr. Wayne Frederick to kick off the season. Not only is he the President of the esteemed Howard University, he’s also a practicing surgeon. As the leader of one of the most renowned Historically Black Colleges and Universities, I was so inspired by his wisdom. We spoke just before George Floyd’s death, and the protests it led to across the world. Sadly, it was the latest tragedy following a continuing pattern of systemic racism in the US. Dr. Frederick’s words about the African American experience feel more urgent than ever. 

 

Theme out 

Alicia Burke 

Dr. Frederick, it's wonderful to meet you. And thank you so much for taking this time today. I thought we could begin where it all began, which is I believe in Trinidad. And if you could talk a little bit about growing up there.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

I was born in June of 1971. In Trinidad and Tobago, I mentioned the year because about a year before that, they had started mandatory testing for sickle cell for all new newborns. And as a result, I was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. My mom and dad as young parents stayed really close to the hospital, literally walking distance, for the first six months of my life before we moved into the home that my mother still lives in today, actually. Growing up being hospitalized regularly was a major factor in my decision to want to become a physician. My grandmother tells that story of me overhearing her, speaking to friends, telling them about my sickle cell and me stopping and asking her for an explanation, and then telling her that I was going to become a physician as a result. 

 

My mom was a nurse so she would take care of people at their home. Sometimes they would come to our home to get their, you know, dressings changed and their temperature checked. As she would say, I would always be right there, looking over her shoulder, extremely curious.

 

Alicia Burke 

I did hear that your mom was a nurse for more than 50 years. So my question about your work ethic got answered there.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

That's right. Nurses are very special and my mom would tell me if you become a physician and you see patients and you don't talk to the nurse, then you haven't really seen the patient and I still practice that today, as I see my own patients at the hospital.

 

Howard University, when you were growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, in the era I grew up was the pinnacle of higher education, several people in the community – dentists, lawyers, you know – were Howard trained and so, I came to Howard University in 1988, you know, I was 16 at the time I got accepted, looked way younger than my stated age, so people easily thought I was 10, 11. When I got to campus, I have to admit I was way out in the middle of a huge ocean. 

 

Music in

 

Excited really, really interested and curious about everything and in a major growth phase in terms of my mind and my ideals, and what Howard gave me, was a confidence and a belief in myself, it really allowed me to understand what my place in the world was, who I was as a young man as I grew into adulthood, what my ideals were, how I wanted to interact with humanity, and in doing so express my own humanity. And so it really just kind of brought what was it one singular focus dream, primarily become a physician and hopefully find a cure for sickle cell I mean, that was my singular focus. It gave it shape and form and substance, you know, over the course of time and so that just has never left me. It lit a flame in me that it doesn't matter where I go in my training. I always felt that I needed to come back to Howard University.

 

Music Out

 

Alicia Burke 

You know, you're this unusual combination and intersection of clinician and practicing doctor, and educator.  How do you think that shows itself in how you lead such an iconic institution as Howard University?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

When I look at my surgical training in particular, my mentor was a man named LaSalle Leffall.  And Dr. Leffall was the epitome of grace, diligence, intelligence and courage. And one of the things that he would always speak to us about was a saying "equanimity under duress". And what it essentially meant was that you should always manage the stress of the moment, the crisis with utter calm. 

 

Music In

 

I've been in the room with patients who find themselves in grave danger. That's not the opportunity for me to lose it and yell and scream and you know, that's when you have to get even that much more focused, you have to really zone in on what you're doing. It's almost like you can't hear any noise in the room that's unrelated to, you know, taking care of that issue. And I think I try to translate that into how I manage the university. And the second thing that I think always helps me on a day-to-day basis is that I've seen people die. I've seen people lose loved ones. Those are things that just don't compare to what we sometimes think, some of the biggest and gravest problems that we deal with every day. As I tell people, probably the most important role that I've had, and that prepared me for this is that I was a patient at Howard’s Hospital, you know, as a result of having sickle cell and so I've benefited myself, from that experience and I recognize the care and concern that people pour into you.

 

 

Alicia Burke 

Wow. There's a huge ingredient of emotional intelligence and it clearly shows itself in all the roles that you play.

 

Music Out

 

Alicia Burke 

And so when this crisis emerged, how did you mobilize?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

You know, I immediately became concerned about the impact it could have. So we put together a task force and began meeting to discuss issues such as should we suspend for the semester, go online, raise funds to get students home. What do we do about international students? Training faculty for online instruction, I immediately thought our hospital would be in the center of this discussion, and so got the CEO involved. And then I realized very early on that we also had to mobilize people's mindsets. We were about to do something and enter into a period of time that none of us could have ever been prepared for. So one of my very early emails, you know was about being communal, and what that meant and how all of what we were going to do going forward as a university and then hopefully as a broader nation would be that we had to be taking measures on our behalf for ourselves, but ultimately, that would benefit everyone.  

 

Alicia Burke 

That's a really interesting way to think about it is this was not something any of us have ever really been through, no matter what our age is.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

That's exactly right and it becomes increasingly difficult with every passing day and I think that's some of what you're seeing, you know, with the anxiety of people wanting to come out and and it's understandable don't get me wrong, I still want people to follow the rules. But I also recognize that this has been so unusual. You know, I have a 15 year old son and a 13 year old daughter, but I really have admired them during this experience because their discipline and willingness to follow the rules without complaint has been remarkable. I told both of them that you know, when I was the age, I would not have lasted six hours doing this.

 

Alicia Burke 

I also have a 15 year old and a 13 year old and it's been a delight actually to be able to be around them more. And they are teaching me. 

 

Can you talk a little bit about how Howard University boosted healthcare, some things that you did to help in the moment and continue to help in the moment?

 

Music In

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

You know, Washington DC is a very interesting place. When you look at race relations, you look at healthcare disparities. It's a real important study in a lot of what probably plagues our country today. Currently, if you use the COVID crisis as an example, although 47% of the cases are in African Americans, almost 80% of the deaths are African American, and that's very, very problematic. But there are underlying issues that caused that to happen. You have eight wards in the city. 700,000 people, if you live in Ward seven or eight, your life expectancy is roughly 72 years. If you live in Ward three, where 95% of that population is white versus the 90%, African American population in seven and eight, the life expectancy is 87.6 years. 15 year difference.

 

Alicia Burke 

Huge disparity

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

Same city. Exactly. Over 95% of the population has insurance, so some people may say, well, maybe that part of the population doesn't have health insurance. DC has been one of the leaders in terms of affordable health care to its citizenry. So that's not the issue, the issue is access. The issue is all the other social determinants of health. Once we recognized that about 43 to 50% of our patients were coming from wards seven and eight. We then decided that we needed to really mobilize testing in that area. So Bank of America, gave us a million dollar grant to get that done, for which we are extremely thankful. But it has made such a big difference. The first week, we decided that we test patients twice a week, for four hours, open up the phone lines, and we were completely overwhelmed immediately. 

 

Alicia Burke 

Wow.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

So we had to go to four days a week, we had to extend the hours and now we're looking at actually standing up yet another testing site, but at a church site, recognizing the role the community has to play. So we really expanded a lot of what our capacity was, but we took it a step further by making sure that we went into areas such as testing that we think are going to be critical as the entire country reopens.

 

Alicia Burke 

That's great to hear. And so it continues.  

 

Music Out

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

This is going to be a long haul. Contact tracing is going to be the next frontier for us to conquer. That is going to require us to engage with the community in a culturally competent manner,  while we're talking about having all these contact tracers, now, I hope we would look at adding them more permanently to the public health system, potentially as patient navigators that really assists patients with getting the type of health care services they need in the long run.

 

Alicia Burke 

How are you keeping in mind the needs of the students right now? What are you hearing from them? And how are you thinking about that?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

So we're doing several things, I mobilized my cabinet to make a list, everybody from alum to students, to faculty to staff. And so we just made random calls. I made a few myself, some of the students were a little surprised to hear from me directly. And that was just to check in, you know, see how they we're doing, their concerns about the pandemic and what they're doing to be safe, how they’re social distancing, how they're managing it mentally. We've offered mental health services virtually as well. We've really tried to keep connected to them and let them know that we're here. We're thinking about them, we're preparing to educate them in summer school, and then, you know, again, next academic year, regardless of what form that takes place, you know, and so I think that maintaining that connection has been critical.

 

Alicia Burke 

The history and mission of Howard University, you use the words, truth and service, I just feel like they're so resonant those words, truth and service. We need a lot of both right now to get us through and I wondered how you see those words manifesting themselves from your perspective. 

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

Yeah. So Howard's motto is Veritas y Utilitas and it does stand for truth and service. During my presidency, I've added one other thing to that, and that is excellence in truth and service, because you can get the truth, but you can get it in a sloppy manner. And I think that the world we live in today some of that truth is distorted and sometimes that service could be cloaked in self serving means, it has to be for others at all times, and we have to provide it in an excellent fashion. We're not doing anyone a favor by providing service to them. We're fulfilling our calling, by providing service and therefore we have to do it in an excellent fashion because ultimately, it is the fulfillment of our own self by doing that.

 

Alicia Burke 

So I'd love to ask you a couple questions about sort of where you see things going in the future. 

How do you see the role of the University in addressing economic impact for the different constituencies?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

One of the things I think we could do in terms of the long term impact is to make sure that we train our student body and get them out as quickly as possible. During World War Two, Howard's medical school, for instance, had graduations in December and June, for the purpose of trying to get more people out, you know, into the workforce. 

 

The thing that continues to make it very difficult for African Americans is the fact that as these things happen, because they're disproportionately affected, they keep having to start back from a very different position than the rest of the country. 

 

Music In

 

And so the ability to build wealth is consistently being hampered and hindered. And then when you start compromising life expectancy, the ability to build wealth and pass that on is also compromised. These are chronic issues, long standing issues. But I would say that we are now at a place in time where we must start finding solutions for these issues. And those solutions have to be big and bold.

 

Alicia Burke 

And how do you think the private sector can help and should be helping more?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

Yeah, the private sector has to help more by recognizing that if we lift up those most vulnerable in our society, we actually will create a society in which more people will win. And this is an opportunity, I think, for the private sector to recognize that and to support and put things in place that help undo that imbalance.

 

Music Out

 

I'll give you one example again, is Howard University, our endowment doesn't match the endowment of large universities. But if one institution in this country sends more African Americans to medical school than anybody else, and African Americans are far more likely to die from chronic illnesses than anyone else. It seems to me that you have an actual marriage of, of an institution with a solution to a problem that exists that the private sector can help fill the gap in between those two that gets a good outcome for everybody involved.

 

Alicia Burke 

You know, if you could talk directly, right now to students, what would you say as you look out to the future?

 

Music In

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

I look out to the future with a lot of optimism. Out of great tragedy and great adversity is born great opportunity and great strength. I think Malcolm X said it that, you know, without great adversity there’s no success. And you must have that, you know, it’s the same thing that Frederick Douglass said as well that there are those among us who want to reap the harvest, and they want the crops to grow, but they are not necessarily interested in the thunder and lightning that comes with the rain. And this is thunder and lightning, as bad as we have ever seen it. And I think what those two men were directing us to think about is what our students should be thinking about. That yes, this is a difficult stormy dark period, but it ultimately will strengthen each of them in a way that no classroom activity, no lesson plan, no Professor could ever have instilled in them. This is something that will now be incorporated into their DNA. We all need to take this pause that has been given to us to recommit. To recommit to what we think is important and to our ideals and I think if we do that in earnest, and we appreciate this time for that, especially the young people, I think that they will come out of this much better much stronger for it and they will be a golden generation in many, many ways.

 

Music Out

 

Alicia Burke 

Yeah, it sort of goes back to what you were saying around mobilizing our mindset and thinking a little differently about how we conduct ourselves in the future.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

That's exactly right. You know, I think we have to internalize this period in the best way possible. There's so many things that have come out of this. We were both talking about our 15 and 13 year olds, and, you know, on the weekends now, one of my responsibilities is to cook with the two of them. And that has now turned into 4 hour dinners. 

 

Music In

 

You know, I never thought that I could sit at a dining table with two teenagers for four hours and have the most amazing conversations as they probe and prod me about things that I never even knew they observed or thought about, in terms of what I do in my daily life and, you know, that that's something that, yes, I don't want a pandemic, I don't want to see, you know, hundreds of thousands of people die, millions of people get infected, but that's what we have. But what we also have is the opportunity to do things that we otherwise didn't think were possible. All of the things that we thought could never be undone because of what technology had done to us, I think we've proven now that the simplest thing that we have, which is the human condition of interaction, is probably still the single best thing that we have, because it's always underscored with love and so I think that there's a great opportunity and if we all just take a pause, deep breath, we could be so, so much better for it.

 

Alicia Burke 

I would also like to know what you're cooking and what you're talking about at those four hour dinners, because we can only get our 15 and 13 year old, as delightful as they are, to be at the table for 45 minutes tops.

 

Music Out

 

Alicia Burke 

You know, I talked to a few people before I had the chance to sit with you and they used some of the exact same words that you shared with me about your mentor, grace, diligence, courage. Are there things you do to help you be that way that you might be able to share with us so that we can follow your lead?

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

Well, that's humbling, I'll say that first. So I do try to do a few things. The first is I try to rely on those around me. I think the team is critical. One of the things of a leader is you've got to get out of the way, empower them to make the decisions but you have to keep them focused. And then the second thing is, I think always recognize that, you know, leadership is difficult. It's not easy. You have to make tough decisions, you're not always going to get them right. So the willingness to fail, the willingness to do something that doesn't work out, but to know that you, you try to make that decision with all the right intent and purpose, I think is key. And then I think the last part, you know, which is underscored by grace. You know, I often say it's kind of that grace is a source that, that goes between love and life. And so you have to have, you know, a certain caring and concern for others that comes with the humility in recognizing the frailty of your own humanity. And if you do that, you know, no mistake will be too big or take you too low. And no success will take you too high. I never count the victories. I focus almost obsessively on the errors to make sure that they never made again. And you know, I think that that has been a little bit of an ingredient, as it were, in my recipe.

 

Alicia Burke 

Well, your recipe sounds perfect. And thank you for sharing your grace and your humanity and your wisdom with us, Dr. Frederick.

 

Dr. Wayne Frederick 

Ah, thanks for having me, this has been an absolute pleasure, I appreciate it.

 

Alicia Burke VO

 

It’s pretty clear to me that all the members of the Howard community are in great hands under Dr. Frederick’s steady leadership. Howard University Hospital is one of the institutions Bank of America has had the privilege of supporting through our $1 billion, four-year initiative. We’re making these investments to accelerate work that supports economic growth, health care initiatives and racial equality, with a particular focus on creating opportunity for communities of color.   

You've been listening to “That Made All the Difference”. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, be sure to check out Bank of America’s other original podcast, Merrill Perspectives, where you'll hear insights about the coronavirus, the markets, and their impact on your financial life. 

 

I’m Alicia Burke and I’ll talk to you soon.