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Todd Williams
127 Plays1 year ago
This is Move The Needle with Rob Kaplan, where we talk to people who lead, innovate and inspire. Today on Move The Needle, Rob talks with Todd Williams, a man who made a lot of money on Wall Street, but also acted on his passion for public education.
Highly committed to public education, Todd is the founding Chairman and CEO of The Commit Partnership, the nation’s largest educational collective impact organization with over 200 institutions (including 15 school districts and eight higher-ed institutions educating over 790,000 students) supported by a dedicated backbone staff of ~60 employees. Together the Partnership and its backbone staff are collectively focused on improving post-secondary completion and economic mobility levels across the Dallas County region as well as the state of Texas. Todd also served for eight years as the Education Policy Advisor to former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings.
Todd is a senior trustee and former board chair for Austin College, a liberal arts college in Sherman, Texas. With his wife Abby, Todd was the founding chair for six years of the regional advisory board for Teach for America in Dallas/Ft. Worth, and together in 2007 they also helped establish the Uplift Williams Preparatory School, a K-12 free tuition public charter school operated by Uplift Education that educates over 1,500 primarily Hispanic children living in limited income homes in northwest Dallas.
Todd was appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in 2020 to serve on (i) the Texas Permanent School Fund Corporation (responsible for overseeing the investment of the state’s ~$50 billion endowment fund supporting Texas’ K-12 public education system); (ii) the year-long 2018 Texas Commission on Public School Finance (where he chaired its Outcomes Committee which ultimately produced 35 recommendations that served as the basis for Texas’ landmark HB3 legislation which equitably invested $11.5 billion in the state’s public K-12 education system in 2019) and (iii) the 2021 Texas Commission on Community College Funding, which recommended the strategic investment of ~$650 million of new biennial state funding to reward targeted outcomes and increase accessibility for the state’s economically and academically disadvantaged students.
Todd is the former Chair of the Citizen Budget Review Commission for Dallas ISD ($1.7 billion budget educating ~155,000 students) and the former Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees for Uplift Education, a public charter school management organization serving over 20,000 students across the D/FW area. He is also the former chairman of both the Real Estate Finance and Investment Center (located at the University of Texas) and the Real Estate Council of Dallas, the city’s largest real estate organization.
Prior to dedicating his efforts full time as a volunteer to public education, Todd served as a partner and global co-head of Goldman Sachs’ real estate private equity investment area, retiring in 2010 following a 20-year career with the firm in their New York, Los Angeles and Dallas offices. Total assets under management purchased by GS-managed real estate funds exceeded $100 billion in cost, including $10 billion of equity invested by Goldman Sachs and its managing partners.
Todd earned an M.B.A. with distinction from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and graduated with a B.A. in Economics from Austin College in Sherman, Texas in 1982.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Move the Needle'
00:00:04
Speaker
This is Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan, where we talk to people who lead, innovate, and inspire.
Todd Williams' Education Reform Philosophy
00:00:11
Speaker
I've been more focused on trying to work on the whole system versus to create more and more lifeboats, if you will, because that's what vouchers are, that's what charters are, and that may be great for those kids. But at the end of the day, you still have a mass amount of kids left back in the system
00:00:28
Speaker
Today on Move the Needle, Raw Up Talks with Todd Williams, a man who made a lot of money on Wall Street, but also acted on his passion for public education.
From Wall Street to Education Reform
00:00:40
Speaker
I've known Todd Williams for 25 years. I was partners with him at Goldman Sachs for many years. And then I kind of fell out of touch with him until I came back to Dallas in 2015. And in the first couple of months in the job at the Fed,
00:00:59
Speaker
I was explaining to me, if you want to know about education in the state of Texas, there's a person you ought to meet. His name is Todd Williams. And I thought that couldn't be the same Todd Williams, but it was. And it turns out Todd left Goldman Sachs.
00:01:15
Speaker
committed himself to working on education in the nonprofit sector years ago and I got reconnected with Todd then in 2015. I really was impressed with what he was doing and I joined his board
00:01:31
Speaker
almost immediately and I've been on his board ever since. Todd is one of the great education leaders, not only in the state of Texas, but I think he's unique in the United States. That is a former business person with great business skills who's brought all that to bear to improve education.
Todd's Nonprofit Leadership with Commit
00:01:52
Speaker
I'm thrilled today to have with us Todd Williams. Todd is a very successful business person, but
00:01:58
Speaker
Very significantly, he's one of the outstanding education leaders in this country. As you heard in the introduction, he runs a nonprofit called Commit, but he has been a very significant leader in the city of Dallas, the state of Texas, and I think a real role model for what business leaders can do in the United States to be leaders in improving education. And so I'm thrilled to have Todd here today. Todd, welcome.
00:02:28
Speaker
Glad to be here. Thank you, Rob. So we're going to talk a little bit first, Todd, about your life and how you came to be involved in education. We're going to start and talk about your business career. You went to college in Texas and then went to business school at Wharton. And then you ultimately went into the banking business. Why don't you talk a little bit about what you did after business school?
00:02:51
Speaker
Sure. I joined Goldman Sachs in their investment banking area, particularly in the real estate area, and did that for a couple of years in New York and then Los Angeles. But when the market became so illiquid, there was some very interesting investment opportunities and the firm decided to get into the private equity space in real estate investment.
00:03:10
Speaker
buying distressed debt, et cetera, and then ultimately moving into existing real estate product and developing real estate product, both in the United States as well as ultimately globally.
Influences Behind Todd's Education Focus
00:03:20
Speaker
And so I oversaw the investment management of our portfolio that grew over time to about, I guess we probably bought about $100 billion of assets over a 15 year period. And so I did that until I left Goldman and retired in 2010. During your business career, were you actively involved in nonprofit efforts?
00:03:39
Speaker
No, I was 100 percent career focused. I didn't really start getting involved in education until probably until 15 years in or so. What caused you to make that shift? Well, I had first of all, my background is such that I grew up in a low income household was heavily dependent on I think my parental contribution to go to college was about 90 dollars a year. So I think public education completely transformed my life as well as access to high quality higher education. So I just became increasingly
00:04:10
Speaker
of that fact and the fact that if somebody growing up in my house currently would not have the same opportunities that I'd had had to frankly enjoy economic mobility.
00:04:21
Speaker
in my community. And so I just felt like, how do I get more engaged in that? Started off with scholarships and then started serving on some boards. My wife and I helped fund the charter school that I was on the board of, but ultimately kept moving up the food chain, if you will, in terms of trying to have systemic impact and finally decided in 2010 that what I really wanted to spend my time on was not buying and selling real estate, but was trying to
00:04:47
Speaker
was trying to improve public education for lots of kids in my community and in my state. And when you made the shift, you're still in your 40s, young in your career.
Commit's Role in Dallas Education
00:04:58
Speaker
What did people in your family say? What did people who you knew say? Did they say, hey, you're too soon to end your business career. Why are you doing this?
00:05:08
Speaker
Well, you know, it's interesting. I'd gotten the point where is, you know, you know, when you're successful at Goldman, you, you tend to do well financially. And I felt like I'd gotten the point where I was making money to give it away. And as the more I thought about it, I felt like my passion and perhaps I could bring some resourcing, some relationships, some connection and some business perspective to try and improve education. And so I just made the decision that perhaps I could be more effective.
00:05:34
Speaker
not just as a board member and as a donor, but an investor, but also someone who kind of led an effort to do that in my hometown of Dallas. So in 2010, 2011, as you said, got very involved in education and you started working with the mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings. Talk a little bit about what led you into that and what did you wind up doing with the mayor?
00:05:58
Speaker
Well, when I left in 2010, I basically spent the next six to 12 months figuring out how could I be most helpful. And so I started meeting with lots of people. And I met Mike Rawlings, who was a successful CEO, who had decided that he was gonna run for mayor and was elected in 2011. And he asked me at that point in time if I would be his education advisor because he ran on a platform of trying to improve education and trying to bridge the have and have not divide in Dallas County.
00:06:27
Speaker
So many businesses tell me that this is their future. Are they going to decide to come in Dallas or not because of the workforce? Or is it going to be a smart, vibrant, aggressive workforce? And it's not just about brain power. It's attitude. It's believing in themselves.
00:06:46
Speaker
We are a county that leads the country historically in job growth, but we also lead it in people living in poverty. And Mike wanted to attack that head on, and he asked me if I would be his partner in that work. And so since I was in the process and had made the decision to form a collective impact organization called Commit that would serve as a backbone entity for the county, Mike agreed to put his bully pulpit in his shoulder behind that effort, and we partnered in that work. What was Commit initially?
00:07:15
Speaker
Committed initially is, think about us as the consultant that never leaves, that brings a tremendous amount of data to the equation and looks at what are the systemic root causes of why we get the outcomes that we get. And then how do we attack those by either passing policies or changing resource allocations or getting more resourcing or spreading best practices, et cetera. But it's a dedicated staff of what is now 60 people every day who gets up thinking about how to improve education and living wage outcomes.
00:07:44
Speaker
in the ninth largest county in America. So to get started on this back in 2011, how did you spend the first six to 12 months? Gathering a lot of data, trying to bring system leaders together to understand from their perspective, what should the geographic scope be? What were we going to measure to indicate whether or not we were having success or not?
00:08:06
Speaker
where should we start and the strong advice was to start early in early childhood. And then frankly, raising money because I couldn't hire the quality of staff that I wanted and I couldn't get the institutional partners in the school systems and higher ed institutions to get engaged unless they thought this thing has sustainability. People perceive Dallas County as an area of high possibility based on the infrastructure that we built, but also given the sheer numbers of kids and young adults living in poverty.
00:08:33
Speaker
What types of system leaders did you first interact with? Yeah, superintendents and higher ed presidents both at the community college and at the four
Data-Driven Educational Solutions
00:08:41
Speaker
-year level. And then I've gotten increasingly engaged at the state level with legislators, heads of the education committees in the House and the Senate.
00:08:50
Speaker
I've worked very closely with the governor who's appointed me to serve on several commissions to help look at these problems on a systemic way and a thoughtful way over a year period of time to make recommendations for legislation to subsequently get passed. And so for those listening who may be living in other cities in the United States and who might want to try to emulate what you did, how hard is it to get the data
00:09:17
Speaker
What data were you looking for? How'd you go about collecting the data?
00:09:22
Speaker
Well, believe it or not, initially when I started this work, I just hired someone who used to be a district data person and said, answer the following 20 questions for me. And Texas benefits by the fact that when George W. Bush was governor of this state, we had, and as you know, he was the architect with Margaret Spellings of No Child Left Behind, Texas was a state that had a tremendous amount of data. But I would say that we were data rich and information poor because we really weren't
00:09:50
Speaker
pulling the insights from the data. But there was a lot of data to pull from. And so I hired people who could basically download the data, look at it, and then figure out what the insights were to cause behavioral change that I could bring to the superintendents and say, hey, you might want to think about this and look at what the data says about that. And what were some of the most important 20 questions you try to gather data on?
00:10:12
Speaker
I think the perception in my region of Dallas County was that we had one district, which was our big, large urban district, Dallas ISD, where people felt like that's really where all the challenges were. And so because I spread the view to Dallas County, which is 1,000 square miles, you could fit several major US cities in the boundaries of Dallas County, the data really helped prove to people in our region that we had a regional problem and not a specific school district problem.
00:10:38
Speaker
And then we really try to think about this education pipeline as a pipeline into workforce. So where did the system first start breaking down, i.e., kids coming to school not ready, third grade reading rates, et cetera? And then how did that problem get exacerbated in terms of the transitions from one institution to another, from K-12 to community college, from community college to higher ed, and from higher ed to workforce?
00:11:01
Speaker
And just basically look at the data and say, where is the system breaking down? Where are we losing the most kids? And how can we change actions or policy or resourcing to stop that leakage so that we've got more people coming to workforce ready to meet the skill sets that are needed and earn a living wage as a result. And when you first went through that exercise, what was the biggest surprise to you?
00:11:25
Speaker
I don't think people understood in general people who were business leaders in this region that understood that three and four kids who went to public school qualified for free and reduced lunch, that 80% of our kids were students of color, and that our six year college completion rates for our Hispanic children and our black children was
00:11:44
Speaker
maybe 15%, 20% tops. And so this was the future of Dallas County. And if we didn't act collectively, we weren't going to be able to recruit and import our way out of our
Challenges in Texas Education Governance
00:11:56
Speaker
problem. We needed to make sure that our own education system was preparing our own kids to participate in the jobs and the prosperity of Dallas County.
00:12:05
Speaker
And I must say over the years you've explained to me, and for those listeners, I joined the board of commit, I guess it was four or five years ago to try to help and taught in this effort. You explained to me the high correlation between educational outcomes and zip codes. And I guess after looking at that, it seemed obvious, but before I saw that and you explained it to me, I don't think I thought enough about it. Why don't you explain a little bit this issue of
00:12:33
Speaker
correlation between zip code and educational outcomes.
00:12:36
Speaker
Well, it's pretty clear when we do heat mapping of our county and we look at educational attainment and then we look at average income. We also look at, frankly, life expectancy. We see incredible correlations that start early and continue on. People don't tend to move around too much. And so we've had kind of, in some cases, it's been so severe, we've had almost a school to prison pipeline.
00:13:03
Speaker
in some parts of our city because we've under invested in our kids, we've under resourced, and we frankly haven't focused as much as we could and should on addressing the problem in a very early period in their lives. And then also frankly, making sure that no matter what you do with inside the walls of a school, if a child comes to school and they're hungry, or there was a shooting in their neighborhood, or they can't access medical care, it's gonna be really hard for them to learn.
00:13:29
Speaker
And so I think we had to have also a comprehensive approach to support our kids versus just what happens within the school walls. You've explained to me the governance issue here.
00:13:39
Speaker
And the clearest way, I think you told me once, that Florida has 60 different school districts and Texas has more like 1,100. That was kind of a shocker to me to hear that difference. Well, the culture of Texas is independence. You know, I would say if you were whiteboarding and you once said, I'm going to educate 10% of the country, which is what Texas is,
00:14:00
Speaker
You wouldn't do it through 1,100 different delivery vehicles, which are 1,100 independent school districts, all with publicly elected boards who all run for board seats for all sorts of different reasons. And I think as a result, you've got very efficient districts. And like Dallas and Houston, that have 150,000 to 200,000 students are able to bring a lot of data expertise and leadership and pay for that accordingly. We've also got small school districts where the superintendent is also the bus driver and the football coach.
00:14:29
Speaker
And so I think it's a political hot potato and a non-starter to ever get any sort of consolidation within our state to drive efficiencies. And so as a result, we thought a lot about legislative activity and public funding to try and if we're going to improve the system, let's fund specific things that we know through research and data work versus just simply giving the money to 1,100 districts and hopefully that they'll figure it out how to spend it best.
00:14:55
Speaker
Now, for those sitting in other states in the country listening to this, are there many other states that have the same issue, lots of, in effect, siloed school systems, or is Texas unique? There are other states like Texas, but I think Texas is really this on steroids, to be really honest with you. Like I said, Florida is by county and Nevada is by county. It really varies, but it's really interesting how we've chosen to divide up this.
00:15:23
Speaker
In the state of Texas, there's over a thousand school districts. Every one of these school boards gets elected in a local election. So it's politics times a thousand. And sometimes what's best for the school may not suit the political interests of the local school board that got elected.
Political Landscape of Education Reform
00:15:49
Speaker
And if you make progress in one school board,
00:15:53
Speaker
you got 999 others where you got to start all over again and convince that school board. And that's what makes this so difficult, not only nationwide, but particularly in the state of Texas. As a layman, I would have thought this is how political can this be? But I think what I've seen here is when you get into the issues of public versus private schools,
00:16:22
Speaker
you know, vouchers, curriculum, all these other issues. It turns out it's an extremely political area. Why don't you talk about how is it political and what are some of the challenges that creates?
00:16:39
Speaker
So I would agree that education is a bipartisan issue in terms of its importance. I think where the disagreement is is over strategy. There are those that look at historical outcomes and say, we just need to completely disrupt the system with charter schools, vouchers, et cetera.
00:16:56
Speaker
And there are those on the on the what I would call the pro public education side that say, listen, you have not been adequately investing in our kids for a long time. We just need to simply invest more to get to the outcomes. And I think there's a place for choice for sure. But I think my view on this work is
00:17:14
Speaker
I've been more focused on trying to work on the whole system versus to create more and more lifeboats, if you will, because that's what vouchers are, that's what charters are, and that may be great for those kids. But at the end of the day, you still have a mass amount of kids left back in the system that'll be even less funded if we don't figure out how to solve the systemic problems of why we get the outcomes that we get.
00:17:37
Speaker
What percentage of kids in the state of Texas are in public school versus in a charter or private school? Do you have an estimate on that? We probably have about 5% of our kids in private schools and we probably have 95% in public. And at the 95% in public, we're probably approaching 10% in public charter schools and the balance in traditional public ISDs. This is why it's so critical to get the public school model right.
00:18:04
Speaker
I totally agree. What's the issue you find with elected school officials who mean well, but maybe are challenging to deal with?
00:18:13
Speaker
For example, you'll have school districts that have billion to $2 billion budgets, which require a level of financial expertise because the issues that are discussed at the school board not only range in and deal with education, but they also deal with financing. They deal with construction. They deal with a whole host of issues. And to my knowledge, there is no minimum education requirement to serve on a school board.
00:18:39
Speaker
And there's also no term limits. And so you will find, and you have low voting turnout. And so you don't really have the ability, you don't see the turnover in school boards. If you had a school district that had schools that were constantly failing,
00:18:57
Speaker
mismanaged resources, but only three or four or five percent of the people vote in the election, you can have people sit on that board for a long time despite the outcomes that the system is getting. And the only real intervention is the Commissioner of Education who, with a public charter school, can take over a failing public charter school within three years, but if they're failing traditional public ISD that needs to be five years in a row,
00:19:23
Speaker
before he can intervene and take over the board and put in a board of managers to guide the district. And if the 1100 districts in the state of Texas, what would be your estimate on what percentage of them are quote unquote failing or below par? Well, per state ratings, typically I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15% of campuses are rated D or F.
00:19:50
Speaker
Wow. So in light of these challenges, how does commit seek to improve this situation and even override some of these challenges?
00:20:04
Speaker
I think what we've tried to do is to make sure that people who are thinking about running for school board are as well informed on the issues and the strategies and the levers and the data and the relative performance. We also obviously try to work very closely with superintendents and their leadership teams to basically analyze the outcomes that they're getting and come up with some ideas collaboratively with them in terms of
00:20:25
Speaker
You might want to try this or here's what this data is saying on these similar schools that are performing better than your schools and here's what they've done.
Commit's Comprehensive Educational Approach
00:20:34
Speaker
You might want to think about going and visiting those schools, etc. I've sat in commit board meetings and you've taken us through
00:20:41
Speaker
your six big priorities with a number of initiatives below each, but the six big priorities or levers that you think can improve education in the state of Texas, can you just go through what those six big priorities are?
00:20:58
Speaker
Every early childhood, making sure that every child comes to school ready in kindergarten and is meeting state standards and reading and math by third grade, just creating a solid foundation. Second, making sure that we have effective teachers in every classroom. They're well trained, they're well paid in order to keep them in the classroom.
00:21:17
Speaker
And frankly, they're inspiring other students to follow them in their career path. Third is really talent, which is how do we make sure that in addition and beyond teachers, we've got great people at the school board level. We've got great people at the school leadership level. We've got well-trained people and central staff based on the data and the issues. Fourth is really post-secondary access and success, making sure that every child knows that getting an education beyond high school is absolutely important and critical. And they know that by an early age, at least by middle school.
00:21:47
Speaker
and that their transition to that post-secondary education is highly supported and that it's an affordable path. And for those kids who just have to work, there's work-based learning, there's apprenticeships, et cetera, so that every student can get that critical post-secondary education that they're going to need to be able to earn a living wage.
00:22:06
Speaker
And I gather skills training fits into that fourth initiative. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are countless middle school jobs that require less than two years of an education that will pay a living wage. But many people within our high schools in the counseling and advising area are not up to speed on what careers are that are out there. Let's go through five and six. Sure. Well, we just want to make sure that there's a broad awareness of the challenges and the solutions. So how do you pepper the ground?
00:22:35
Speaker
with information for parents and taxpayers and voters on what's working and what's not. This problem is absolutely solvable. I think a lot of people historically, at least in Dallas, kind of threw up their hands and saying it's too big. It's too intractable. We can't solve it. And we've shown over the last 10 years that we've actually made significant improvement and become an urban district leader.
00:22:54
Speaker
and Dallas here. And so I think just awareness is a critical factor. And then finally, making sure that you've got well-resourced schools and neighborhoods. You cannot learn if you're hungry. You cannot learn if you have gunshots in the neighborhood. You cannot go on and get your post-secondary education if you
00:23:15
Speaker
accidentally become expecting and pregnant. So contraceptive access is a huge issue. Healthcare is an issue as well. So how do we invest in our neighborhoods to support kids outside the classroom? And on number six, I know you partner very actively with the Child Poverty Action Lab to address a lot of those issues. We do. We're very, we're joined at the hip. We serve on each other's boards and the founder is a commit alumni.
00:23:45
Speaker
To do these six at commit, you have some direct intervention, but often you are partnering with a range of organizations. I mentioned Poverty Action Lab is one, but you're partnering with a whole range of organizations to drive initiatives that achieve these priorities.
00:24:08
Speaker
Absolutely, particularly in the neighborhood work because there are entities in those neighborhoods that have long-standing trusted relationships and it's better for us to partner with them and invest in them and support their efforts than to try and do it directly. Again, we only have a staff of 60 people and we have 500,000 kids in K-12 and 2.6 million residents. So we have to be thoughtful about how we efficiently do our work.
00:24:35
Speaker
What has been the role of teacher unions in trying to prove educational attainment and improve this ecosystem you described? I think that they do what they're hired to do, which is to represent every member of their union, whether that is the highest performing teacher that you would give an arm and a leg to have put them in front of your child, or it might be an educator who was really struggling and may not be in the best line of work for them given their skill set.
00:25:02
Speaker
And so inevitably, we've been successful in passing both locally and then ultimately statewide policies that allow school districts to evaluate all their talent and get significantly more funding to pay their best educators faster and sooner, rather than a 100-year-based, seniority-based pay system. And unions have struggled and pushed back against that, but they really
00:25:27
Speaker
And I understand why, but I think wisdom has ruled the day that if we really want to value education the way we say we should, which is paying your best educators $100,000, if they're great teachers and they'll work in your most challenged schools, your hard to staff schools, we should do that. And so now as a state, we're up to 61% of all kids in the state of Texas are in a district that is pursuing what we call the teacher incentive allotment, which we passed through legislation with many others back in 2019.
Leadership Transition and Business Collaboration
00:26:10
Speaker
I'm going to shift gears here a little bit and we're going to talk a little about your leadership and your leadership style. How did you need to change your leadership style moving from a for-profit private business into being a community leader and an education leader? What changes did you have to make in the way you operated?
00:26:34
Speaker
Well, it's not surprisingly that when you show up in 2011 in my life and you say, I'm an ex-Wall Street, Goldman Sachs partner, and I'm here to help, there might be some hesitancy in terms of what's your real motivation. Are you really willing to do this as a volunteer? Are you really willing to invest your money? What's your ulterior motive?
00:27:00
Speaker
And so I think trying to make sure that people understood what was in my heart and why I was doing this work was first and foremost critically important. And I had to build that progress at the speed of trust. Again, we have no power to direct anybody to do anything. And so we just had to consistently show up with data and to be helpful. And we've always provided our services to districts at no charge. We're philanthropically funded so that they know that we're not there for any other mode of them to help them get better.
00:27:29
Speaker
And I think in terms of how I've tried to lead this organization, it's just like we did at Goldman Rob, which is you try and hire the best people you can, you try and empower them, you try and set clear goals. And you also, importantly, in this work, you have to listen a lot. You have to learn from others who have the lived experiences. You may have biases or guesses about why you're getting the systems, outcomes that you get, but you've got to just listen a lot more.
00:27:57
Speaker
in this work than we might have in the commercial setting. For those business leaders listening who are at a certain stage of their career and who say, you know, I like this story and I want to do what Todd Williams did. What advice would you give on how they should think about it and prepare to do something in the nonprofit sector in their community to make a positive difference?
00:28:24
Speaker
Well, I think that business leaders have tremendous social capital. They have the ability to influence others. They have the ability to raise money, but they also have the ability to recruit other people who have skill sets and talent. And I think when I talk to most superintendent leaders, for example, one of the things they struggle with is having enough capacity at the board level, at the district level,
00:28:47
Speaker
in the nonprofit community to support them. And so I've seen business leaders chair boards. I've seen them raise money. I've seen them run for political office and use the bully pulpit of that space. I've also seen them do it at the micro level, which is student by student mentoring, tutoring, etc. For me, I just I started off with scholarships.
00:29:10
Speaker
So after giving scholarships, I got involved at a campus level, helping start a charter school and then went on a school board, uh, and then ultimately formed commit because I was attracted by scale, but there's going to be others that are just more motivated by at the micro level. And so whether it's tutoring or mentoring, et cetera, I think business leaders have tremendous social capital that they should be using as much as possible. When you deal with business leaders who want to help,
00:29:36
Speaker
What's the biggest misconception that you have to address when you're having these initial conversations?
00:29:42
Speaker
that the problem is probably bigger than they think that it is solvable. It's like an engineering process. You just got to look at this as a pipeline into workforce and address where the challenges are. I think that also one of the biases is that I have never met an educator that gets up every day, doesn't think about, I've come to work and I want to serve kids. They don't come to work to not serve kids well. But sometimes the system doesn't really support their success.
00:30:13
Speaker
I think, you know, I haven't been blessed to not have to take a salary for 11 years. And I will tell you that just getting up every day at work, I just, it's even though the work is hard, I love who I get to work with. I love the fact that I feel like I'm making a difference. I think we're all looking for, you know, it's that whole success versus significance that all of us wrestle with in our lives. And success is great, but it's not enough.
00:30:39
Speaker
I think and I've also frankly tried to be as much as possible a role model for I have five sons and I wanted to be a role model for them in terms of how important it is to think about others versus just yourself and your family.
Vision for Future Education Improvement
00:30:53
Speaker
And I have been very pleasantly surprised by how the business community, once they felt like the problem truly was solvable and that there were some early wins on the table, was increasingly willing to get engaged both locally and at the state level to help solve this problem as a collective team, if you will. Okay, the last question. If you had a wish list, how you'd like to see
00:31:20
Speaker
this ecosystem we've talked about evolve and what changes you would dream about seeing. What is your dream on how this system might evolve over the next 10 or 15 years? My dream is that our state legislature views this process as a continuous improvement one where we ever look at the data every two years and we basically make adjustments toward a common goal that we've all agreed upon as a state which is
00:31:46
Speaker
broad shared economic prosperity. I would love to see better governance at the school board level, more people engaged, voting, participating, bringing expertise to the board level and sufficiently being advocates for resourcing the improvement of our of our education system and the outcomes.
00:32:04
Speaker
for our kids. I'd love to see a change in the perception of the teaching profession in this country. I think I've been blessed to travel to other countries in the world, high-performing countries such as Singapore, where they view teachers as nation builders. It is very prestigious to be a teacher in the country of Singapore, which generally leads the world
00:32:23
Speaker
in education attainment? How do we create that same perception within our own community, given the value that they have? And frankly, the final thing is that every kid in our community expects to go to college or get some type of education beyond high school.
00:32:40
Speaker
and is able to share in this prosperity that many of us have been able to share in. I just feel like we'll all be better off. And frankly, it leaks into our politics because of the haves and the have-nots and people using their democratic vote, which they've certainly earned, to try and change the systemic inequities that they think exist.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:32:58
Speaker
And I'd rather us just try and solve it the other way, which is to be resolute in thinking that this is important as a society and we're gonna act appropriately.
00:33:07
Speaker
Todd Williams, great words to end on. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for all that you do in moving the needle in this city and the state and I think in the country. And I look forward to working with you in the months and years to come. Thank you so much, Rob. I certainly appreciate your partnership on this one. Thank you so much. Thanks, Todd. Next time on Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan.
00:33:36
Speaker
I was up, but I was getting ready for work and got a call from my sister of all people saying an airplane had flown into one of the towers. You could see it on TV and I turned on TV and we all thought it was just some small aircraft. I continued to get ready and then the second airplane hit, my phone immediately rings.
00:33:53
Speaker
What's it like to take over a major American airline just 10 days before 9-11? That's next time on Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan. Move the Needle with Rob Kaplan is produced and edited by Sam Zaff and Scott Richardson and I'm executive producer Renele Golden. We want to thank Michelle Brown as well as Zorik and his team from Hello Studios for logistical and technical support.
00:34:21
Speaker
Make sure not to miss an episode by subscribing to Move the Needle on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the Robert Stephen Kaplan YouTube channel.