Stop & Talk

Singer 0:00
Stop talk to me.

Grant Oliphant 0:02
Hey, Crystal,

Crystal Page 0:11
hey grant,

Grant Oliphant 0:12
so good to be with you. Today, we're going to be sharing an interview with one of our board members, but that's not her real claim to fame. Paula Cordeiro is who we're speaking with, and Paula's got an extraordinary background.

Crystal Page 0:28
Yeah. Well, I think, like most of our board members, I fangirl it a little bit with with Dr Cordeiro Paula, because she is at every event. She's connected to community, but this social movement and connection she has in this vision. It's just so energetic.

Grant Oliphant 0:44
Yeah, so she is rightly described as a distinguished educator, leader, advocate for nonprofit leadership and social entrepreneurship. She is a distinguished professor. She's an extraordinary, I think, thinker. She's familiar with philanthropy, and she is probably San Diego's leading expert in the growing convergence between the nonprofit and the business sector, as we think about purpose driven businesses. So we probably should let her explain that. Dive in, and we'll talk at the back end.

Crystal Page 1:21
Let's do it.

Grant Oliphant 1:26
Dr Paula Cordeiro, it's really nice to be here with you. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 1:30
My pleasure.

Grant Oliphant 1:31
Yeah, I've wanted to talk to you for a while, and I'd like to pretend that being on the Prebys Foundation Board is your greatest claim to fame, but I've wanted to talk to you because you are doing so much. You have such a great perspective on the evolving role of business, how there is a synthesis going on in the worlds of nonprofits and and for profit companies. You're also a big thinker when it comes to the role of San Diego in the world and the opportunity to work on a global scale. So we want to cover all of that, and I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you about that. But let's start by talking about your background and how you came to be doing this work. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 2:18
Sure, I grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is a port city and a city of immigrants. So I you heard, I heard just about any language being spoken, particularly Portuguese, since that's my ancestry. But also we had people from a variety of African nations that were speaking different Criollos because they were former Portuguese colonies. We had people from Puerto Rico, Poland, French Canada, and it was a low income community. We all lived in tenement houses. We all went to local public schools, and very ethnic, and also very innovative as a result. So lots of ideas,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 3:02
and you shared this heritage with San Diego's own Irwin Jacobs,correct.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 3:07
That's correct. So Irwin and I went to the same high school. He did as I always like to note several years before, before me. But yes, Irwin, being Jewish, was part of I knew the area where he lived. My father was the carpenter for the synagogue, very close community.

Grant Oliphant 3:30
I know New Bedford a little bit because I worked in the community with Teresa Heinz when she was spending lots of time in Massachusetts. And I would describe it even, even when I got to know it a couple of decades ago, as a kind of hard scrabble New England town, like you said, full of immigrants. What did it teach you growing up in a community like that, about about the role of immigrants in our country?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 4:00
Well, clearly, accepting other people, oftentimes, because of language issues, you'd be the only person who spoke English in a group. Or why do people do things? Why do they eat certain foods? My interest in eating foods came from all the different cultures that were around me. So, you know, I mean, I I totally miss the foods from the communities where I grew up, and it's hard to find them in San Diego.

Grant Oliphant 4:28
So what brought what made you want to come to San Diego?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 4:32
Yeah, actually, my husband had, my then fiance had moved here, so that was a big attraction. Also, the opportunity, I applied for the Dean's position at the University of San Diego, and I was fortunate enough to get it.

Grant Oliphant 4:46
You told me a story at one point about what you were told by a colleague when you shared the news that you were moving to San Diego. Do you remember what that was? It was something about, yeah, it's. So

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 5:00
I actually think it was a person who was visiting San Diego when I had just arrived, and he was from the UK. He was the dean of Westminster Abbey, and he was speaking to our leadership program. And we're sitting out in front of the fountain across from in the Peace school. And he looked at me, his name was Leslie, and he said, Paula, what are you doing at the end of the earth?

Grant Oliphant 5:26
I love that story because I've heard variants of that sort of description of San Diego from lots of different quarters, because of how people have thought of this as a corner of the country, as though it's disconnected from the rest of the country. What would you have told him today? If you could have had a retort,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 5:45
yeah, I would have told him, it's one of probably, and I've lived in lots of different places, I think the most vibrant community I've actually ever lived in, and this is why, yeah, because we're at a border, right? And because we are a port. So there's just so much here. And to me, it's, it's that diversity that keeps me here.

Grant Oliphant 6:09
Yeah, I love, by the way, your New England accent coming through when you say, port, appreciate it. Yeah. Actually, that connection is something that I that connectivity is something that people, I think, forget about San Diego, and actually, you're a part of that. In the role that you're playing, you are actively connecting young people and businesses and thinkers in San Diego with a new school of thought, both globally and locally, about the role of business and opportunities for business to play a role in changing society for the better. How would you describe the work that you're doing now, in terms of that and how you got into it?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 6:52
Well, it's been an evolution. You know, I was in K 12 education, teacher, principal, Dean, Professor of Educational Leadership for many years. And you know, we know from the research and educational achievement research that it really depends on where a child lives. What is the zip code of the child? That's not to say that teachers can't have a big influence. They certainly did on me and in my zip code, but we're in an ecosystem, and I was taken into that ecosystem through my work as a dean, in particular with nonprofit organizations. When we founded the Nonprofit Institute, our nonprofit Masters started working with government folks, and then started interacting with the business community, and so that greater ecosystem is what brought me to this work. And then when I left the Dean's position, I had an opportunity to spend five years working internationally, and so I was part of that business ecosystem. Social Enterprises learned about that continuum of nonprofit and for profit, social enterprises, people who wanted to make a real impact in their work. Of course they wanted, they had to be successful financially, but they really wanted to make an impact. So during that time, and that was 2015 to 2020 it was all gelling for me, that if I was going to, I mean, what it was I going to do for the rest of my career? Well, I wanted to have my students have an opportunity to work in organizations that will positively impact the community, but also result in them having a good standard of living, a fair wage, and be able to retire one day with the kind of money in their portfolio that people who work in those kinds of organizations that I'm teaching about have versus working in a regular business. So I'm really interested in generational wealth,

Grant Oliphant 7:22
and did you see that as a an alternative in those terms to the nonprofit sector as well?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 9:07
Well, in the beginning, I did. But then, as I you know, when you go deep on nonprofits, first of all, so many nonprofits have social enterprises within them. So they, in other words, they might have earned revenue, maybe from a bookstore at a museum, or maybe they have some program where they're bringing in two or five or 10% of their expenses covered. But also then I went to, for example, up to Homeboy Industries in LA and Father Boyle is one of the most remarkable entrepreneurs out there, although he never would call himself that, but he has anywhere from 10 to 12 different that's a nonprofit Homeboy Industries, right? And it's helping people who have been in prison, been in gangs, get jobs. So it's what's called a. A wise which is a worker integrated social enterprise, which is the oldest form of an of a social enterprise. So when I saw the magic that was happening there with people getting jobs and they're being paid a living wage, and how about 30% of homeboys revenues are covered by these social enterprises. So we have more and more nonprofits that are doing that. We also have many nonprofits, places like mac or lifeline or others that 50, 60, 80% 90% of their revenue is coming from contracts. It's not gifts,

Grant Oliphant 10:39
right, right

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 10:40
So what is a nonprofit? And then you have nonprofits like universities and hospitals, those kind of interesting and foundations. So it covers such a wide array. So when you look at the middle of the continuum, I call it with a totally 100% nonprofit, depending upon gifts and grants versus a business on the other end that's not doing anything to help the social impact of their communities. I'm not interested in looking at any of those. They can exist, fine, but I'm going to focus on the middle, whether it's for profit or not for profit, they are social enterprises, and what do they need?

Grant Oliphant 11:20
I love that. That's probably the best description of the intersection of these forces that I've heard. Could you quickly define a social enterprise for our listeners?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 11:31
Sure. So, I mean, we all know what an enterprise is. Social Enterprise is a business, whether it's non profit or for profit. It's a business, but it has a social impact. It's people, profit and planet. So you have to have profit. Profit has to be number one, because if you're not making any money, you won't be sustainable. But you have this organization because you also want the people in your organization to stay with you. You don't want turnover. Turnover costs money. The quit rate, it costs money. So you want to retain them as much as you can. You are in a community, and most businesses, 99% of the businesses out there are small businesses, so they are local, so therefore they want to retain their employees. So there's where the people come in, and then the planet, if we are, if my company is, is continuing to destroy this planet. I mean, we know that landfills are- there's no more room in the landfills. So what are we going to do with the stuff we have? We have had an over abundance. We have done what's called an overshoot in the environment. So local business folks that that have an interest in in making sure that their people are taken care of, the planet is taken care of. I want to work with them, and I want to do anything I can to promote them.

Grant Oliphant 12:55
And you use planet, I assume, as a proxy for broader social goals?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 13:00
Absolutely.

Grant Oliphant 13:00
Yeah, so it's, you know, it's interesting. What comes up for me in listening to you describe that is that this is a movement that felt, to me inevitable, up until a couple of years ago or a year ago, because there was such interest among young people in working for entities for profit or not for profit, or in between, like you were describing that were a place where they could make a living and and have a good life, but where they could also do some good, and they wanted to feel like they were part of doing, doing good in the world suddenly very complicated times for for that kind of thinking, and we're seeing, at least at the level of government, a retrenchment to old concepts of what the role of businesses and the role of society. Are you worried about this trend line of young people wanting to work in these sort of companies and the migration to these sort of companies, or do you see it as still inevitable over time?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 14:08
I think it's absolutely inevitable. This is for me. I really, in my heart of hearts, believe this is a blip, if you look at environmental issues out there, if a company in the United States wants to work, if they're a multinational, and they want to work in Japan or in the European Union, they have to meet the regulations of those nations. They're still going to have those regulations. They might call them other names, but they're still going to be there. You know, everybody needs a compass to move forward. You know, I'm a sailor, so you need that compass. And in the storm, you really, really need the compass. A lot of people are trying to throw the compass off the ship, and the compass is not going to take you directly to the port. It's just going to give you the direction of the port. So I believe that the compass is on the. Ship, and there's winds all around. But my students are just as energized, matter of fact, perhaps even more energized, because the the waves are coming, the movement has is growing.

Grant Oliphant 15:15
That's really encouraging to hear. So let's talk about the people who take the helm of that ship for a moment, your first foray into, I think, working with them, obviously, was just working with young people in your educational capacity, but then you created this entity called the Nonprofit Institute, which I see as an attempt to bring greater rigor and capacity to the leadership of organizations working in the social mission space. Can you say a little bit more about why you created that and and then what you see as the biggest challenges for nonprofit leaders today?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 15:54
Sure, sure, you know it's interesting, but just about why I've created anything as an educator is because of my students. My first semester, I had one of our doctoral students come to me and say, you know, I work in nonprofits, and I want to take a course, because we have a leadership PhD. I want to take a course in nonprofit leadership. It's like, whoa. We don't offer anything like that. I start, you know, looking around the country, and there's not much offered in the country. So I hired this phenomenal woman, Pat Libby, to create the course. She came into me about three days after, three sessions later, and said, We need to have a program. So I said, Well, let me hire you as a consultant to go out into the community and meet with people and ask them what they want. So that was the or that's part of the origin of that we ended up creating, first the Masters, then then the PhD specialization, and then the institute. And the other part is, I've always sat on many boards, and some of those smaller boards in particular I've been on were not professionalized. They weren't looking at some of their basic duties as a nonprofit. So we wanted to make sure that, you know, people understood you have to have bylaws. And we also wanted to make sure that they understood that boards could be generative as well, that that the CEO didn't have to be threatened by board members asking questions.

Grant Oliphant 17:18
Thank you for that.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 17:22
So that was sort of the origin of it. What was the last part of what you

Grant Oliphant 17:25
well, the second part is, so that's the origin. But now some years have passed and you've you've expanded your thinking around this to include not just traditional nonprofits, but people in purpose driven businesses, social enterprises, what do you see as the evolving set of challenges for leaders working in this space?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 17:49
Yeah, I think the finance part is a big piece, the systems, the back office, systems for data collection that nonprofits need, and that's where I think foundations, all of our foundations, can play a role in helping people to build the systems so that they can then monitor the people they're serving and how they're serving them, and the effectiveness of some of those programs. But also the financial part, a lot of people have a CFO, or a fractional CFO, whatever, in a nonprofit, but I don't think they have had the opportunity, I'm talking about the people in those roles in particular, to understand the options that are available to nonprofits, such as taking out loans. So there's, you know, my husband wrote a book on nonprofits, and one of the chapters because he was a finance guy, and one of his best chapters gets into debt financing, something that nonprofits are they just don't want to do it. They don't even want to talk about having any debt. But if they had a CEO that understood those kinds of things, then there'd be a different conversation. So that's one area in particular. I think the kaleidoscope award that we give out annually is helpful for the people who apply for it. It's not necessarily about winning, it's really about looking at your practices as a board and as an organization to make sure that you're fulfilling the requirements and more of a good nonprofit.

Grant Oliphant 19:25
And that'swhat that award celebrates.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 19:27
Yes, yes. What about the shifting terrain in terms of forms of entities themselves? Yeah,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 19:34
and that's where, again, the finance person might play a role in that my students and I were working in our practicum with a local nonprofit that I absolutely love them. I went to them first and said, Can my students work with you on a project? Please make it business related, because a lot of them are coming from business. And so the nonprofit said, Why don't you look at how we can better serve the corporate community through the programs we are. Through the facilities we have, and we presented a report at the end that was, I thought very, very thoughtful, but the questions that came back to us were, well, we're a non profit. Can we really do that? So they didn't know the possibilities of what they could do,

Grant Oliphant 20:20
right, right? Do you ever encounter pushback from people in the nonprofit arena who when you're talking about alternative forms of delivering a social mission? Because what I've heard some in in certain circumstances is that's great where it works, but there are certain types of entities that or types of missions that don't necessarily lend themselves easily to adding an earned revenue component or a for profit component. Interestingly, I was thinking about this when you were mentioning father Gregory Boyle, whose Homeboy Industries, you would think would fit in that category, because it's all about helping very disadvantaged people to get back up on their feet. And he uses a for profit component to do it when you when you encounter that sort of resistance. I assume you think some of it is legitimate, and some of it you push on. How do you how do you work that through with people who are wrestling with these concepts,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 21:32
I give them examples of organizations similar to theirs somewhere in the country, because this is the work I do. I look at other cities and other places that have similar programs, which we did my students did with this particular organization, and I give them that example, or many more examples. I don't like to call out nonprofits, but I'm going to call out Teresa Smith's work Dreams for Change. So dealing with people who are homeless, one would think, well, how could there be any kind of social enterprise connected to that? Well, a food truck and having people who are homeless maybe work in that. Those are there are ways we need to have conversations about how we can bring these innovative ideas to our organizations, and it's very difficult to do that when you are in one community, not looking out at what is being done in other places

Grant Oliphant 22:31
well. And this is, I think, part of why you created the nonprofit Institute too, is that people working on social enterprises, particularly nonprofits in a community tend not to have access to ongoing career and professional development, and the opportunity to benchmark best practice practices elsewhere around the world is that

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 22:52
exactly, exactly

Grant Oliphant 22:55
I want to, I want to expand our aperture even a little more now, because When you think about this or talk about this. You you talk about social enterprises and the way you defined them earlier. You talk about classic nonprofits as well. Then you talk about challenging for profit businesses that maybe don't necessarily have a social component, but to think about opening up ownership in their companies differently, so that they, in effect, do through ESOPs and other employee ownership plans. And we, you know, we're fortunate to have examples of that in San Diego. But how did that become important to you as you started studying all of this as well.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 23:43
I first became a dean in 1998 and before I started my job. Right after, during the interview process, I met a student, a doctoral student in our program, who had just come from Mondragon, Spain. He was in his late 50s, maybe 60 years old, and he had been the head of Sunoco, VP for Sunoco for the world, or something, some big position

Grant Oliphant 24:08
sounds like a big job.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 24:09
Yeah, it was. And yeah, he's in this doctoral program, which had been a dream of his. And he said, I just came back from Mondragon, Spain, and you used to live in Spain. What do you think of Mondragon? And I was kind of embarrassed, because I had lived in the Canary Islands, which are two and a half hours away by plane, so I had never been to Mondragon. So he said, we're taking a group of students. It's the first time we're doing it. Would you like to come? So I went. It changed my life, and it changed my life, because I saw how in the late, around 1950 that this priest, Father, Arizmendiarrieta, was living in the poorest region of Spain, and brought together a group of at that time, young men to say, we can't live like this. We have to have opportunities. We don't want people to move away. What can we do? Fast forward to today. 90 co ops, never been on strike, which that's a big deal in Spain, never to have a strike. The standard of living is high, one of the highest regions of Spain. When I lived there, it was the poorest region of Spain. So this is miracle that's taken place in that region. What can we learn from that? And what can we learn from a cooperative model?

Grant Oliphant 25:25
So, and that got you into it,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 25:26
that got me into it, and and so I've read everything I can. I've been to co ops around the world after that, all types of co ops. And so here in San Diego, I've connected with the co op community. And for the next couple of years, I would, I'd like to do whatever I can to promote their work, because they don't have a lot of support in their particular Can

Grant Oliphant 25:51
you give an example of a co op here that would illustrate this point?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 25:55
Yeah, some of the food, mostly their food co ops in this area. Of course, you know, there's another market that's opening up I just joined. It's a co op in Imperial Beach. So most of them are food related. There are also some fishing co ops in Mexico, in Baja, and there are a lot we could have cooperative housing that would bring money to people, that would bring equity. People would have equity in their house. If we had housing co ops, we could have so many other types. But for whatever reason, I don't hear those conversations in San Diego. And so I'm trying to ask myself, what kind of conversations can I bring with my students and my connections so that we can at least begin the dialog

Grant Oliphant 26:48
to build momentum for that type?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 26:50
Yeah,

Grant Oliphant 26:50
I mean, this is this feels extremely important as we think about how how glaring the wealth divide is in this country, and one way to revisit that is for companies to share ownership more broadly. And the co op model, by definition, shares ownership among the participants. So it's it seems to promise a different way forward.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 27:21
You know, Grant, if I may, when in 1965 a CEO on average in the United States made 20 times what the lowest full time employee made. So 1965 about 20 to one was the ratio. Fast forward to now. It's about 350 to one, right? CEO pay is in the stratosphere. This is creating great and that's just one example, one killer fact out there. This is creating Gross, gross inequities in every community in America, employee ownership and other alternative forms have an opportunity to change that, to to write it again.

Grant Oliphant 28:13
Yeah, so that's what I that's what I wanted to get at. And thank you for for pushing on that point, because this is not this is not simply motivated by your sense of justice around individual companies. It's about the broader society that we're a part of and and how to make it more sustainable for everyone. Yes, so I'd like to believe that San Diego is, or can be, on the forefront of much of this work. And we do have some spectacular companies here that model various aspects of this. Taylor guitars, I think, is a standout, right? Yeah, so, and we've got Dr Bronner's, which is got a social mission, and yet it feels like we're still learning. Is that, because all communities are still learning, and, and we're just one of many, or are there special circumstances here that we're struggling with? How do you see the opportunity here?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 29:18
Well, there's enormous opportunity and, you know that I work with the Benefit Corporation community, the certified B Corp community. They're part of the worldwide movement, and they are, they want to you know that they're that I love some of their goals to become one of the key cities in America for the growth of benefit corporations. There are others that have there are more benefit corporations, more certified Benefit corporations in other regions. Part of it is because the ecosystem already existed there. San Diego's ecosystem around supporting these alternative forms of business really needs to be supported more. A colleague of mine, Sam Maseo, is one of the few people. One of the few lawyers who understands the B Corp movement. He is a B Corp. If an organization wants to have an alternative form of ownership, if they want to be a co op, where do they even go to get legal advice? How many lawyers have worked in the creation of a co op, with the conversion of an organization into a co op. So the I think that there's a lot of interest by people out there. I think the universities and other organizations need to play an education role, but we also need to support the accountants, the lawyers, the folks who are going to help those organizations to be whatever form they would like to become.

Grant Oliphant 30:47
And just for clarification, a B Corp, or a benefit corporation, is a particular type of social enterprise that actually has to adhere to a rigorous set of certification standards.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 30:59
Well, the B Corp does the benefit corporations. He says they have to have a social mission, and they're great, and I'm thrilled with benefit corporations, but they don't have to be certified and meet particular standards which the B Corp community does.

Grant Oliphant 31:16
So one of the ways that you're taking on trying to build more of this movement in San Diego, and also to bring the expertise of San Diego to other places around the world, is through a program you're just launching called the Global Entrepreneurship fellowship, and it is focused on this type of social enterprise work. Tell us about what you have in mind for that and what you're trying to accomplish through it.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 31:44
Sure. So it's originally I thought I was going to attract a different audience than I actually attracted. I thought I was going to attract people my age who had companies and maybe wanted to make them better in some ways, but I actually have the 35 to 55 year olds mid career people. They are either the CEOs or in that C suite office. And we started in San Diego in January. We launched. We visited Taylor guitar. We visited Dr Bronner's, because they are wonderful, wonderful examples. There are other companies we could have gone to, but those are two shining ones. Next we're going to Spain. We'll be in Barcelona, Spain. Because why does Barcelona Spain have so many benefit corporations and B Corps certified organizations? It's one of the shining lights of Europe. Couple of other cities as well. And then we're going

Grant Oliphant 32:36
to so many ways,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 32:38
exactly, besides, it's just, it's just a beautiful place to be. But then we're going to Mondragon to deeply examine the co ops and the Co Op model, and then we'll be off to Rwanda later in the summer, because Rwanda is a phenomenal example of economic development in what at that time, right after genocide, every single institution was destroyed, and their president said, we will become the Singapore of Africa. And I believe they are on their way. And so let's learn from them.

Grant Oliphant 33:09
So you put this curriculum together, and I know the program is just starting, but you knew what you were doing and putting together those three destinations and and what you hope students will learn, and I know some of that is organic, and you're going to learn alongside them, but at least at the outset, what do you think are some of the takeaways that a community like ours and the set of students third I love the fact that they're mid career. It means that they've got some runway in terms of of of their future leadership, what do you hope that they will take away from this?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 33:44
Well, I had a nonprofit CEO come to me at the end of our three days, and she said, I can't believe I didn't know all of these things about our community, and this has direct implications for my nonprofit. Now I'm not exactly sure what she was referring to, but she saw the connections, and that had always been my goal for the nonprofit folks. So because I was a little worried, are they going to see the relevancy? And they saw it. They saw it loud and clear. So just their networking. They met last Friday, the people who are from San Diego, not everybody's from San Diego, but the people who are from San Diego, they met last Friday night to have a drink together. So they're getting together beyond and that's part of the reason for this is, how can we bring people together from different sectors, but all want to have a successful business that has a good a strong social impact. How can we bring them together? Because they will do their magic in their relationships, and I'm just kind of facilitating their learning.

Grant Oliphant 34:52
I love that. I love that story, and it's the type of learning that's available to leaders, whether they're in charge of small organizations or big ones. And they can bring home. So I'm, you know, I ever since I you and I first started talking about this, I have, I have been thinking, this is a huge opportunity for San Diego, and it ought to be part of the portfolio of the work of the Prebys Foundation. And I've noticed, and looking around the country at other foundations, that this is an area that foundations are intrigued by, but not leaping into. That's typical, you know, it's the way the it's the way the field works, but in some ways, but I'm, I'm curious to get your take on why foundations have been relatively slow on the uptake in backing this movement and this shift that you're describing, especially if you're correct, which I believe you probably are, that this is a vehicle for addressing generational wealth issues, the socio economics that so bedeviled the country at the moment, and the wealth divide and income divide. Why are, why are we not moving faster on, on this work.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 36:04
So much of it is new, yeah, so so much of it, I mean, B Corps and benefit corporate. Benefit corporations and B Corp certification did not exist 15 years ago, 16 years ago. So it takes a while for a movement to move forward. When you look at all that's been written about alternative forms of business, it's all the last 10 years. So that's one piece. I think another part of it is foundations are comfortable doing commissioning reports. So I have noticed,

Grant Oliphant 36:40
What do you mean by that?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 36:42
I don't think we've commissioned too many reports yet, but, you know, I was on the Irvine Foundation Board. I love it. It's great foundation, and they've commissioned a report that I'm using in my work right now, and it looked at co ops in California. That report had not been done. It needed to be done for the entire state had been done for a few areas. So that's one role that that foundations are comfortable playing, and it's also can be a catalytic role for people like myself to then take that data and use it in the ways locally that we can use it or with our students. That's another piece. I also think that a lot of foundation boards have people. And let me tell a quick story. One of the donors for the programs that I work in, he said to me, he said, Paula, you know, I worked with him in micro finance. And he said, What are these benefit corporations, B Corp, what is all this stuff? I got a business degree, and I don't know anything about them. I said, What year did you graduate? Because it's so new these ideas, they're just not a part of most business people's understanding of the options. So if I want to create a business, and I go to a lawyer and help me create a business, they might tell me about an LLC or an S corp. They're not going to talk to me about becoming a benefit corporation, because it's still not typical for people to know about it. Foundation boards, they're comprised of people my age, more or less, who don't have, if they're in business, they have a traditional form for their business. So they don't, we don't know what we don't know, and so people are not aware of this. And when I talk about it to anybody who's above the age of about 40, they tend not to know what I am talking about.

Grant Oliphant 38:46
I Good. I'm older than that, so you're letting me off. That makes all the sense in the world. It raises the question for me, of course, about what what it will take to have this movement take off. You know what? What is missing? So what you just described was a fundamental problem of awareness. It's a new it's a new set of models, new behavior. You're You're so right to point to the set of infrastructure like lawyers and law firms, if they're not advising clients that this is an option, then they're probably not having that conversation unless the client is asking for it. So just awareness is one pillar. What else is missing, though? What will it take?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 39:35
It takes champions. So for example, you know, Grant that I'm not a huge fan of private equity, but there are people in that space, people like Pete Stavros, and I believe, you know, I believe you went, you heard a TED talk that he gave, who they are making their niche by working and helping companies to become employee owned, right? And it's not just. And some of the research that they are coming up with in the nonprofit that they have is that, why do they have some companies in their portfolio that they've all, let's say they all have ESOPs. They've all become ESOPs. But why are some doing better than others? Why are some struggling, or, you know, changing their minds about about the model? Well, it's leadership, then it's leadership, and then, you know, I'm a student of leadership. I'm a professor of leadership. What is it about leadership? Well, it's empathy. It's empathy that the person has for their employees. You know, I look at companies like Bob's Red Mill, they make muesli. Yes,

Grant Oliphant 40:49
Bob just I've eaten their products. Yeah.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 40:52
Well, great products. Number one, but, but number two, why is it a worker owned organization? Why did he care so much about employees? What motivated Bob well. For Bob, one of the things that motivated him was his faith. Okay, that was really important to him, and he wanted people to do well because of his faith. Other people are immigrants, and they want people to do well because they that they were doing better than their parents, and they want their employees to do others are women owned because they've seen that women haven't had the opportunities in companies. So they're going to push for their employees. So there's different forms of motivation, and I really and that's another reason that foundation boards need to be diverse to represent all of these different groups, so that all of these other ideas are coming to the table. So just to go back to what KKR is doing, I think it's exciting. It's only one model of employee ownership, but it can make a difference for the employee.

Grant Oliphant 41:53
I think what I recall from the talk that I saw Pete Stavros give was that he argued that, obviously, employee ownership is a way of addressing the social economic divide, but that's a social problem. He also made the case that it results in better run businesses.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 42:14
Absolutely,

Grant Oliphant 42:15
they perform better.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 42:16
The culture improves because, you know, this basic theory in education part is called participation identification. If a child participates in school, they will identify with school. If they participate in a gang, they will identify in a gang. If I participate in my organization, if I feel that I'm an owner of my organization or that I'm involved in some way in decision making, in my organization, there is a greater likelihood that I am going to stay there, and the culture of the organization is going to be stronger.

Grant Oliphant 42:50
So your answer to my question about what else was missing was champions. I think now you've also pointed to a information set that is growing that can make the case. You also mentioned leadership, and I was really intrigued that in the context of leadership in this space, you talked about the role of empathy, maybe not having its moment in on the global stage right now. So talk to us a little bit about why that the qualities of leadership that you really see emerging through the work that you're doing.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 43:27
Yeah, you know, first of all, I believe, I believe that empathy can be taught. I'm very practice oriented, so I'm always taking students out into the community. And I was at the University of Connecticut, and we were doing work in Hartford, and I'm with a whole bunch of folks. My students are graduate students, so they were probably 25 to 35 and they were of all colors, and it didn't matter what color they were, what the key factor I found with empathy in this particular setting was socioeconomic background, because people of color were just as critical as white people about what we were seeing and experiencing, whereas a few of the students, regardless of their color, who had grown up with very, very little, maybe living in poverty or on the edge of poverty, had a very different viewpoint. We have more in common with people from our own socio economic level than we do just because of the color of one's skin. So I took what I thought was the teachable moment at that time, forgot our whole curriculum and what we were doing, and we spent time together as a group, going deeply on what we had seen, what we had experienced there, and why we were feeling the way we were feeling about the people that we were interacting with. And I saw growth in my students over time. I saw them caring more- because I worked them for a few years. These were school principals caring more about students and families that asking themselves questions that they hadn't before. So so if we can teach empathy, then somebody's a leader of a nonprofit or a for profit. You don't have to have experienced all these things in your own lifetime, but you have to be, I don't know what it is. You have to be open and willing to listen and have a conversation about the elephant in the room.

Grant Oliphant 45:35
Do you? Do you see a change happen in your participants in these programs in terms of their leadership style.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 45:45
Maybe, you know, that's a hard one, because it's long term.

Grant Oliphant 45:47
Yeah,

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 45:50
yes. Retrospectively, I've had so many of my students, this is why I love to teach come forward and say x experience or I was reading a student's paper the other day about a professor in another class, and we had this portfolio class, and in this portfolio, she wrote about this professor and what they had done in the book they had read, in the conversations they had read, and how for the last three years in the program, it's impacted her. It was so powerful that I went to his door and told him the story, and he was flabbergasted that that would have that kind of impact, because we don't how do you measure that? Okay? So you don't see a lot of evidence, but, but I have seen anecdote, one, not one anecdote, but many, many anecdotes have told me that's data, right? Lots of anecdotes, yes, and told me that we can teach it and we It does make a difference.

Grant Oliphant 46:50
So Paula hadn't anticipated asking this question. But, you know, I'm just mindful that in a recent survey of leaders in the nonprofit sector, there's a real feeling at the moment of actually, the word that that was used was of feeling dispirited, that the work of the sector is is under threat, that leaders feel intimidated. They feel as if the work they've spent their lives doing is is at risk of being undermined, and yet you are an incredibly hope, hopeful person, and even earlier in our conversation, you described the current assault and environmental standards as a blip that You that You think over time will work itself out. So what, what gives you that hope, and how do you communicate that to the future leaders that you're working with? Or do they give it to you?

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 47:53
Well, they give it to me a lot, because, you know, look at Patagonia, look at Yvonne Chuna I don't know what is he now, 85 years old. I don't know. I mean, he's been going against the tide his entire career, but he believes in it, and he's passionate about it, and he knows that his example will it'll ripple out. So our nonprofit folks. You know, this is why I try to be so positive with them and support them in any ways, in my very small ways that I can. You're making a difference out there. You're making a huge impact. Believe in your work and just keep on doing it.

Grant Oliphant 48:39
Yeah, that's that. I appreciate that and I and I think it's a message that needs to be heard. More and more, I'm wondering if there's something I've forgotten to ask you in the or that you you hoped to discuss in the context of this work that you're doing. How do you imagine that you will end your Global Entrepreneurship fellowship? What will be the message that you leave students with when they walk out the door? Yeah, maybe we'll have to make them promise not to listen to this.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 49:10
I guess I want them to tell me that this experience was important for them. I'm not saying it's going to be the experience of their lifetime, but that it was a significant learning experience for them, and that they want me and my colleagues to continue to offer this learning experience, because it's an enormous amount of work to put this together, and it takes and I'm grateful To all of the organizations that provided scholarships, including Prebys, to make it happen, because these are folks who are mid career, and they It's hard enough to get them to get the time off, to to to visit these places and have these experiences, but also it's expensive to do that, so let them. Let other folks tell me that they need this, and then we will try to do it again.

Grant Oliphant 50:06
You know, you and I were just briefly talking before we started about Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote about the what he called associations, which was sort of the predecessor, precursor to nonprofits in America. And you know, in describing that America is great because it is good, and if it ever stops being good, it will stop being great, he was pointing to the role of these associations in what he called our civil society, and how important they are to the definition of our national character. When I, when I look at the evolution since then, the the model is changing, because, of course, you know what was then, volunteer associations evolved and had to, in a very complex world, into nonprofits with paid staffs, and then they evolved into new models of paying for those, for those, for that work. And now we're watching a shift happen that you're describing, and that you're at the forefront of, where there is this intersection emerging between the for profit and nonprofit world, that's another vehicle for continuing the way in which America is good. And I think what all of that is to say, I want to thank you for the work that you're doing. I hope, I hope we make San Diego a national leader in this work, and I think if we do, it will be because of the groundwork that you have laid, and the payoff will be a society better equipped to meet the challenges that we face today. So I just want to say thank you.

Dr. Paula Cordeiro 51:51
Thank you. And I know San Diego can do it.

Crystal Page 51:58
I've always wanted to start my own B Corp, so this was the best conversation ever.

Grant Oliphant 52:02
This was a fantastic conversation. It was actually it was harder than I thought it would be, because Paula thinks so quickly and answers so succinctly that you've got to be ready to follow up very quickly. But that's kind of models how she approaches the work that she does. She's always thinking about what pieces need to be put in place to advance the agenda that she's working on. And that agenda, I think, is so exciting for San Diego. So B Corps are part of it. Definitely. I never know how to pronounce that exactly right.

Crystal Page 52:39
I mean, I think the proper term is B Corporation, yeah, but we're in the now.

Grant Oliphant 52:43
But you know her idea, you know, and she's seen this from every perspective. She's been a teacher, I mean, a professor. She's been on the board of a major foundation, the Irvine Foundation, here in California. She's worked with nonprofits of all kinds. She's started a center dedicated to nonprofit excellence and leadership. So she's got the whole the whole package, but what she's seeing down the road is that there is a convergence coming around businesses that care about their impact on the world and how to engage employees in a purpose driven way, and customers in a purpose driven way, and the nonprofit sector, which is having to figure out new models to survive and be relevant in a really rapidly changing world. And I just thought it was so interesting, how she put those pieces together,

Crystal Page 53:41
absolutely. I think for me, what it is with Paula is she's able to step up, to use the metaphor, up on the balcony and look and say, all these things do go together, and then she's down on the ground saying, Hey, have you thought about talking to this person or that person? But the way in which she does it is also storytelling, right? She talked about the gifts and the resources of folks. But even when she went back to her own origin story of the diversity of that community and how it informed how she connects with folks in the food and the culture, that's clearly what she's building with the vision and the story she's telling now, yeah,

Grant Oliphant 54:15
I love, for example, on the storytelling front, the metaphor she used about when you're in a storm, you need a compass. And, you know, she's very clear on the environment that we're operating in, and the need to have clarity around goals and principles and values and how that steers and guides us. And so that, for me, was one of the pieces that resonated in that way. The other thing that really struck me about this interview, and I think it's really important for San Diego, is that she sees something happening here that is of value to the world. She also sees something happening globally, that is a value to what's happening here. And what I mean by that is simply she sees our leadership in San Diego, around employee owned companies, around B Corps, around mission driven for profit entities, and the convergence of those with nonprofits, but she is also studying that and helping people in San Diego to study that in places like Rwanda. And she has a capacity to see leadership at a global level, and then to want to bring that back to what's happening here on the ground in San Diego. And when I see that sort of cross pollination, what I walk away with feeling is, oh, you know, we could be a global leader, not because we are currently a global leader, but because we have the seeds of it, and we can learn from the best examples all around the globe. Why? Because people like Paula will make sure that we learn from the best examples around the globe.

Crystal Page 56:11
Yeah. It actually made me think of I think it was in season one with Sid Vivek when he talked about the youth, if they can see it,

Grant Oliphant 56:16
Wow throw back,

Crystal Page 56:16
right? Yeah. I encourage folks to listen to that one. But if they can see it, they can believe it, right? So she's taking this cohort of global leaders, our San Diego leaders, to go around the world and see that leadership and better understand the case studies of how those business practices work, how it's tied back to community. And then those folks get to bring that back home to all the rest of us, you know. And so I feel like no matter our age, right, we have to have the ability to see it. And then I also know her website gets 1000s and 1000s of hits. So her as a subject matter expert, what really stuck with me, to build off of what you were saying, is I noticed it's she sees the gifts and skills in everyone. But there was also a couple times where you two talked about the generations, right, the intergenerational learning. And I just feel like Paula is not above learning from anyone. So what can I learn in every instance of conversation? And then, how do we make business better because of that? How do we make our nonprofits stronger because of that? And I just think that's a piece of the vision that we've all wanted, and she's trying to make it real.

Grant Oliphant 57:25
It's such a good point. You know, I think her curiosity, you can call it intellectual curiosity, which certainly it is, but it's, it's just a far ranging curiosity is a great model for all of us. And when I think about again what we could make happen here in San Diego, you know, the world is currently thirsting for new models of getting things done. And we are, we are, I think, aware that some of the old models are growing tired or need help, and and San Diego could be one of the places where the old models get reinvented. By the way. Note that I didn't say thrown away, nor would she. What she's seeing, though, is, again, this word convergence. She's seeing this coming together of these different approaches. And I think what we if we if we are willing as a community, if we are willing, like Paula, to learn from the best examples around the globe, and to leverage the assets we have right here in town, prepared to teach us about that, then we can emerge as one of the places in the world where a desperately needed new model of social change and of thinking about business, and of how we approach capitalism, and what the right approach to to the communities that we want to build is, you know, this that could happen here?

Crystal Page 58:59
Yeah, I think, you know, as we're winding down, I'm just like, hey, San Diego, we have this huge opportunity to innovate, re innovate, re innovate. What business, what that social movement looks like here, and we have all the talent to do it, and other talents on its way in, I'm sure, from all across the globe, because we're a great place to be. But if we can kind of listen and get this out to the right nonprofits and businesses and help support those like you said, convergence of it, there's such an opportunity here. We just have to take it. Well,

Grant Oliphant 59:33
I think that's a great place to end that. Thought there's a great opportunity. We just have to take it. I love that. So thank you for another great conversation, and what a pleasure it is to have had Paul on this program.

Crystal Page 59:48
Great. Thank you all so much. Thanks for stopping and talking with us, and always good to see you. Grant

Grant Oliphant 59:52
likewise. Thanks, Crystal.

Grant Oliphant 59:54
This is a production of the Prebys Foundation,

Crystal Page 1:00:04
hosted by Grant Oliphant

Grant Oliphant 1:00:06
co hosted by Crystal page

Crystal Page 1:00:10
CO produced by Crystal page and Adam Greenfield,

Grant Oliphant 1:00:14
engineered by Adam Greenfield,

Crystal Page 1:00:17
production coordination by Tess Karesky,

Grant Oliphant 1:00:20
video production by Edgar Ontiveros Medina,

Crystal Page 1:00:24
special thanks to the Prebys Foundation team.

Grant Oliphant 1:00:27
The stop and talk theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical Groove.

Crystal Page 1:00:32
Download episodes at your favorite podcatcher, or visit us at prebysfdn.org.