Live with Darren Walker! (EP.37)
Last Updated
May 13, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Darren Walker. [Live show recorded: May 11, 2020.]
Guest: Darren Walker
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, an international social justice philanthropy with a $13 billion endowment and $600 million in annual grant making. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy and is co-founder and chair of the US Impact Investing Alliance.
Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs including the Rebuild New Orleans initiative after Hurricane Katrina. In the 1990s, as COO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation—Harlem’s largest community development organization—he oversaw a comprehensive revitalization strategy, including building over 1,000 units of affordable housing and the first major commercial development in Harlem since the 1960s. Earlier, he had a decade-long career in international law and finance at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and UBS.
Darren co-chairs New York City’s Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, and serves on the Commission on the Future of Rikers Island Correctional Institution and the UN International Labor Organization Commission on the Future of Work. He also serves on the boards of Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Gallery of Art, Art Bridges, the High Line, VOW to End Child Marriage, the HOW Institute for Society, the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the recipient of 13 honorary degrees and university awards, including the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from Harvard University.
Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren was a member of the first class of Head Start in 1965 and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, which in 2009 recognized him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award—its highest alumni honor. He has been included on numerous annual media lists, including Time’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative People, and Out magazine’s Power 50.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hey, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Workshop. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE! The Morning(ish) Show, even more so today. We are so excited for our episode. Today we're joined by Darren Walker. Darren is the President of the Ford Foundation and as a genuinely awesome person. Fun little story: As I was just sharing with Darren in the green room, when he agreed to be on the show through our mutual friend. Our mutual friend, she said, "yeah, good news, tonight Darren is going to be on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah." And it was immediately this moment of like, Oh dear God, what have we gotten ourselves into? Uh, so, so we'll see. Most of you know, Darren and the terrific work that he and the Ford Foundation do. If you have any questions about bios, links, they're all in the description to this. So let's just get going. Without further ado, Darren, welcome to the show.
Darren Walker:
Thank you for having me.
Lauren Ruffin:
So Darren, the first question that we always ask our guests are, how are you and how is your community doing?
Darren Walker:
Well, I am fine, all things considered. When I'm asked that question, it has to be in consideration of all the things going on around me. I'm doing fine, but the world is not. And I recognize my privilege and the level of security I have, which insulates me in some ways from what every day people have to deal with, which is how to make enough money to pay rent. And I have a decent livelihood so that you and your family can live with dignity. That today is a real challenge in this city and in this country as a result of this horrific pandemic, that is wrecking havoc on the lives of the people who are always most vulnerable, Black folks, Brown folks, Queer folks, people who have been marginalized historically. And in this increasingly unequal world, the inequality that is revealed as a result of this calamity is, I think it brings into stark relief of what we always know.
Darren Walker:
And we know who is going to be harmed the most, what communities are going to be discriminated against the most. This is not a new phenomenon, it is a recurring nightmare for some folks. And so Darren Walker is doing fine. All things considered
Tim Cynova:
Darren, what does it look like right now? Just from a practical standpoint for work at the foundation, I assume you all are working remotely or from various places. Have you done that before? Is that actually the case? How are you coordinating with the team?
Darren Walker:
Well, we are working remotely and it's actually been pretty seamless because we had in place a very robust business continuity plan. So in case there was some shock we could very quickly pivot and work remotely. We have the equipment and the resources. So relative to our grantees, this has been a very easy transition. Now that's not to say that people aren't emotionally traumatized, that people are not feeling the various roller coaster of emotions that one feels. But relative to our grantees, relative to the nonprofits who are out there operating without endowment, without wealthy boards, without the equipment, we made the transition quite easily. But we are concerned about the state of the field, particularly in the areas where we work with the lens of racial equity. And a concern about the organizations and institutions that serve our community and how resilient they will be in the face of what will be a, not a sprint, but a marathon of challenges of postponed fundraisers, of canceled seasons, of a revenue source that evaporates, how are these organizations going to survive?
Darren Walker:
It's essential that they survive because without them, we have no culture in America. We have no justice. The nonprofit sector has been the one leg of the stool that consistently fought for justice, have fought for the rights of those who are most forgotten and left behind. And then the art, it is those organizations who have often provided the creativity, ingenuity innovation, that has made possible the larger American, creative, artistic experiment. So without these organizations and the communities they are embedded in and represent, it's hard to imagine how we're even going to have something called American culture.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. And so you just mentioned organizational resilience and how fluent we can support that, but how are you approaching your own resilience and self care while you're in quarantine and during this time?
Darren Walker:
That's a great question, especially for an admitted, acknowledged, extreme extrovert. For those of us who have had enough coaching and Myers-Briggs testing and all other sorts of personality disorder testing, I can tell you that it is very challenging to live in an apartment and basically not have any social engagement for two months and counting. I am a person who thrives, who desperately needs engagement with other human beings and to be denied that is very challenging for my own emotional health. And I have thought through the technology and the genius of Zoom and FaceTime to find proxies for what I need and it simply isn't possible. Because you go from one Zoom to the next Zoom and by the end of the day, you are spiffed and you don't feel like you've had any real human engagement.
Tim Cynova:
One of our previous guests, Caroline Woolard described every day as blurs day and every hour as Zoom o'clock, as it feels like you're going from one to the next. And speaking of Zoom recently Hannah Drake published a piece on ArtPlace America, their blog titled, We Will Not Zoom Our Way Out of This Crisis. And one of the memorable quotes from her piece that I found was, America, as we knew it has changed and similar to the USB port on my Mac book, it's not coming back.
Darren Walker:
That's right.
Tim Cynova:
And this got me to think about systemic change, systems change. And before the pandemic, it feels like probably for a lot of people, that there was a fairly abstract concept. Even if you talked about systems change and systemic change, but the pandemic, the surface for a lot of people, I think the systems and the systems in particular, as they're not working and they're falling apart. As you think about systems change in the current context, what comes to mind?
Darren Walker:
What comes to mind is the design of these systems. So the systems that are failing us were designed, choices were made, these systems don't exist in isolation. We made choices to have an economy that delivers far too much inequality and far too little opportunities. We made a choice to have a criminal justice system that disproportionately locks up Brown and Black people and poor White people. We made a choice to have a housing system that places, Black folks, Brown folks, people who have historically been discriminated against, in disadvantaged geography, this place far from opportunity. So these systems that we have designed, we now need in this PC world to redesign them, not renew them. I heard someone quite prominent say on television, we need to renew our American dream and we need to renew our economy. I do not want to renew our economy. The dictionary defines renew as restart something that was interrupted. I actually don't want to restart that economy. I want to reimagine the economy in a way that delivers more shared prosperity.
Darren Walker:
And so how do we design that economic system is the question that I believe is a critical question. Before we dive in the deep end of the pool and just bring forward the old tools that did not work for most of us.
Lauren Ruffin:
I can't agree more. I spend so much time thinking about how capital flows through our economic system. And one of the things that's really been sitting with me for the last two or three weeks as we saw the paycheck protection program rollout and EIDL loan come out. Some of the data suggests that 95% of Black businesses were locked out of those funds, 91% of Latin Mexicans businesses, these small businesses that are the engine of Black and Brown communities in terms of training apprenticeship, just community building. And I've been thinking about that and also in the longer term context of traditional loans drying up, CDFIs not giving and banks not lending to Black and Brown small businesses. It strikes me that philanthropy has all of a sudden become perhaps the one place that Black and Brown businesses and ideas and innovation can be funded. I don't think we talk about the sector in terms of the importance, it is in writing capital for these businesses ideas.
Lauren Ruffin:
Are you in Ford thinking about work in that lens and looking at your work as being a critical underpinning of funds for these businesses and for these ideas?
Darren Walker:
Well, first of all, that's a great observation. And the question about what Ford is doing, let's just go back in history. So the fourth foundation helped to create America's first community development financial institution, the CDFIs the emerged out of the 1960s, and an effort at what was then called urban renewal. And a number of interventions that the foundation played a role in that thought to mitigate and redress, the red lining that had occurred that made it impossible for Black businesses to receive loans or Black homeowners to get mortgages, et cetera. So there are a number of things, including the community reinvestment act and the local initiative support corporation, the affordable housing movement that the foundation was involved in. But what we have been stymied in is scaling these challenges, scaling these opportunities. And the challenge is that you fast forward, as you just were describing very well, what happened with the PPP program and the Cares Act B for B Black businesses.
Darren Walker:
And of course, as you probably noticed in the most recent round of PPP, there was an acknowledgement that in a first round Black businesses and CDFIs had been ignored. And so there was an effort that was driven in part by the Congressional Black Caucus who heard from Bayer constituencies, what was actually going down in their communities. And they insisted that there'll be some recognition that this needed to be righted, and so there is now a recognition of that. Now, whether it will actually flow to our communities and our businesses remains to be seen. And this is why a number of us are funding accountability efforts to follow the money and to measure and assess and survey Black businesses to understand whether or not any of those funds are actually flowing into our communities. I think the foundation, you are right, when you say philanthropy could, that's right, philanthropy could do a whole lot of the things, but will philanthropy do it?
Darren Walker:
So you asked the right question. I would say, the jury is out. Are we willing to pay out more at a time of an existential threat, when it is no longer defensible to simply say, we pay out our 5% because that's what the government requires us to do? Is it defensible to say, we are looking at our investments strictly from the standpoint of maximizing returns? I don't believe it is acceptable. And I believe that in this PC world, some of the things that we in philanthropy were able to sustain in the BC world they're going to be reckonings. And people are going to expect and should expect in this moment to not have the answer be what the answer was in the BC world.
Tim Cynova:
Darren, what do you think is going to take? Getting ready for this interview, I meditated and reflected a lot of, if I were in your position or one of your colleagues positions running a foundation, would I increase the payout? Would I just go bigger, go home? Be like, if our commitment to social justice is this, and this is the time, would there be a plan that would cause me to say, let's just cash it all out and go big and, Oh, we're going to do our best right now. Thankfully you and your colleagues are far smarter in mortality than I am, so I'm not having to make those decisions but I wonder what it would take for the community to say, well, this is our moment. This is why we've been around forever or for however long, let's make the most of it.
Darren Walker:
Well, I think you are right, that it will take prayer and meditation and more to actually get the sector to fully embrace all of the leverage capability our institutions have individually and we as a sector. So I do believe that philanthropy is filled with thoughtful, committed, passionate people who want justice, who want to fight poverty, but there's also this thing called the market and we allow the market to trump the imperative to do what is best. And so what I say to our fellow legacy foundations, who like the Ford Foundation are charged with transitioning into the future and future generations and preserving the endowment, all of those very important, but do share a responsibility, is that there may not be a future for our endowment. There may not be a future for this democracy if we let slip away from us the one opportunity we have to actually begin to get things right in this country and in the world.
Darren Walker:
And so, while I appreciate as a former banker, the importance of fiduciary responsibility, I think that the four foundations endowments will be better served in the long run if we have a healthy flourishing democracy. I believe that we have to go beyond the 5% and look for ways to substantially increase, certainly in this year and probably next year, most definitely the level of giving, the level of investing.
Tim Cynova:
We're coming up on time and want to make sure we get the suitcase question in, because it's just a fun question to ask. Before we get to that last question, you co-authored a piece in the Chronicle Philanthropy about a week or two ago, titled, In Covid-19 Crisis, Philanthropy's Attention Must Focus on People With Disabilities. In previous episodes, we've had the amazing opportunity to chat with Deana Haggag at United States Artists and stylists Marcus Ware. And wanted to have an opportunity for you to maybe encapsulate or what resonates from you about this moment in time. And one of the things I think we're hearing is, how can this not just be a short-lived trend?
Darren Walker:
Well, I think we have come to understand the long standing prejudice, discrimination and bias against people with disabilities and the invisibility of them in our quote unquote "strategy". Our are strategies that were designed to broaden the circle and bring more justice and we forgot people with disabilities. That reflects our ableism that reflects our bias and we need to, we progressives, we foundation people, need to own our culpability in marginalizing this critically important community. And even more important is our mission, of our justice, our reducing poverty and inequality. How will we have more justice in this country if people with disabilities remain discriminated against? In seeking employment, housing, the right to live independent dignified lives. We've got to take on those costs of it and make sure we support them with the bigger, that we support LGBTQ and African American and Latino and native, et cetera.
Darren Walker:
This community cannot be left behind. In fact, we can't have justice without this community being at the center of our work. And so for me, it's been liberating to be liberated from my own ignorance and my own sense of myths that we progressives have about feeling that we know what's right and what's wrong. And right in front of us fits a community that defines and knows what it feels like to be left out and left behind. And they have been invisible to large foundations. And only recently have we large foundations come to understand how critical addressing the issues that affect people with disabilities is to our mission.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thank you for that. I feel like I was in church for a second. I might've been saying, Oh, a little too loud.
Darren Walker:
That's right. I need you to stand up and do it [crosstalk 00:00:19:45].
Lauren Ruffin:
I was, I had that moment. So I guess we should go to our last question. I know we're out of time.
Darren Walker:
What is the last question? I hear it's a famous one.
Lauren Ruffin:
The last question is getting famous. Both of our viewers there [crosstalk 00:19:57]. So throughout your life Darren, you've been carrying a figurative suitcase with you, of behaviors, habits, things you really love. The pandemics maybe made us question all of these things. My question is, what's one thing that you've been carrying around in your life suitcase for a long time that you're throwing out and you're never doing it again? And what's one thing that you're putting in your suitcase, one behavior, habits, this thing that you've never really done before that you've started to do that you think you're going to carry with you for the long haul?
Darren Walker:
I think the one thing that I'm going to leave behind is this notion of the critical importance of working in an office and the need to be face to face. I fought tooth and nail about telecommuting and working remotely, because I said that we needed to build a community at Ford and to build that community and culture, people had to see each other face to face every day in the office. I have been disabused of that ideology and so I now understand that we can have an organization where people work remotely some of the time, not all of the time, but that they can work remotely effectively. If there is something that I want to do that I don't do enough, I think it is making sure that I own my right to be at the table. I have found that I, for my entire life as a Black man a Queer man, a man with my economic origin, I have often felt humbled to be at the table, to be included.
Darren Walker:
And I find that among a lot of people of color and women in rooms of power and influence to be grateful to be in the room. And I now have come to understand that we're in the room for a reason. And that is not to be grateful. That is to make sure that we are speaking truth to power and that we are interrogating our own beliefs and our own biases and prejudices and ideologies that get in the way. And so I am going to hopefully be more assertive about being in the room and doing the work that I'm there to do.
Tim Cynova:
Amazing. Darren, it has been an absolute pleasure getting to spend time with you. Thanks for going long on this interview. It's been a true pleasure. Thank you so much.
Darren Walker:
Thank you guys. This was great fun for me. Let's do it again.
Tim Cynova:
That's good. Take care. Thank you.
Darren Walker:
Bye. Bye.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck live adventure, with us on our final episode of season one, when we're joined by Elizabeth Streb. Miss us in the meantime, you can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and re-watch Work. Shouldn't. Suck live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it, who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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