Journey Towards Anti-Racism Ep9: Conversation with David Reuter (EP.62)
Updated
June 21, 2022
In episode nine of the 12-part podcast series, "White Men & the Journey Towards Anti-Racism," Tim interviews David Reuter, Partner at LLR, a private equity firm based in Philadelphia investing in technology and healthcare businesses.
This series was created to be a resource for white men who might be wrestling with questions like, “What’s my role in anti-racism, equity, inclusion, and justice work as a white man with power and privilege?” and “How might my personal commitment to do this work manifest itself in the organization I help lead?”
Are you new to the series? Check out episode 54 where podcast co-hosts Lauren Ruffin and Tim Cynova introduce and frame the conversations. Download the accompanying study guide. And explore the other episodes in this series with guests:
Raphael Bemporad (Founding Partner) & Bryan Miller (Chief Financial Officer), BBMG
Ted Castle (Founder & President) & Rooney Castle (Vice President), Rhino Foods
Ron Carucci, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Navalent
David Devan, General Director & President, Opera Philadelphia
Jared Fishman, Founding Executive Director, Justice Innovation Lab
Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder, B Lab; CEO, Imperative21
Kit Hughes, Co-Founder & CEO, Look Listen
Marc Mannella, Independent Consultant, Former CEO KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools
John Orr, Executive Director, Art-Reach
Sydney Skybetter, Founder, CRCI; Associate Chair & Senior Lecturer, Theatre Arts & Performance Studies Department, Brown University
Want to explore related resources primarily *not* by white guys? Check out our compilation of 30 books, podcasts, and films.
Host: Tim Cynova
Guest
DAVID REUTER is a senior private equity investment professional combining strong financial and strategic analysis skills, extensive transaction experience, and proven leadership and business development capabilities. He possesses an analytical mind that quickly adapts to new environments and situations, and is self-motivated and dynamic with natural business decision skills. David is a Partner with LLR Partners, a lower middle market private equity firm investing in technology and healthcare businesses. LLR collaborates with its portfolio companies to define high-impact growth initiatives, turn them into action and create long-term value. Founded in 1999 and with more than $5 billion raised, LLR is a flexible provider of equity capital for growth, recapitalizations and buyouts. Find out more about David here.
Host
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.
Transcript
David Reuter:
So I see people feeling overwhelmed with, how do I start? I have an hour today to do something, what do I do with my hour? And so I think the unknown and that linking is hard. And I think the other hard thing too is unpacking it individually. There's a lot of emotion that comes with it. I think there's a lot of denial that everybody subconsciously applies, not me type of thing. And I don't know that there's great trainers out there for the unpacking, to do it effectively for people. So I think there's a lot of ground to cover there. So then even we're talking about, there's some deep learning and reflection and developing that you got to do before you... I don't know if we even know how to quantify that. If somebody says, "Well, how long do I need to do the deep learning and reflecting before I can go take action?" I don't know what to say. Is that a week? Is it a month? Is it a year? Is it 20 years?
David Reuter:
I think those are the things that have been hard for us. I think the stuff that we've done, I feel like I'm happy with how it's going. It's always harder than you think. It takes longer than you think. It's more complicated to get consensus. But I feel like the steps that we've taken, I'm happy with how they're going.
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck; a podcast about, well, that. We've paused our regular podcast episodes to produce this 10-part mini-series called White Men and the Journey Towards Anti-Racism. While you can listen to the episodes in any order, if you're joining us in the midst of this adventure, I invite you to check out episode 54 of our podcast, where my cohost Lauren Ruffin and I introduce the series and frame these conversations. All of the episodes, as well as a whole host of amazing resources on the topic, not by white guys can be found on workshouldntsuck.co.
Tim Cynova:
In this series, we're talking with a variety of white guys who are personally and professionally engaged in anti-racism work. When asked, they each define the work in slightly different ways. Some articulate it as anti-racism or anti-oppression work. Others say they approach it more through a justice lens. Others, inclusion and belonging. Still others, equity and impact. Through these conversations, we'll explore the moments that led each of them to do this work, including their initial realizations that this was work for white guys to be doing. We'll discuss what's been most impactful and resonant to them in the journey? What's been most challenging? And since this is a podcast about the workplace, we'll discuss how this work shows up in the organizations they lead and the ones they work with.
Tim Cynova:
On today's conversation, I'm joined by David Reuter, a partner at LLR, a private equity firm based in Philadelphia, investing in technology and healthcare businesses. You can read more about David in his bio that's included in the description for this episode. So in the interest of time, let's get going. David, welcome to the podcast.
David Reuter:
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
So David, how do you typically introduce yourself and the work that you do?
David Reuter:
My paid job is providing growth in tech healthcare companies with capital and advisory services to help them grow and thrive. I'm part of a 100 person private equity firm, where we raise capital from large institutional investors and help those investors gain access to the frontline of these small growth companies. My unpaid job is to try to bring equity to the private equity market. Our industry has historically been pretty poor at diversity at the investor level. And then for a range of different factors, at the business evolution level, where it's just hard to gain access. And I think it's time to start to modernize this industry through the diversity, equity and inclusion lens at both the investment firms like mine and also at the growth companies that we support.
Tim Cynova:
What has that journey looked like for you to get to the place where you're trying to bring equity to field of equity?
David Reuter:
Yeah. It's interesting because I think in a lot of ways, pioneering. And I know for our culture, whenever you think of something new, usually the mandate is, go figure out what the other thought leaders are doing in the industry and see if we can replicate that. We tried that here, but there's not a whole lot out there in the public domain. So I think it's testing our boundaries just in general on some creativity and innovation to figure out how to do it. And that's really what we're embarking on over the past couple of years and have some pretty good examples we can share today.
Tim Cynova:
I found that early in the work that I was doing, where I was asking facilitators that were coming in and be like, "All right. Case studies, can you point me in direction of them?" We're like, "Yeah. There aren't many." And one of them in particular said, "But we'll be looking into what you're doing and so hope you'll be publishing about it." The white guys series that we're doing here is capturing some of the stories to share, because there is so much work that's being done in different ways.
David Reuter:
Absolutely.
Tim Cynova:
I guess, to start, how do you frame the commitment, the "work" that you're doing? Anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, justice, inclusion. How do you categorize that commitment?
David Reuter:
I like all the words you just used and I tend to incorporate most of them into the way that we see and are starting to frame the work that we want to do. The one that you didn't use that I also like, so I'd add to the list because I think it's a bit broader umbrella term and I'll talk more about how we're thinking about impact in a bit as well. But I think all of those words mean different things. And in some ways, you have to look at the comprehensive solution to cover each of them individually and maybe all of them as a whole eventually.
Tim Cynova:
How long have you really been thinking about this work personally? And then what does that look like at LLR as an organization?
David Reuter:
For me, I think I'm a late bloomer. I'm a white male. I grew up without noticing the privilege that I got by being both or each, white and male. And I certainly knew racism existed, but I think I saw it more in the form of what extreme people were doing versus everyday systematic versions of it. And I also felt like there was a group of people that were taking care of it. I don't know who that was exactly in my mind, but that it was getting taken care of and it didn't need to be something I worried about. And then if you fast forward to being an adult, I sought diversity for myself. I think I mostly did it because I wanted to be an interesting person. I wanted to experience and learn new and different things.
David Reuter:
And one of the places that that journey took me intentionally was into a mixed-race family. If you look at my close family today, it's small, it's 16 people. And that's grandparents, parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews. And across those 16 people, I literally have white, Hispanic, Black, and then each combination of those. So almost every person is like in its own racial class in this family or maybe there's two of something. And I think, unfortunately, I hate to mention the name, but the Trump election was really a shock for me because I started to see all the dimensions of racism that existed through that election cycle and the news cycle associated with it. And it was really a wake up call that people weren't taking care of racism and that it was a lot more systemic than I realized and it was really existing everywhere in an unlimited number of ways. And it really wasn't just the extreme people. It was everybody that was part of it.
David Reuter:
And then I think looking at my own family, just realizing that now I have these people that I am really closely connected to and care about deeply that are going to have to go through a lot of these different experiences as not white people that I lived. I realize that, I think first, I need to jump in, in a much different way to the work and I think ultimately motivate everybody to jump in. Because I think without everybody or a lot of people, we're not really going to make progress. I think to get to equity for each individual and peace in our country, you're going to need a lot of people really running in the same direction. So that's a little bit about me and my connection to it. Let me pause there and then I'm happy to jump into the work side of it as well.
Tim Cynova:
What have you found most useful in your personal journey?
David Reuter:
I think there's a bunch of things. I think that the way that I met you was through a group of people that are working on unpacking this in community. And so I think that one important part is finding other people that you can talk to about this. Because certainly if I went around to existing relationships that I have, there's going to be different degrees of interest in chatting about all these topics and maybe awareness or comfort talking about these topics. So I think there's a community aspect that I think when I do my own inventory, I feel like my personal network, my friends, my family are pretty homogenous in views. And so on one hand, it's good because I don't happen to have a lot of relationships with extreme racist people. But on the other hand, I think that my relationships are probably fairly moderate and passive in terms of what they're doing to drive change as well.
David Reuter:
So I think it's jumping outside of that comfort zone to find some people that are more like minded and ready to be activated. So I think that's a piece that's been interesting. I've also really jumped into a lot of training and learning and development, because I feel really unsophisticated from every aspect of even processing all of this stuff. I feel nervous about having conversations that I'm going to offend other people that look different than me on the other side of the table. So I've almost tried to absorb as much as possible. I just think there's so much learning and introspection that needs to happen first to give you perspective to then jump in and do action.
David Reuter:
I'll tell you a funny anecdote. We were doing some of this learning and reflecting work at my firm and maybe I was six months ahead on the program. And I just remember after a couple hours worth of talking at the firm, everybody was like, "We got to go. We need to jump in and take action." And I was like, "Let's be patient. We've only done two hours of listening to podcasts and talking about it." And then the next week now we're three hours in. I was like, "All right. Let's take a pause. Everyone wants to take action. I'm going to get out a pen and paper and let's talk about what we can do as a firm. Who wants to go first with an idea?" And nobody had an idea.
David Reuter:
And so I think that the linkage of learning and reflecting and getting trained and developed and educated takes longer than I think people's typical attention span is. And I do think that's important to then jump into the doing part and the action part so you can do it well. So I think for me, I'm in the earlier phases of trying to develop a network, trying to build some community and trying to feel like I'm getting caught up on an education that for me personally was... even though I feel like I'm a highly educated individual, it was a lacking piece of that educational experience for all of my life until pretty recently.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. We often hear about that tension, especially among white guys in leadership where, now what do we do about this? I'm often reminded of that quote, while white people are learning, black people are dying. And also, white people just need to sit with this. The group that we're a part of, we're working through Me and White Supremacy, Layla Saad's book in a very methodical way of, let's sit with the discomfort and really go deep on this. And at the same time, there's that tension about, all right, how do we operationalize this commitment into the things because we know it's happening right now? How does this start showing up at LLR, at the workplace? What has that journey been like with you and your colleagues, in particular as you are a white guy who holds positional power and privilege?
David Reuter:
Our journey's been interesting. For better or for worse, we started a concerted effort about six years ago, actually. And it was initially around some feedback that we had received from an investor who's capital came from a diverse community and felt that our team lacked diversity and felt that we owed it to their constituency to do better. And it was sad. I think that we probably didn't even realize it until it was brought up. So that was a little disappointing. But we took it on and I feel like this work is learning to walk. The initial year of what we were trying to do were like baby steps with a lot of falling down. And by falling down, I mean lack of progress where you're not going too far.
David Reuter:
And at first, it was really focused around our internal talent and what do the members of our firm look like? What backgrounds do they have? And for us, diversity actually even just started with non-male. So we need more women to start. We need non-white races next. So we got going with that. And I think that the next window was really the George Floyd movement was I think, a deeper smack in the face that really triggered us to take a bigger step back and look in the mirror to see who we are versus who we want to be. And I think that that led to a much deeper level of effort and energy to really stop with the baby steps and dive into the deep end of the pool and really start to think about how we can lead in our industry and try to drive more aggressive change and have more aggressive impact.
David Reuter:
And again, in a lot of ways, we're still early, even though we're six years in, but I'm still proud of where we've gotten, which is, we're now in process of building a multifaceted office of impact for the firm. And we're looking at literally every inch of our business model and finding places where we can have impact on our team and the diversity and equity too of our team on the firm as a whole. We have about 40 companies that we invest in that we're owners of. So then on those companies, that's the extended network of us. And then on the community, we're based in Philadelphia, as you mentioned. So we want to have an impact locally. I think people feel really passionate about why they're here in Philadelphia and want to help the city and people in the city that need it. And also the industry at large, which I mentioned earlier has not been great in the diversity and equity realm.
David Reuter:
Where that is inside the firm and to your point of harnessing all this energy, for me I'd rather see the unbridled energy. Then I can help the team shape and focus and deploy, than the lack of energy where then I have to stimulate it. So at least there's a spark and I want to hold onto that spark. And one example of something that really blew my mind recently was we've been doing... Again, this is my philosophy. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I've been trying to get people to walk before they run and to do this training and learning and introspection. And we've been doing a lot of this training of people inside the firm on racism, on diversity, on equity, on where firms like ours can go. And a lot of it has to do with themselves. And we've been having these round table discussions. And I can talk more about that later. It was a pretty interesting experience, both direct and indirect outcomes of those.
David Reuter:
Anyway, last year in the fall, we had a three-hour session with a great consulting firm that was talking about racial equity. I knew it was going to be a great session because I had done it before personally. I knew the facilitators and so I was pumped, but I said, "So we have this great session for three or four hours. And then what do we do with that?" And so we decided at the end of the session, because we didn't have any time in the schedule, we would invite people to this optional meeting the next day. And the invitation was, if you like what you hear and you want to engage in a deeper way, come to this meeting tomorrow and we can figure out what that means, totally open ended.
David Reuter:
And normally, we do other things like that at the firm where you have these volunteer extra credit stuff. And usually three to five people show up. So it's like, "Who wants to help with where we're going to donate money next year? Who wants to help with the social committee for what fun things we're going to do next year?" And you get a few people and it's great.
David Reuter:
So we show up the next day and there's over 30 people, which is over half the firm. And they're like, "We're in, let's go." And it was just great to see that the firm and the firm's culture has really developed a lot of passion for impact in a lot of genuine interest and making a difference. And so I want to make sure that I can, as a leader, keep that going. And it's amazing too, because these people are already running past me in the race with better ideas and more energy and more creativity. So it's phenomenal to see and inspiring to see that people can really take the ball and run with it.
Tim Cynova:
That's really exciting. Because as you pointed out, this is innovative work and it doesn't exist. There's not a template that we can just pull off the shelf. I mean, they're beginning to be some kinds of things that might approximate templates, but it's unique and bespoke. And so that's why I always find the fascinating with the learning. What are you doing? How are you approaching it? How can I do that differently? Or what can I learn from that? And so it's really great to have those different ideas. As you talk about the initial impetus for this work, having a client who said you're essentially a bunch of white people that doesn't feel aligned with the values that the people who are providing the capital. So you have clients, investors, you have your firm, and then you also influence a lot of other companies by being owners. What does that relationship look like? How does this inform and change the way you typically might work with other companies?
David Reuter:
That's a work in progress right now. We're mostly focused on what we can control right now, which is our own firm because there's a lot to do there. But we do have a process map laid out where later this year we intend to take a lot of the things that we've learned and done ourselves. And in some ways, turn it into a package that we can hand off to our companies because what we're finding... And maybe this has to change too. Eventually it's going to just take more work. But what we're finding is a lot of these companies, they're pretty intense in terms of the pressure on them to grow and perform and deliver on their business plans. I think that they do want to engage in a range of elements around diversity, around equity, around inclusion, around anti-racism, around making the world better.
David Reuter:
Some of the business models have a more natural connection into that. For instance, we invest in some healthcare companies that are actively trying to change their patient bases or change their outcomes or other things. But there are others that are software companies or technology companies that don't have as clear of a delineation of how they can impact the greater good. But I also see there's a time limitation that seems to come up a lot with anything that's outside of driving the business forward. And so I think we're trying to modularize this where maybe companies could have a bigger impact more efficiently, because we can take out a lot of the learning curve. And I do think over time, my hope would be that there also could be more time and space set aside to do this work because I think that the time and space is also needed.
David Reuter:
Step one is getting engagement. And I think if we can accelerate the time to value for some of these companies, because I think they do want to do a lot of these things. I think their younger workforce members are expecting it and it's becoming a bit more table stakes, I think as you try to employ people in the younger generations to have companies tackling this. And I know we get a tremendous amount of positive feedback from our younger colleagues that they love it, they're so excited by it, they have friends at other firms and nobody's talking about this other than us and so it's becoming more of a differentiator. But I think other people will have to follow that as well. So we do have an intent to guide this out. And then I think in the longer range, one of the things that we're looking into now is, does this become a bit of a differentiator for us in terms of how we find companies and how we plug into companies and who those companies are.
David Reuter:
And we got to figure that out. We have to unpack that because I think our investors today, they want the return first. And if you could do these other things behind it, that's an added bonus. And I think the question that some people are asking, which I think is a good question, is a lot of the investors or pension plans that represent communities of lots of people in the US. And how do those people feel? Do they want a blend of return and good, and what's the right mixture? And I think we're going to start working on that with those investors too, just to see what's possible and what the real guidelines are on that. So I think that you could see changes in the investment approach in the selection process and the sourcing process that start to plug in back to characteristics that are in the DE&I realm and landscape.
Tim Cynova:
I think it's interesting the approach here. You're starting to think about with the companies you're involved with, in a way of creating the processes and systems, and sharing in a way that they've already been vetted... Like inclusive hiring. You don't have to have gone deep into anti-racism and anti-oppression to be... including something like salaries in job postings or strictly structured interviews. You don't have to know the background of what this thing is, but you can help even without knowing that, I guess is what I'm saying there.
Tim Cynova:
I'd like to go back to the round table discussions at the company. As you mentioned, a lot of people showed up, a lot of people want to be involved in the work. What have those kinds of conversations looked like? And what have been the conversations at LLR that you're like, "Well, that was pretty easy"? And what are some of the ones where you're like, "Wow, that took a turn and I didn't expect it to maybe get thorny or really challenging"?
David Reuter:
I'm not sure that I have a great example of something that I would say didn't go well. I don't know that we've failed at something yet in this line of effort. I think the hard part to date has just been the unknown. My example earlier of all these people saying, we want to go do things and we want to get to work, but then nobody having an idea. That's just an unknown. I know there's a problem, I know I want to help solve that problem, but I have no idea what action to take to go solve the problem. So I think that's the scary part.
David Reuter:
I think the global pandemic. One thing for me that I keep thinking about is pre-pandemic. My kids are in school. We're pretty conservative at, we're not doing a whole lot for the last couple years outside of ourselves. So a lot of interaction with random people, whether it's meeting new people in my own work, networking or travels. We used to go do a lot more in person meetings. There'd be some downtime from formal conversations. You lose that with Zoom. Just meeting people randomly. Everything is take out and delivery. You're not even going to the grocery stores much or going on vacation as much. I feel like there's a lot of practice areas for some of this stuff in terms of just having small, basic conversations in your day to day life that I don't get to have and most people don't get to have. So I think that the hard part is the unknown. The hard part is seeing a problem that is really massive, and as you said, 400 years old or been around for a long time and seeps into every place you look.
David Reuter:
So I see people feeling overwhelmed with, how do I start? I have an hour today to do something, what do I do with my hour? And so I think the unknown and that linking is hard. And I think the other hard thing too is unpacking it individually. There's a lot of emotion that comes with it. I think there's a lot of denial that everybody subconsciously applies, not me type of thing. And I don't know that there's great trainers out there for the unpacking, to do it effectively for people. So I think there's a lot of ground to cover there. So then even we're talking about, there's some deep learning and reflection and developing that you got to do before you... I don't know if we even know how to quantify that. If somebody says, "Well, how long do I need to do the deep learning and reflecting before I can go take action?" I don't know what to say. Is that a week? Is it a month? Is it a year? Is it 20 years?
David Reuter:
I think those are the things that have been hard for us. I think the stuff that we've done, I feel like I'm happy with how it's going. It's always harder than you think. It takes longer than you think. It's more complicated to get consensus. But I feel like the steps that we've taken, I'm happy with how they're going.
David Reuter:
So examples would be our new hires are 50% not white males. And so that's up from a very small percentage. So I'm happy with that. We put in place a program just recently for our companies where we want to have at least one diverse board of directors member over a set timeframe of a year or something after we invest. Again, I don't know that's enough, but it's a start and we got consensus in alignment that we're going to make people do that. I think there's a lot of things like that. We launched a fund with capital from our team to invest in local funds that are controlled by diverse managers to invest in diverse owned and operated businesses. And so there's a full circle of community impact and investing capital that's being created by that. So all those things, they're off to a good start for early days. And the hard part is the strategy part and figuring it out.
Tim Cynova:
I'm reminded of a framing that my colleague, Courtney Harge sketched out a couple years ago where she was using Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours to be an expert or I guess that framing is "mastery." And she's like, "I did a quick sketch of people of color. If all they do is interact with whiteness in school and work," she's like, "By the time they're 30, they've interacted with whiteness 50,000 hours." So she's like, "I'm five times over expert and whiteness." And then to your earlier point, how much do you have to do before it's enough? It's like, "All right. Well, more than reading. That book and podcast might be great, you're just getting started." What does that mean to really understand whiteness that deep as someone who's not white? And then what's the journey look like for those of us who are middle aged, mid-career, just starting to learn about what this is and how it shows up and how it influences in a lot of unknown ways, the course of our careers and life? And then what do we actually do about it?
Tim Cynova:
Often it's a helpful touchstone to go back to, 50,000 hours at least. I've done my own tally on hours, but I know I'm still working up to 10,000. Also, I did a session with a fellow white guy around anti-racism and work. And it was like an hour long session. At the end, this white guy is like, "Yeah. That's all great but can you give some tangible things that we can do at our company?" And I'm like, "Oh God, the whole hour was spent on tangible things that we did in the organization." And my colleagues said, "I think people confuse tangible with impactful, and impactful with visible." Adding pronouns to email is tangible. Ending gender discrimination is impactful. And increasing gender diversity at the organization is visible. As you think about that framing and the work and the approach that LLR is taking, what resonates with you in those different distinctions?
David Reuter:
Yeah. It's a great question and I have to try to remember the quote. I like the quote of the differences between some of those words that probably seem fairly similar from a distance. As I mentioned at the beginning, we're all about impact and that's really how we're defining this initiative for us. So it's pretty broad base. And I think at the end of the day, it is what we're about is having an impact and having a lasting impact. All people to have equity. And we want to find a way to pave the road to make that happen.
David Reuter:
But with that said, I'm opening my eyes to some small things. And so in your example of the tangible, impactful, visible variations, I recently read a really interesting article of adding pronouns to emails as why. And it wasn't something I had thought about from the lens of the author and I thought it was a good learning experience. And I took that to our team and I said, "I think we should do this."
David Reuter:
For me, what's valuable in the addition of the pronouns, the emails or your LinkedIn profile or whatever is when everybody rolls their eyes when you announce it, and then doing the little training to talk about why we're doing it and helping people see this other point of view that I personally hadn't seen even recently until this article came up. And so I think that's getting the ball rolling because now people are like, "Why are we doing this?" Then you explain it. And maybe a little light bulb goes off in that moment of the symbolism of it, even though to your point, it's not impactful, it's just a tangible change.
David Reuter:
But the question is, does that tangible change that sparks the conversation internally and gets people's juices flowing a little bit on the idea? Can that also then have things follow behind it that are going to lead to ending gender discrimination? So I do feel like they're building blocks and sometimes those small things may be dismissed because they feel small, but I think sometimes they can be building blocks to go for the bigger wins once you point out the problem. Because one thing that I'm starting to see, I have kids who are seven and nine, and they're talking about this in school, talking about racism, talking about diversity, they're talking about equity, they're talking about all these different family structures that I haven't even heard of before, based on race and gender and ethnicity and families that are mixed because of divorced parents.
David Reuter:
To me, I just had a family. We were just white and married and that was it. And so there's a concept about admitting a problem, in all the different problem solving universes of Alcoholics Anonymous and all these different places that try to help people with different issues, that admitting the problem is often a big first step. And I think around the racism topic, I do believe for most people that are educated, either not really educated, there's a problem. But you're taught social studies and you're taught history and you're taught politics and all these other things. There's this great book, People's History of the United States. And it's the history book that's told from the underdogs or the losers' perspective in each conflict that existed in the country. And it's fascinating because it's such a different point of view than what we've all learned. And I think both sides were true. There's a winner story and a loser story and I think it's important to hear both.
David Reuter:
Getting out on the problem part... I think if you started life with kids and saying, "We live in a world that has a couple problems that are significant, and racism is one of those problems. And we're all working on changing this and solving this problem or taking apart this racism issue." I think the kids end up being different adults because you just start with a totally different vantage point. But what we're doing now is we're just perpetuating, there's no problem, everything's great. Great history, great country, living in the best place on earth. Go to college, get a job, make money, American dream. And I think there's a way to have both, where you can teach that there's a problem, that there's some fairness and equity that we need to go unpack and work for. And I think that can be really powerful.
David Reuter:
I think it's got to start young, I think it's got to start with honesty. But I think going back to my example of the gender pronouns that still having a conversation with a group of adults that never got the memo when they were back to fourth grade of these gender bias issues, and aren't really conscious of it because they're just their gender and they don't have any personal issues with that. And so they don't appreciate the person sitting next to them that has an issue and is not comfortable working where we are because we're not recognizing who they are. And so I think then you start that conversation of pointing out that there's an issue and then figuring out like, how can we be more attuned to that issue?
Tim Cynova:
I think that's one of the really interesting things about, as we do this work in our organizations, people join us along the way. And it's not like we go back to the very beginning where we're like the history of the creation of race. People have to join along the way and they're bringing in different perspectives about the work that further pushes forward the work. Me growing up as a white kid in Indiana, I learned a very specific thing. And then I got to be 35 and I'm like, "I missed a lot of stuff here. I'm a 35 year old white guy who's leading organizations who has less than a complete understanding of how America works."
David Reuter:
And it's like to your point earlier about the 50,000 hour concept and the 10,000 hour concept, it's like, because you started out without the problem identified mindset, every experience you had in your whole life you looked at through a lens of everything's okay. Almost every interaction you probably had in your whole life, if you looked at slightly differently, I think you end up being a pretty different person at how you respond to things and how you weigh and evaluate things. So it's powerful. Wherever the starting line is of sharing the big secret, I think really changes the outcome of how that's done.
Tim Cynova:
Well. And that's been one of the interesting things about working through Layla Saad's Me and White Supremacy with the 28 day prompts. We're like, "I know I've done this, but I've had white privilege that I haven't had to think about this before." And so trying to get back to unpacking some of the ways we've shown up in our lives that we just haven't had to think about and just floats through your mind. And now, to really take a concerted time together with other people who are doing the work has been really meaningful. And yourself included in our group that gets together weekly to talk about this personally, and how we show up. As we're coming up on time and landing the plane, what else is on your mind?
David Reuter:
The big to do for me in 2022, and this is only coincidental to the fact that we're talking today. But we did yesterday a kickoff on a big strategy planning project that we're doing over six months at my firm was to me a very impressive impact investing consultancy that I think is a really great blend of investment returns and capitalism that is a part of who we are, unfortunately, with how you can find opportunities to do good, be more diverse and equitable and make the world a better place like the and, where there's definitely a lot of people out there that I think push for the or, which is like we've met consultants we're like, "What you should do is shut your firm down and everybody quit their jobs and all go join the Peace Corps, go help some other country." And it's like, "Well, we're not quite ready to do that."
David Reuter:
So is there something in between doing nothing that we've done for a long time and literally going that extreme? And so we're excited we found a thought partner to help us through that. And we have some really, really big ideas that we want to capture and refine and push forward. And the hope is that we're going to do that over the first half of this year. And then the second half, we're going to then try to transition and take a lot of that, to package it into what we can give to the portfolio companies. And then really, I call it blast radius. We have a really far reach between ourselves, but then this network of these companies that they have a lot of employees, they have a lot of stakeholders between clients and vendors and everything else that I think it can really penetrate to a lot of different places. So that's what I'm really excited about going into 2020 and building. And maybe we'll get back together and we can report back on some of the great ideas that come out of that.
Tim Cynova:
Sounds great. David, thank you so much for the time today. Thanks so much for your openness, your vulnerability, your sharing the ideas that you're wrestling with and for being on the podcast.
David Reuter:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Tim, and thank you for elevating these conversations and this work, because I think that's an important piece and big step in what we're all trying to do here. So appreciate your energy for it as well.
Tim Cynova:
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