Larry Miller 0:00
Ken Oliver 5:55
Thank you, Laurel. Thank you for having us.
Larry Miller 5:56
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Laurel Donnellan 5:59
So, in addition to all the accolades in your introductions, Ken and Larry are both recipients of the Compassionate Leader Circle Award that was given out in April. We're very honored that they are part of that esteemed group, and I'm going to do a little introduction about Compassionate leadership, because I've been thinking a lot about this podcast, been looking forward to it, and we are my colleague Sarah Feely, and I are writing a book right now about compassionate leaders, and one of the foundational pieces, based on research, is that all compassionate leaders, including the gentleman I have with me today, are pretty exceptional at three things. They're often exceptional at many more than three things, but one of the things that we find that they have in common is a, they're good at self-compassion and taking care of themselves and forgiving themselves, they're good at being vulnerable, and I have enough experience with Larry's book and interviewing Ken to know that that is very true, and they often translate that energy from being self-compassionate and being vulnerable into being compassionate and wanting to make the world better, and I think their stories are remarkable and are examples of those three things. So I'm excited to get started. Larry, let me start with you, because as the founder of Jump, I think people can learn all about you and your beautiful book that you wrote with your daughter, which is called Jump, but what is motivated you to create this organization to be the founder of this organization?
Larry Miller 7:56
Well, you know, it's interesting, because when my story came out, I realized that there were a lot of people that were a lot of people, a lot of organizations that existed already that were in existence to help people re-enter into society, to help people get out of prison. There are a lot of positive organizations out and my initial goal was, or my initial thought was to kind of help those organizations lend my story to and then I met Ken.
Larry Miller 8:43
So, Ken and I connected, and just realized that we had a lot of the same goals, we had similar experience, but our goals and what we wanted to do to try to help help people that were coming out of the system, or even still in the system, were similar, and so we kind of put our heads together and we came up with creating job and it's it's been a an incredible experience working with Ken, working with the team and the other organizations that we've been able to to connect with, but to me my goal is always, whether it's business or whatever, is to figure out how one plus one can equal three, and I thought by Ken and I coming together that one plus one could equal three, and that we could put our heads together, we could connect with organizations that are thinking about and looking to do similar work to what we're doing, and we decided that we, because of because of some of the experiences that we both had over the years, we decided that sports entertainment and working with corporations was really what could move the needle for us and really allow us to scale what we're trying to do, so that that's that's why we kind of really focused in on sports, entertainment, and corporate in the corporate world, and so we've been working to develop those alliances, and I think I think we've made some pretty significant progress over the last year or so in, you know, making sure that we have those alliances with people in the sports world, people in the entertainment world, and people in the corporate world.
Laurel Donnellan 10:27
So, Ken, I know you have some really big, lofty north stars that I saw. I'm watching your website evolve, I'm watching the press releases come in. Can you, can you talk about your, your, the foundation of jump, and what those goals are. Where you headed?
Ken Oliver 10:47
Sure. Well, you know, I've been in this work almost since I came home in 2019 It started with ban the box stuff that was happening in the policy realm, and it just really paid attention to what's happening in the second chance space, and I've learned a tremendous amount from some of the smartest people in America around the space, and I've also, because I've been able to do that, have been able to see some of the gaps that have existed, and I've been on the forefront of witnessing those gaps, right, and so for me meeting Larry was the perfect storm, because I was doing this work for a corporation, a tech company in the Bay Area. I'm working with companies across the country to teach them how to institute change management when it came to inclusive hiring practices. And when I met Larry, Larry's the perfect storm of the three things that we focus on, which is sports, business, and entertainment, and the fact that he has this amazing story of transformation and triumph in the face of harrowing adversity is exactly what this movement needed, writ large, to be able to scale it and really shift culture, which is what we're trying to do, and so the foundation of what we do is, as Larry mentioned, is work with those entities who have the loudest platforms or the biggest platforms and the loudest microphones to be able to change the way people think about people who have records, because it's typically been a deficit lens in the way that people view communities, and you know, unfortunately, a lot of that is over indexed on black and brown communities, and so that exacerbates kind of stereotypes that already exist, and then they are the programmatic areas that we decided to focus on were, well, a, we know that there's a huge skills gap, there's always been a skills gap between what's happening in the inner city and what's happening in corporate America, so before we can ask employers or work with businesses to talk about the bar for talent, we have to make sure that talent can meet the bar, so we really concentrate on skill development, right, and we've chosen pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship as a methodology to get people the skills necessary to compete, right, and to be able to be in a position to thrive. The second area that we saw that really needed some work is like, Who's talking to these business leaders? You know, I tell folks across the country, CEOs don't know community-based organizations, and they don't know the people that are served by those organizations, and vice versa. Many community-based organizations and people in inner city communities don't know the C suite of boardrooms, and so we need to get into the rooms together to have conversations and get what Bryan Stevenson said is proximate to each other and have conversations about what that looks like. When I was at Checker, we used to bring in the young presidents' organizations in California to the company, and I would call up all the CBOs in the community and bring in 5060 justice-impacted people, and we would have like town hall discussions. We would feed lunch, and we would have conversations about fears and anxieties and experiences, and every single time there were tears, every single time CEOs came up afterwards and said, "I had no idea that this problem existed, that these people existed, and how can I be part of the solution rather than be part of the problem? So we're doing the localized coalition building, because we know that's where hiring happens at large, and how you change people's minds is by demonstrating success. The third thing is, you know, something else that Larry is an expert at, which is the media narrative and culture piece. How do you, how do you take something like this and make it part of the culture in the way that he's done with the Jordan brand? It's a cultural phenomenon, what he's been able to do with the Jordan brand for a player that doesn't play anymore, right, and we think that you could do that same thing with social justice. We saw a little bit of that with with the LGBTQ movement, when you had shows like Will and Grace and Ellen, and these types of media and narrative pieces that came together to galvanize folks and actually help shift the way we think about people who are part of that community in this country, and so we're following a similar trajectory. And then the last piece that's really important to us is working with policymakers. How do you, how do you work with local, state, and federal policy makers to unwind some of the barriers that exist to employment and education for people who have a record? I mean, it's there's 80 million people, a third of the country, has had some type of justice involvement. So, that's primarily the foundation, is like a Larry's expertise is sports brands, entertainment, and he also has a tremendous amount of currency. He is the representative of what that actually means. I mean, just a quick anecdote. When I, when I first met Larry, I was VP of corporate social responsibility. I was on the executive leadership team, and by most people account, I thought, you know, I thought I was doing a little something. And when I met Larry, I was at Nike campus, talking to him in his office, and a whole new world of possibilities opened up, even to me, and his influence affected me in that moment, as we were talking about what was possible, about what is achievable, what a person could strive to do better at, and I think that to Larry's point earlier, by us being successful, we can have that same type of impact writ large in the programs that we develop for people that are on the inside, people that are on the outside of the face barriers, and most importantly, demonstrating to people who are naysayers that despite justice involvement you can be great, so that's the foundation of what we're doing.
Larry Miller 16:08
I agree 100% with everything that Ken said, and you know when we talked a little bit earlier about the audiences that you have here, I think you know one of the keys that we're looking to do is reach an audience that typically wouldn't know about what's going on with the criminal justice system, or concerned about it, or have a specific image in their mind that we want to change that image and that narrative. One of the key benefits I think that came out of writing the book and telling a story was the fact that Harvard Business school decided to make a case study based on the book, and they basically taught are teaching that case study in their Executive MBA program. I went the first time they taught it, I went, and it was amazing. There were 250 C-suite type individuals who were in this, in this classroom, and they were hearing this story and studying what had gone on with my journey, and it was amazing to see, because to me, those are the decision makers, those are the people that are going to decide whether someone gets hired or doesn't get hired, or a policy changes or doesn't change, and to be able to affect the narrative that those people have in a positive way, I think was very incredible. When the teacher started out teaching the class, his people had read the case, and he said, he said, "Take yourself back to that time, would you have hired Larry Miller in that scenario, would you have hired him under that scenario? And it was probably 75 80% no to yes by the time the class was done. That percentage had flipped by the time the class were done, and he took that same survey again. It was like 70 30% yes, they would have, and to me, that that was the goal. It's like, how do we reach these people who are the decision makers, people who are going to be, you know, making those calls? How do we reach them and change the narrative for them? And I think we've done a lot of that over the last couple of years. I think, you know, Ken and I have been out speaking to all types of groups of people at different universities or different corporate meetings, and I think we've done a lot over the years to change that narrative for a lot of people, and that continues to be one of the goals too, because I truly believe that if we can change that narrative specifically in corporate America, specifically with, you know, organizations that hire people, I think to me that's how we can have a major impact here. I would love to see every leader thinking like Jamie Dimon, you know, where they want to bring, you know, they want to help people get their lives on track, and they're willing to take a chance and hire people that have had, you know, have been in the system, and they're willing to take a chance on people, so to me that was one of the best. The Harvard Business School deal was one of the best situations that came out of it, because it is an opportunity to change the narrative for people who are decision makers.
Laurel Donnellan 19:16
Well, getting back to your book, it is a great way to feel like you get to know someone that's been impacted by the justice system, even if you know I was telling Larry before I met him today that I feel like I know him, because I started writing his book personally. I'm very interested and a big advocate for everything you're doing, because two things happened in my life, first I I had, I do a program for career development, and we did two pilots at Rikers, and I always say that the day I went to jail for the first time was one of the most enlightening days of my life, because I got to meet people that have been impacted by the justice system, and get to know them, and had a colleague. I also accidentally hired someone with a record, because I didn't check her references, and she didn't tell me. If I had, I probably would have not hired her, just out of habit, not out of anything intellectual or anything brilliant, just, you know, that was the habit. And then she told me about her life and her record a year in, and it was a kind, it was a really spiritual experience for me, because I was like, I'm glad you didn't tell me, and I'm glad I got to know you and your work. so I think to your point, Ken, about movements, it's getting to know human to human, right, like getting to know these stories and getting to know people and not throwing them into a stereotype or a group, right. The other thing that I think a lot about is I happen to be in recovery from alcohol and drugs for 35 years, I have, and I think a lot about, like, I could have had a record, I just didn't get caught, like I'm, no, you know, I mean, there's a, there's the reality, we all make mistakes, and some of us get caught, and some of us don't.
Larry Miller 21:32
So, when I was, when I was going to work for the Portland Trailblazers, I found this out after, after the fact, when my after my story came out, there was the guy who actually hired me at the Trailblazers, was a guy named Todd Mywicky, and Todd ran what was called Vulcan Sports and Entertainment for Paul Allen, which was the Seahawks, the Trailblazers, the Sounders, all the arenas. Todd was ran all of that for Paul Allen, and he was the one who, who I initially connected with, in terms of he reached out to me about coming into that job, and so after the story came out, Todd reached out to me and said, "Hey, next time you're in Seattle, I'd like to take you to breakfast, something I want to share with you. And we go to breakfast, and he starts to tell me that when they were looking to hire me, I, everybody was on board, like, yeah, hey, we definitely want to do this, and so they had the NFL security do the background check, and they actually went down to Philadelphia, went into City Hall, and went into some back rooms, and found all these manual records, and actually found all of my criminal history, and they reported that information back to Todd, and Todd was now conflicted because he's still thinking, hey, I'm the right guy for this job, and still wanted to hire me, but he's concerned that if he shares the information with Paul, that Paul will, to your point earlier, like probably say no, I don't want to do that. So he said he called David Stern, who was the commissioner of the NBA at the time, and he asked David, he kind of shared it with David, and he said David still wanted to hire me, also, and he said he asked David, he said, "Well, you know, do I have to share this information with Paul? And David said, "Yeah, you do. You can't know this, hire this person and not have shared the information with the owner of the team. And so he said he called Paul, and he kind of started sharing information, and he said he went through sharing everything with Paul, and he said when he was done, Paul said, "I got one question. He said, "We'll say. He said, "How long ago was this? So I don't know. 20 said, "Don't worry about it. Then, so they hired me anyway, knowing about my criminal past, but they were hiring who I am today. They were like, "We don't care about what happened in the past. This is the person, he's the person we want today. And I think that's one of the things that people need to think about. It's like, hey, if this person did some things in the past, but who are they today? And it was, I, the crazy part about it, they never told me, so I was still like walking around nervous and afraid that they might find out, but they knew and never shared it with me. But again, and one of my regrets is that both Paul Allen and David Stern passed before, so I never got a chance to thank them for giving me the opportunity, but they were willing to give me that opportunity and risk the fact that it could have come out and they would have then had to defend it or defend hiring me, but they were willing to take that risk because they thought I was the right person, and like I said, they were hiring the person I was today, not the person I am today, not the person I was back at that point,
Laurel Donnellan 25:00
I wouldn't hire myself 2626 years ago today. I would, Ken, I'm really curious about what we need to do as a society, and what Jump is doing about changing those hiring habits that don't make sense anymore.
Ken Oliver 25:19
Sure, well, I mean, it's a multi-prong approach. If you look at most social justice movements, whether it's the LGBTQ or what happened with HIV, you have to attack it from multiple sides. There's not a one size fits all solution. So, you know, at the heart of what we do, Jump is a narrative change shop. We seek to change the narrative, and we have the ultimate story to help us catalyze that narrative change, and that's Larry. Right, there's no, there's no better example of what's possible, and what that's what's shattered stereotypes in this country about men of color and about what's possible if you have a criminal conviction of gang members or people from the inner city. Larry has shattered all of those myths, so you can't argue against results, and I think that he's demonstrated top line results, and so we think that, and we believe that, based on Larry's experience and my experience, and where we come from, that that's possible to do at scale, you know, not necessarily with the Jordan brand, but whether you're a waiter, you're a business owner, whether you're a marketer or work in HR, whatever, everyone has the potential to achieve excellence and be great. We believe that at our core, and we're out to convince the country, based on our stories and other people's stories, that that's the state of affairs in America, whether we choose to like that or not. And what we're trying to do is unwind the 200 year old narrative that has been the politics in America every political cycle since America's founding, they've used crime and punishment to other folks. We saw that with the immigration argument. Now the first thing coming out of their mouth is everyone's committing murder, rape, child molestation. They've done it with every group of people they've chosen to other. That's the ethos that we've used. And so what we're here to do is unwind that ethos, but we think that you can't just say it, you can't just point to Larry and say this is the truth. You have to demonstrate it over time and make it sustainable, which is why we focused on those programmatic areas. We think if you put people through the fast track of programs, you get them educated, you get them skilled, you prepare them to compete, right, you will produce a lot of Larry Miller's and Ken Oliver's and others, right. We know that, right, but people need to be given the opportunity. Larry talked about that earlier. The prison system now is, you get $100 when you get out, you get a bus ticket to the biggest city near you, and you're on your own, and
Larry Miller 27:41
that's California, some states,
Ken Oliver 27:44
that's right, in some states there's $25 to be honest with you, but when you think about that, and then you think about what's happened the last 30 years, in the last 30 years with the advancement in technology, 95% of companies do background checks, screening, and what happens is, we've all taught ourselves that there's any mark on the background check, you're automatically excluded. That's being exacerbated with AI, who's pre-screening people before you even get to a human. They're looking at, like, what colleges you went to degrees, and if you have a criminal record, even if it's a misdemeanor. I mean, I worked at one of the biggest background checks in America, and I was seeing people get screened out for fishing and gaming license violations, like for having their boat docked in the wrong place, right? It was just like crazy. So I think for us, we have to go tell stories, and then we have to show and prove. If I can go back to a sports analogy, like when I look at people like Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan, they were known to be prolific talkers, they talked a whole lot of mess with what they did, but one of the things that made them great and sustainable is that they always backed
Speaker 1 28:46
it up,
Larry Miller 28:47
right? If it ain't bragging, if you back it up
Ken Oliver 28:51
that 100% right. So, so that's what we believe. Yes, we can point to Larry, we can point to whoever, but then we're going to back that up consistently with the people that we run through our programs, we're going to back that up with our commitment to excellence in the way we show up every day, like we're not taking any losses, we're not, you know, we're preparing people, and we're going to compete at the highest levels that anybody else is competing at, and that's how we think we can sustain and change the narrative, city by city, county by county, and that's kind of what we're doing, and then since, since Larry, since last time we talked, Laurel, I don't know if you know this, but Larry got announced as the co-chair of the Business Roundtable, Second Chance Business Coalition with Jamie Dimon, so he's now leading 5060 of the biggest companies in America and helping advance second chance work, so you know, to have somebody that's directly impacted and understands what it takes, both from a talent perspective and a business perspective, is really what we think it takes to help move the needle.
Laurel Donnellan 29:52
What does this look like on the ground with people that are impacted by the justice system? Like I saw on your website, there's something called Jump Cities, like, could you tell me more about that, and what your focus is with the folks that are being released with 25 or $100
Ken Oliver 30:14
Well, when we launched, we were very fortunate, we had a big launch at the NBA All-Star Game, and a lot of big businesses, you know, came to us and asked, How could they help? So we worked with Boston Consulting Group for three months on a sprint and really did a landscape analysis of the entire country. What cities had the biggest problems with unemployment? What cities had the biggest problems with recidivism? And we identified 30 cities that we thought we could target between now and 2040 Charlotte, which was one of the top three cities, is where I moved, and I'm located now to build these localized coalitions, and the localized coalitions are a mix of business people, philanthropy, policy makers, the local university and junior colleges, and the community-based organizations that serve, and the idea is that you can go farther together than you can alone, and we need to break out of these silos and actually have conversations about the challenges that we're experiencing in our cities, and one thing I know for sure, every single human being that I know, even people in prison, want a safe community. No one wants to wake up to gun violence, no one wants to wake up to a robbery, no one wants to wake up to a riot on the yard, we all want to sleep and move about our life in a safe way, if we can, and so that's the pitch that we're making to cities, is we're going to help you build a stronger, safer city, bringing people together in a coalition, so you can identify and understand what people who are re-entering your community are facing. We also want community-based organizations to understand what CEOs are facing and what they're interested in, in reference to business outcomes, right. And we think through those conversations and bringing people together, we can actually find common ground and create ecosystems that support pathways. At the end of the day, as you know, Larry said it earlier, one plus one equals three. All of us in America and across the world have been told since we're about five years old by our parents and grandparents, go to school and get an education. Then, when we all turned 15 or 16 years old, and we were asking for a lot of money to go to the movies, we all got told we better go get a part-time job, right? And then when we went to college, or whatever we did afterwards, we were all told get a job and work your way up for the mobility piece, so we know it's a universal message, very bipartisan, very nonpartisan, and we've had success, to Larry's point, having these conversations with all different types of people, whether it's corporate, whether it's policy makers, we've met with governors, first ladies, and they're all interested in pursuing this approach to building ecosystems within within major cities, so that's kind of what it looks like on the coalition side. On the apprenticeship side, it's getting just as impacted people to also understand a different narrative. Right, I'm never going to advocate for somebody to change, per se, who they want to be or who they are, but I am interested in telling people that if you want to play in this field, you have to have the keys to have the unlocks, so, so, even, even MJ, as great as he was, he can't come in there and change the rules of the NBA and the owners, they have a set governing rules, and he's going to play according to the way the NBA plays, right, that's the same way, if you want to go into corporate America, you want to get these middle-class jobs, you have to learn to play in the field that you're navigating, doesn't mean that you're selling out, doesn't mean that you're doing this and that, but for those eight or 10 hours a day, if you want to unlock an $80,000 year job, this is how you have to perform, this is the expectation, and this is how you have to show up. So the narrative change is really both sides, to be honest with you, and also showing people that they can do it. I'll never forget, I interviewed a woman for a documentary, and she said, Ken, I was more afraid of getting out of prison than I was going in, and when I think about that now, like, it touches me in a real way, because that's that's terrible, right, that someone is actually thinking about in prison experiences better than like what's out there on the streets, but that's what people are facing, and so that's what we're trying to change with the work that we're doing.
Laurel Donnellan 34:06
Is there anything? It sounds like you're building an architecture, really like, like the foundation for something that's really lasting and sustainable over the long run. Yeah, it's great. It's a complex problem, so it needs a very smart and complex solution. Yeah, go ahead.
Larry Miller 34:30
I think we have, I think we have a pretty good solution. I think if we can, you know, accomplish our goals here, I think that would be great. And the reality is, you know we're you are you're right, we're building that foundation, and now it's like, how do we start to scale that? How do we start to, you know, take it to a point where we're reaching more and more people, and that's where help is going to have to come in for us. That's where we're going to need support, financial support, and other support to really kind of scale this and really let it have the impact that we're hoping to have. I think you know the goals that that we've set out are pretty lofty, but I think with the right support we can accomplish those goals. You know, to create a million jobs over, you know, the next 20 years or so, you know, to reduce recidivism by half over the next, you know, 20 years or so. I think to me those are extremely lofty goals, but I think they're goals that, if accomplished, they will have a major impact on this country, on crime in this country, on job jobs in this country. I think we could have, we will have a major impact on the way on the situations in this country, and so to me, like you're absolutely right, we're laying the foundation, and now we're going to need support from folks to be able to to accomplish these goals.
Ken Oliver 36:00
I'll say this too, Laurel. If I can just add to what Larry laid out, is one of the main goals is making sure everybody sees themselves in this problem, right? No community likes crime, you know. And Larry is fond of saying, which is true, that most recidivism, most crime comes from recidivists. People who have committed crimes are out of the system and are locked out of the economy, if we can get people to understand that it's not an over there problem, like it's a right now problem in front of you, because we're all impacted by the things that happen in the city, especially the bigger cities, but in every community, I think we can make big headway to Larry's point once we change that narrative and get people to see themselves as part of the solution rather than just something that's happening over there on the east side of, you know, name your city.
Larry Miller 36:46
Yeah, one of the, one of the things that the Harvard, Harvard case study showed was that at the time the recidivism rate was 77% so two to three years, 77% of people get out and they're back into the system, but it showed that if people are able to learn a marketable skill set of some type where they could come home and earn a livable wage, that 77% dropped to 30% and if people were able to get a bachelor's degree, it was at 6% and a master's degree, it was zero. So, to me, that's a clear indication that if people are able to come home, or even before they come home, start to build a marketable skill set, or get an education of some kind, where that leads to a livable wage job, people don't go back to jail under that scenario, and so to me that's the kind of that's what we're trying to build opportunities for people to come home and get those type of jobs, so that they don't end up, you know, back in the system, because to Ken's point earlier, a lot of it is is economics, it's finance, it's people not being able to get a decent job or not being able to, you know, take care of their families legally, and so they resort to other issues to try to do that, and I think our goal is to address that, so that people don't need to resort to those other issues to try to take care of their families and to make a decent living,
Laurel Donnellan 38:25
is entrepreneurship part of the plan as well, separate from straight jobs working for the man.
Ken Oliver 38:36
I'm glad that you mentioned that. That's come up a lot. I mean, I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship, I'm an entrepreneur at heart, you know, but when I ran another organization, entrepreneurship was going to be one of the things we would put people through boot camps and people who were successful there that didn't want to go work for, in your words, the man, we wanted to give them a pathway to get into entrepreneurship, so we partnered with UC Berkeley, and for me, I wanted to do something that looked like a Y Combinator. I didn't like the entrepreneurship programs that existed, where they tell a justice-impacted person, like, don't think outside of a $5,000 business plan, because this is all you're capable of doing. Like, if we're going to do real entrepreneurship, we want people to still be able to dream and think about becoming the next Google or Microsoft or Jordan brand, even. Right, we haven't delved into putting that in practice, but it is in the back of my mind that when the opportunity comes, I mean, we're 15 months old, and in reality, as Jeff, and we've covered a lot of ground that we offer an entrepreneurship track, we've talked about coffee shops and other different types of things that we can offer people and do the training necessary to allow them to be self-sustaining, but entrepreneurship is a tough road. I don't, I don't sugarcoat entrepreneurship. 92% of businesses that start fail, and so we want to make sure that we provide the right type of service and training that has set people up for success in that way. But I love the idea of entrepreneurship, and I appreciate you flagging it, Larry. What I know, you have thoughts about entrepreneurship.
Larry Miller 40:01
I agree 100% I think you know there's some incredible minds out there that are locked up in the penitentiary, creative minds, intelligent people that, if given the opportunity to start a business, they have business ideas, but I think to Ken's point, I know a lot of people who've had good ideas, but they didn't understand the nuances of running a business. They didn't understand, you know, what it takes to have a successful business. Great idea, but not the ability to understand how to run a business, and so a big part of, you know, what we're thinking about as we move to the entrepreneur basis, providing that training for people, so that if you have a great idea, you want to start a business, this is what you need to understand to be able to run a business,
Ken Oliver 40:56
that's right,
Laurel Donnellan 40:56
yeah, so, so being and in the career development space, I I'm always thinking about the future, and basically what's going to employ my clients and my nephews, so I do, I do think a mixture of knowing the knowing the keys to corporate life and working for other people and learning that, and also I think it's going to be necessary, whether it's gig economy work or entrepreneurship, it's going to be a necessary strategy in the future, because people are going to be displaced with AI and other things, right, so we used to, we used to have career transitions. Now we're living in a time where we're always in transition, and so having options is important. But the three of us could talk about that offline.
Larry Miller 41:54
One of the things, though, that Ken has been really pushing as we've been developing this is really the idea of providing leadership skills and leadership training for folks as they're coming out, as they're, because again, whether it's in the corporate world, whether it's in sports and entertainment world, whether it's entrepreneurship, you need to have leadership skills if you're going to be successful in any of those worlds, and one of the goals, and again, Ken's been pushing this hard, is we need to make sure that we're providing training in terms of leadership skills for
Speaker 1 42:29
people,
Ken Oliver 42:33
you know, you know, as Laurel is like, you know, you see some of these things, and when people think about leadership for a certain segment of population, it could be veterans, it could be just as impacted, it could be neurodiversity. What I've seen and experience, and it just, it really irritates me as they dumb it down, and so rather than ask people to lift up and help support people lifting up, they always like, "Oh, well, we're going to do leadership, but it's going to be like this offshoot of like workbook that we do, right? And you know what I've shared with Larry is like, we should be giving executive-style leadership the same that you get at Harvard or a major university, and I think when you provide that, what I've seen is guys step into that because it's the first time in their life, in many instances, where they've been able to operationalize something that we often have on the streets when we're in the life, we have leadership in the wrong places, but now when you can get a certificate and it says Stanford on it, or this university, and it's leadership, you'd be surprised at the amount of effort and dedication that guys give to pursue that, to have some validity, and so I know that they can do it, the potential is there, but we have to be able to look at them the same way we look at somebody who graduated from Yale.
Speaker 2 43:39
Oh, for sure, for sure,
Ken Oliver 43:40
you know, and that's that's my big thing, is I want to look at everybody that like they can go out and be the next Larry Miller, right
Laurel Donnellan 43:48
in the future everyone, if there is literally going to be a leader in every seat, because we have, you know, influence through social media, you know, we have much more influence as individuals, even if we're a one-man band, and we have a coffee cart, right? You still have to lead your customers, you have to lead your team, you have to lead your family. So, I think there are professors, I think, at the University of Michigan talking about a future where there's.. there's not going to be leaders and followers. We're all leaders, and yeah, so I will break there with you on that, and, and I believe that I mean, I teach leadership sometimes to high schoolers or to people about to retire, and it's the same curriculum, really. It's, it's, and you know, high schoolers a lot more sophisticated than I was when I was in my school. I'm so excited about everything you have. I'm curious, Ken, and you're in your, and Larry as well, like in your looking out into the universe of reforms. What did you see that works that you're adapting in the past,
Ken Oliver 45:04
yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I told you a little while ago, I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm always looking for ways to improve on existing mechanisms and systems, and what, what I've seen the last seven years, almost since the time I came out, was a lot of status quo and a lot of lowered expectation, and you know, one of the things that helped me gravitate and build a relationship with Larry, and I remember asking him this. I said, Larry, when you were in prison, what made you think that you can get a degree in accounting of all things, right? And what he demonstrated was extreme belief in himself that he can open up a textbook, get an AA degree, even coming from where he came from, and he felt like, and I don't want to just put words in his mouth, that he belongs at the table, and not only belonged at the table, but should be leading, and I've always kind of felt like that it's been applied in different ways in my life, in a negative way, which is why I ended up in prison, but I always had that same sense of confidence that I could be at the table with anybody, and probably could offer some type of value proposition, I think, for me, that's what's important to instill in other people, is that piece, and I think that the things that I've seen don't think that people can do that, there's.. I remember, I remember when I pitched the state of California for $27 million to build a tech training campus for justice impacted men and women, and I thought, why aren't we doing this co-ed? Why are the men separated from the women when we're free in society? It doesn't make sense. This isn't prison, and I remember, like, five different, like, major nonprofit leaders in the Bay Area saying, like, Ken, this is crazy, like, you just got out, and like, why don't you think about a $200,000 house, and then put three people in it, and you could share chores, and then start with that, and everyone had like such lowered expectations about what was possible, and I just refused to accept that, right? And so I think, for me, the work that we're doing now are the things that I think work, I think local coalition building right works, whether it's for policy or whether it's economic development or whatever. I think skill building in a serious way, and not saying, like, oh, I'm gonna teach you resume writing or interview skills, which is what a lot of nonprofits do. You have to be able to demonstrate that you can compete with the kid that's coming out of Vanderbilt University, and you have to show that you're the best person for the job, and so I think that that's a different approach. I think the idea of storytelling works, but we don't do enough of
Speaker 1 47:28
it
Ken Oliver 47:29
as a movement. I think there's a whole lot of stories on the other end. If you turn on cable TV, there's 25 crime shows that say everyone is the boogeyman,
Laurel Donnellan 47:37
and podcasts, and too much
Ken Oliver 47:41
percent, but Larry knows, and I appreciate this about him. He acknowledges, and I acknowledge that some of the smartest people we've ever met are people that are behind the walls, and there's 1000s of people now that are doing amazing work in the community, that are giving back to their community, that are executives, executive directors, heads of marketing, but no one's telling their story. No one's having those conversations, right? No one's telling Jamie Dimon's story, right? I mean, we know it because we're in the space, but like people need to understand why Jamie Dimon, head of like the biggest bank in the world, is interested in something like employing people that have records and is doing it a great success, right? Those stories are what moves culture right along with other things, but, but that's that's really what I think works. I think a lot of the other policy-driven stuff is tough, not that it's not needed, it is, but what happens is, is crime is so politicized and always has been since this country's founding that if it's if it's a George Floyd moment, everybody decides to go to the left. If it's other people that get into the presidency, everyone decides to go to the right. And you're kind of, you're kind of subject to the winds of what's happening politically. I like to be a jet, I like to cut through the wind. I don't want to like have what I can do these three years is who's in office, right? So that, so for me, I think the systemic approach, dealing with the systemic issues that cause crime, is what's really missed in the movement, because we deal with the symptoms, but we don't deal with the root, and the root, to Larry's point earlier, is really primarily rooted in poverty, and what grows out of the concrete of poverty is what we need to solve for, and you'll see a lot of this other stuff go away once we have a more inclusive economy.
Larry Miller 49:29
Yeah, I just want to touch back on what Ken was talking about, about expectations and the fact that people, you know, try to lower what your expectations are. When I was, when I was going to school, and I decided to major in accounting. I remember I went to, I was in the accounting lab, and there was a woman that worked in there, and I was kind of sharing with her the fact that I wanted to get my accounting degree, and I'll never forget this. She said, Okay, well, that's great, but, but don't you know, be willing to take a clerk job if necessary, you know. After you, I was like, absolutely not. Why should I? Because I put in the same amount of effort and work and money and everything else that the next person did. Why should I take something less than than that person, and that was always my mentality, and I think that's kind of the mentality we need to make sure that people come out with the fact that hey, I've got the qualifications, my expectations should be the same as the next person's, and I think that's one of one of the travesties is that a lot of times folks coming out allow people to lower their expectations, and that keeps them from being able to be successful. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm like, why should I do that if the next person is not going to do that? If I put in the same effort, get the same degree that the next person has, my credentials are just as good, my grades are just as good. Why shouldn't I? The same thing, and, and I, you know, realizing that I've got this mark on my record, but I think that I have proven now, and I want to prove that I'm just as qualified as the next person, and that was the approach that I took, and she was a little bit upset with me when I pushed back on her, but I was upset with her for trying to convince me to take something less than I deserved.
Ken Oliver 51:30
I think that worked out for you, Larry. It
Laurel Donnellan 51:32
worked out wearing his coveralls, and he was like, "What are you doing here? You're not the right person for us, and he boldly said, "Oh, he's the test, and it'd be him, and he was the first person in our family to get a white-collar job, because he was willing to take his test, right? So, well, we could talk forever, and I know we're not going to do that, but we'll talk again for sure. I, I think I know enough about both of your stories to know that there was something inside of you that defied what your circumstances were, and I'm very curious about where do you think that came from what's the source of that.
Larry Miller 52:24
Well, I think for me, you know, growing up I was always encouraged by my family. I was always told that I could do anything I put my mind to, and I, in a lot of cases, I think people saw more in me than I saw in myself, and you know, it just, but it did instill in me this, this thought and this ability that, you know, hey, I can, I can deal with any situation that comes along, and I can do anything that I put my mind to. If I decide I'm going to do this, then then I believe that I can do it, and I think that was instilled in me by a family early on, but I also think, you know, in some cases, you know, people are born with certain, you know, certain qualities and characteristics that lead to leadership and lead to, you know, you know, the question is, you know, our leaders made or born, and I think it's a combination of both. I think you know there are certain things in certain people that just naturally lead them to, to want to be and be leaders, and I think that, you know, you can also, people can learn to be leaders. I've learned I was thinking about when we're, we're, when I was thinking about coming on to this podcast and talking about, you know, what leadership and compassionate leadership. It made me think about what made me kind of feel like I needed to give back and needed to make sure that I advanced in my career, that I needed to make sure that giving back was a part of that, and I remember the situation when I, when I, when I was hired at Janssen to move out to Portland, we had me and my ex-wife, we had to sell our house in Philly, and we ended up taking like a loss of about 10 $15,000 on the sale of the house, and I was flying back. I was on a plane with the leadership of the company I was working for at the time, it's company called VF, and one of the senior leaders there, he was like the number two person there, he was on the plane, and we were just kind of talking as we're flying back on this, was on the private plane, my, my first time on a private jet, which was blowing my mind, by the way, but we're talking, and then he asked me, he said, So, how'd your move go, and I said, well, what, okay, I said, but you know, on the sale of the house, we, you know, we took kind of a loss, but you know, hey, I'm, you know, I was willing to do that, so we talked a little bit more, and then I saw him, like, on the telephone later, and you know, he was, he was on the phone and talking, I didn't know who he was talking to, what he was doing, and then he came back to me later on, he said, you know, that that problem you have, that 10 $12 million problem you had. I said, yeah. He said, you don't have it anymore. We took care of that, and I said, well, wow, how can I thank you? He said, just remember, as you're moving forward in your career, if you have the opportunity to help somebody, that you do it, and you just pass it on. And that stuck with me from that day on, and I've always thought about, you know, okay, as I advance in my career, and I've the way I've always looked at it is the further I advance in my career, the more opportunity it gives me to give back and to help other people, and but but that act really instilled that was early on in my career, and that really instilled that in me to like, hey, if I have the opportunity based on the position that I'm in to help somebody, then I need to do that, and that incident with that particular leader really kind of instilled that in me.
Laurel Donnellan 56:14
Nice, can't wait about you. Where's your source? Where's your source?
Ken Oliver 56:20
It's a combination of things to Larry's point, but I will say that, and I don't even think I've ever shared this with Larry, like me and Larry's story, especially our early childhood, is so similar. You know, I was always from, like, time of kindergarten on, they said I was one of the brightest kids, but the teachers just say either Ken is going to be a genius or Ken is going to be in prison because he gets bored super easy, he whips through stuff like five times faster than the rest of the kids, but then he's into all different types of stuff to like solve his curiosity, his curiosity, and you know that was true, that ended up being kind of the story of my life, and by the time I was 1314, I was in the streets, and you know, I thought that the streets were cooler, that was what everybody else was doing, and hanging out with the fellas, and doing that, and then you know, when I got out of prison, I think it was the first time I was in a program called Amer I Can, which was started by Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns Hall of Fame football player, and one of my mentors there said, Ken, I had a friend that I grew up with, and I was real anxious to get into the program and do well in the program, and he was kind of not so interested in doing well. He still wanted to be on the corner, and you know, I didn't understand it. And he said, Ken, listen, he said, you can teach everything under the sun, you can teach math, reading, real estate, you can teach it all. I said, but there's one thing that you can't teach. He said, "you can't teach drive, and I didn't really fully understand that at the time. I think it was like 19 or 20, but when I got this life sentence right, and I started thinking about my own life and what my place in the world was, and all of that, a lot of those lessons that I got early that I wasn't listening to started to resonate with me, and then it became this voracious appetite to catch up to what I should have been when those teachers are saying I had the potential to be something great, and it just, it started, I caught fire, basically, right, and then I had no idea that, like, this entire industry existed on the street, social impact nonprofit. I had no idea I was going to be a paralegal and go do law stuff and all that, but then I met this attorney who helped get me out, named Ward Johnson, and he just exhibited a tremendous amount of leadership for one of the biggest law firms in the world, and when I watched him treat me in the same way that Larry just described it, that he was treated after he got me out. He still held me, still wanted to make sure I was straight, invited me over his family's house, and took me in as a human. It was the first time that somebody really valued me, and I said, "You know what, the people that have surrounded me and given me opportunity, that doesn't belong to me, it actually belongs to people I need to be serving. And so that's what has me on fire about serving people. I tend to say it's, it's probably the same way Harriet Tubman felt when she got free, and she wanted to go back and help the people that she, that she had lived with. And so, you know, I remember telling myself, when I got out, I said, I can't go off into the hills and live my life and not reach back and help the people that I grew up with, and turn my back. And so, I feel like it's a charge, if I'm being perfectly honest with you, I feel like, like something bad would happen to me if I didn't take the gifts of Ward and Stanford and Larry and all these like amazing things that are happening to me. They don't belong to me, right? They belong to me as a vehicle to go help other people. And so that's really what has me on fire with this work and doing, I'm a servant leader, right, and it's the way that I cope with doing a couple of decades in prison, and there's nothing more fulfilling for me than to know that I help somebody get a job that transforms not only their life but their family's life and their generations, their kids can see them graduate and make money, and you know, get a car and do all these different types of things. There's nothing that makes me more happy than that.
Laurel Donnellan 1:00:06
Well, I couldn't be happier spending time with the both of you. How do people learn about Jump? What is your website?
Ken Oliver 1:00:14
Well, the best, the best way to get it, get with us is to go to info at Jump project.org I don't mind if people email me. I answer all my emails. It may take a little time, but I answer all my emails. Ken at Jump project.org And if you, if you reach it, either through our website or through me, we'll point you in the right direction, support you where we can, and obviously would love to be able to work with organizations that are willing to partner, hire, provide resources, talks, conversations, whatever it is we can do together to help advance this piece to make the world a better place. I think we're down for it.
Laurel Donnellan 1:00:48
Well, thank you both for your time and for this beautiful work. I'm honored to be with you today, and I hope you have beautiful weekends.
Ken Oliver 1:00:56
Thank you, Laurel. We appreciate you.
Larry Miller 1:00:58
Same to you.
Speaker 2 1:00:59
Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:01:00
bye bye.
Laurel Donnellan 1:01:04
I'll talk to you later. Yeah, I understand. You go, yeah. No, we both have another. Yeah, I'm sorry to go over. You go. Thanks, Larry. We'll talk more. Okay. Be well. Bye, bye. Hayley, are you still here?
Hayley Lynch 1:01:23
I'm here. Yes. Thank you so much for this. I thought it was great.
Laurel Donnellan 1:01:27
Okay, anything that you wish I'd asked that I didn't, or any feedback, or
Hayley Lynch 1:01:33
honestly no feedback from me. I think it was a really wonderful conversation that hit on vision and tactics, so yeah, I think I'm good, I, you know, I have.. I was recording on my end, just, you know, because we,
Laurel Donnellan 1:01:49
yeah,
Speaker 3 1:01:50
why not? I'll be, I'll give Eric too, but
Laurel Donnellan 1:01:54
yeah, yeah, we'll.. so, in about a week, I'm going on.. I have to go on. I have to have shoulder surgery. So, we will get this published in late June at the latest, and it'll be a video, a podcast, and a Forbes post.
Hayley Lynch 1:02:16
Video, podcast, got it? Podcast and post, yeah, and if you know, as you're working on any of this, if there's any additional information you need, or like something that we can provide, and that just helps the process, please do let me know, you
Laurel Donnellan 1:02:33
know, I love working with you guys, you're on it, so thank you very much.
Hayley Lynch 1:02:38
Awesome. Well, I hope you enjoy your holiday.
Laurel Donnellan 1:02:40
Okay, be well.
Hayley Lynch 1:02:41
Best of luck with surgery.
Laurel Donnellan 1:02:43
Thank you so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
