Evan Frazier: Evan Frazier: Accomplishments of TALI

Welcome to Disability Matters with your host Joyce Bender. All comments, views, and opinions expressed on the show are solely those of the host, guest, and callers. Now the host of Disability Matters, here's Joyce Bender.

Hey, hi everyone, welcome to the show, to everyone in North and South America, around the world. Oh my goodness, we have so many great listeners. We have just fabulous people. Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia. Can you believe that? Russia, Finland. I mean, we have such great listeners. I want to thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone with listeners around the world, Ireland, you do so much in the UK. I really mean it, I appreciate it so much. And then to my superstar listeners in this country, oh my goodness, what would I do without you? I'll tell you, I wouldn't be on the air 21 years, which, can you believe it? 21 years? Wow, even hard for me to believe. And wait till I tell our guest in a few minutes who the very first guest was 21 years ago when I absolutely had no idea what I was doing. But I love all of you. I mean it. I just think you're awesome. Thank you for helping me spread the news about people living with disabilities. Hey, Yoshiko Dart! Yes, I am thinking of you, Yoshiko Dart. Special shout-out to you. And just so you know, I had a note from Janine Bertram telling me how much she liked that shout-out, Yoshiko. No surprise to me. You know, the show's been on 21 years, and I've got to tell you, Our lead sponsor is Highmark. What a great company they are. And now we have ABLE First coming in for the quarter, and they too are just a fantastic organization. Fantastic. And with all of that, I get to introduce one of my favorite people in the whole world, My guest today as we celebrate Black History Month is Mr. Evan Fraser. You know Fortune 100? He is in the top 100 in this region. He was in— he won. That's what he was named in the top. But to me, he's numero uno. Numero uno he is. Evan Fraser, welcome to the show.

Joyce Bender, thank you so much. What a privilege it is to be here, and I can't believe— 21 years, that is incredible. Congratulations. That is just a fantastic achievement, and I'm so honored to be here with you once again as a part of this incredible Disability Matters show that you have been, uh, you know, doing for so long. So great to be here.

I know. It's so— well, we're thrilled to have you. Are you ready? Ready for trivia? Here's the trivia: who was my first guest 21 years ago? And the answer is Ty Alexander.

Oh wow, that's amazing. Yeah, well, Ty is an incredible guy. I've not talked to him in a couple years, but he is— what a fantastic guy he is.

Yeah, first guest. Isn't that something? And now here we are all these years later, but I still remember getting on the air thinking, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? But that's how I started with Ty. And I have told all the guests, Evan, that now that we have so many listeners because we have been on for so long, No matter how many times someone is on, new listeners want to know your story, the story of the guest. They want to know about the person because they'll say, "Wait, this person is great. Tell me more about them." So Evan, as you know, storytelling is very powerful. Let's start by you sharing with our listeners, you know, where you grew up, maybe what your family life was like. When you went on to school and graduate school. I always say, and how did we keep you in Pittsburgh? That is, thank God we did. But would you mind sharing a little bit about your background, your family growing up in Pittsburgh for our listeners?

Joyce Bender, it would be my pleasure. So, yes, I grew up here in Pittsburgh. Very proud to be a Pittsburgher. Went to Peabody High School, which is no longer Peabody. It's now a different— I think it's Obama Academy, but it's a public school. Went to public school throughout my years here growing up. I had two amazing parents. You know, my father was a teacher in— in fact, he was a teacher in— for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit where he used to, you know, He used to be a blind mobility instructor. And so he really just went around the county teaching people how to use the cane, teaching people with disabilities how to navigate.

I never knew that. I never knew that. That is— wow, that's something.

Yep, yep. And I have a mom who is also incredible. My mom was a teacher, but she went into real estate. She went into insurance. And then came back to teaching. And then when she retired, she actually became a public official. She was, I believe, the first Black woman public official for Allegheny County that was elected in Allegheny County. Wow. And I believe that's her claim to fame. But she also was very much a civic leader, you know, one of those people who was very active in the women's movement. Very active in her community with the civic association and other things. So she was very much, very much a leader in the community. So I was very fortunate. I had an older brother and a younger sister, Andy and Janine. And, you know, just kind of grew up in a middle-class, kind of middle-class experience. Since I was 8, I was a paperboy. My brother and I started a paper route, and so I did that for 6 years, 7 days a week for 6 years, starting at 8. And that really was the foundation for, you know, customer service, being consistent, you know, meeting demands. And then that was very, very powerful. And then when I entered high school and started taking other jobs, got involved with an organization called Junior Achievement. Which was about entrepreneurship and, you know, teaching young people how to run businesses. And I was— I did that all 4 years and became the president of the company a couple times and then would go on these conferences, national conferences, some of the regional conferences as well. And one of the people I met along the way happened to own a restaurant chain. And I remember being a part of his session. It was on business ethics. And I remember, you know the person Joyce Bender because it's someone who's very known here in Pittsburgh. But I met this gentleman and I remember just participating in this business ethics course. And at lunch he came up and said, "Well, so what do you want to do?" I said, "Well, I want to run businesses." And he said, "Well, have you ever considered restaurants?" I said, "Not really." And then he started telling me about restaurants. Eaton Park Restaurants and that they were looking for someone that if they were interested in a career there that, you know, they would consider paying for their college. I was very, you know, that was a turning moment for me. I said, you know, I never considered it, but I'm very open to that. So that actually prompted me to think about hospitality in that industry and going to school for that as well. And so after I spent some time working for Eaton Park Restaurants, And the gentleman was Jim Broadhurst, who happened to be the chairman and CEO of Eaton Park. And ended up going to Cornell University in the hotel school there, studying hospitality management. So that's how I kind of ended up on that track. So I went to Cornell, and then while I was there, you know, just, it was an incredible experience, but I also saw a need there that was emerging. And so I had the opportunity to be a part of a number of things, but one of the things that I did when I was there was I had a chance to co-found something called NSMH, the National Society of Minorities in Hospitality. It was initially Minority Hoteliers, but then it expanded. And so we built that organization while I was in college, along with a few of my colleagues. At Cornell. And it became a national organization. At one point there were over 100 chapters. I do not think there are that many today, but over the years. But it is still around. I was just at the 34th National Conference this past, this past fall. And so that is, you know, that is part of my journey. When I graduated, went on to, came back to Pittsburgh. Because this company, Eaton Park, had invested in me. I felt that it was important, while there was no contractual arrangement, but I felt that it was important when people invest in you that you're also invested back in them. So I spent the next 6 years out of their corporate office, started in human resources, moved into community relations, and actually started the first community relations department And along the way, I had— I was very fortunate that I was able to do graduate school at Carnegie Mellon, their Heinz School, did a Master of Public Management in the Heinz College there. And so that became the initial part of my journey. After a number of years there, I ended up wanting to go broader, ended up spending some time doing You know, I wanted to kind of get out of the box. I wanted to get out of the Pittsburgh box. I wanted to kind of get out of just restaurants. I wanted to get out of just a number of things and broaden myself a bit. And so I found an opportunity to go overseas with the Henry Luce Foundation. Every year they select a number of Luce scholars for people to kind of live and work in Asia for a year. So that's what I did. And so I had this incredible opportunity to be in Singapore and Hong Kong to study Mandarin, you know, during that time as well. Just a very enriching, eye-opening experience. If anyone ever has the chance to, an inclination to apply for that program, I highly recommend it. What an incredible time it was. But then after that, I felt like I had that broadening experience and I came back to Pittsburgh and found, continued to find opportunities here. And I, you know, at that point I decided, you know, I really wanted to have an impact on my home community as long as I could still travel the world. I wanted to be, you know, I thought Pittsburgh would be an incredible place to grow. It was a great place, but if I could have impact here, and still be broad and travel and do the things at a much broader level, then, you know, I felt that that was an important reason to be at Pittsburgh. So I do not know how far I can continue on, but I want to respect the time and those things. But do you want me to share—

When we come back from break, we are going to continue on. But I just want to say, you worked for two great people, the Broadhursts, and I just spoke for Jeff at a big event he had, their son, such a great family, one of the first group, first companies to have people with disabilities working in there.

That's great.

Yeah.

I couldn't agree more.

Yep. But with that, we're going to go to break. If you just joined us, we are talking to Evan Fraser, president and CEO of the Advanced Leadership Institute. This is Joyce Bender. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

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You're listening to Disability Matters. If you have a question or comment, call in toll-free at 1-866-472-5788. That's 1-866-472-5788. Now please welcome back the host of Disability Matters. Here's Joyce Bender.

Hey everyone, welcome back. If you just joined us, we're talking to Evan Frazier, President and CEO of the Advanced Leadership Institute, as we celebrate Black History Month. And Evan, I mean, I was telling Evan at the break, wow, your background is unbelievable. Evan, you went on then to Bidwell Training. Is that what happened next? Where did you go next?

Yes. Yes. So when I came back from Asia, I came— I had run into Bill Strickland, who had invited me to join the board of Manchester Craftsman's Guild prior to leaving. And he said, well, so what are you doing? I said, well, I just got back and I'm starting to look for opportunities. To, you know, back here in Pittsburgh. And so the long and short of it is I ended up working for him. He has an organization, several organizations. One was Bidwell Training Center. The other was Manchester Craftsman's Guild. They also had several other entities. One was even a food service company. And so he— I happened to get there right at the time they were forming the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, which was combining all of those entities. Most of them nonprofit, a couple for-profit, into one single organization, which was the Manchester Bidwell Corporation. So I had the privilege of starting out there, ended up becoming a senior vice president there over the next couple of years. And what an incredible experience that was. And Bill, if you don't know about Bill Strickland, please learn about him. He was one of the innovators in the whole social leaders and social entrepreneurship. And so just an incredible experience. And I believe that's where I met Joyce Bender, and it was during that time period. I then had— was looking to, you know, broaden my horizon a little bit, be a little bit more traditional. I always had this perspective in my head that I would want to be able to move between both the public and the private sectors. And build careers in both. And so I felt I needed to get back onto the corporate side. So I ended up looking for opportunities, found an opportunity to go with, to work for PNC in strategic planning. So I became a vice president in strategic planning at PNC, which was, wow, it just opened me up to a whole new industry that I had not been a part of. Banking and Finance, and I spent about 2 years in Strategic Planning and then a little bit, maybe half a year or so, maybe a little longer in the area called Finance Communications within PNC. Then got recruited to work as the Executive Director of an organization, was a comprehensive community agency called the Hill House Association. So became the executive director there, which, you know, over the course of the 6 years I spent there, became their president and CEO and had the fortune of having people like Joyce Bender on my board.

And I loved it.

I was so honored when you came to be a part of our board, Joyce. You were incredible.

I was honored to be on the board.

But then they lost you. Yep, yep. And so I spent, like I said, Hill House was a comprehensive community agency from working with young kids to youth services. They had something called family workforce development, neighborhood development, and then we had senior services. So we really had a broad spectrum of outreach. So after 6 years, I ended up getting recruited by another amazing company located, headquartered in Pittsburgh, but has a much further reach, is called Highmark, Highmark Health now. And so I ended up becoming the Senior Vice President of Highmark Health, where I was in charge of community affairs for the organization. And believe it or not, I spent 11 years at Highmark. It's hard to believe. It was 11 years. And just, you talk about, I love what you said earlier, you know, Highmark is one of the sponsors, but also I remember, you know, you had mentioned Ty Alexander, who was the head of HR at Highmark, and just what a powerful connection between Highmark and what they do and the connection with Bender Consulting and the work that you've been doing over the years. I feel very fortunate to be with a company that had the mindset that they would invest in people, you know, and serve people with disabilities in the way that they do.

Yeah, they are amazing. Absolutely. The greatest company. Now this leads me to, this leads me to what you do now. I want to know, what I want to know is how did this happen? Like What made you decide to do this? What was the thing that said, I'm going to— this is what I want to do? How did you come up with this whole idea? Yeah, I think for the Advanced Leadership Institute, and probably you should also tell everyone what the— what Tally is, what it is.

Sure, sure, sure. So, so Tally's mission is to cultivate Black executive leadership to strengthen companies, institutions, and communities. That's what Tally is. And we do it through really creating these comprehensive community service agencies. I'm sorry. So we really do it through partnering and creating these world-class executive leadership programs basically that, you know, will help to prepare and propel Black leaders for executive advancement. And so that was kind of the idea behind it. And the way— the reason it came about, I just remember, you know, having multiple conversations with the community, you know, with peers and colleagues and people all around about the frustration that there is such a small presence of Black leadership in these major companies, you know, and, you know, in and that, and how we had lost so much ground over the past 20 years. So this was 2016 that actually started to write the concept paper for the Advanced Leadership Institute, or for short, sometimes people call it TALI, T-A-L-I. And what was noticed is that in the, you know, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, from that point in time, you can almost point to every major company and there were senior-level Black leadership there. And, but that had eroded. And so you looked around, there was hardly any leadership. And so essentially we had, there was a study done and the person who commissioned the study, Greg Spencer, who I know you know dearly, looked at the top 25 organizations, like top 25 public companies in our region, and was trying to get an understanding of C-suite representation. You know, the C-suite, for those who may not be familiar with the term, is those in the corporation that report directly to the CEO. They're at the really senior levels, and it's really important to have representation at those levels. And in a city where the city was 24% African American, uh, at the county, we were about 13% in the region, it was 11%. But in terms of Black C-suite representation, we were less than, not 1%, 0.1%, 0.1%. So it was, it was almost negligible. And we were far behind our other peer cities. And so, in the broader community, there was awareness, and you would hear rhetoric from time to time about how it's so important, we've got to figure out, become more diverse, have more diverse leadership in our region. There just didn't seem to be a solution that was already built. And I didn't see any tracks where there was a direct pathway there. And so, that's really the impetus for how TALI, or the Advanced Leadership Institute, came to be. It was people like Ty Alexander, you know, when he was back at HIMARC was just one example, or Aaron Walton and folks like that, Greg Spencer, who were in these C-suite roles, but then as time evolved, it had just eroded. And so, so really in 2016, I took my summer when I was away for vacation that summer, I just took my computer and my notepad and started to write this idea of a concept that I had shared and been talking with a few friends over the past few years and really took the time to really refine it, make it crystal in my mind. And then when I came back, I started to share this document pretty widely, you know, across our region with other Black professionals, with funders, with corporate representatives, to just get feedback. And so based on that feedback, a couple things emerged. One was there was a sense that, okay, there was clearly a need, and people felt— were pretty excited about it. There were a couple cautions. One was, you know, one, you've got to have corporate buy-in, you know, because you can't just have these educational classes that people go to and there's no connection to their company because that won't work. They'll just get frustrated and leave. So it had to have a corporate buy-in. But the other thing that was said is you needed to have a strong academic partner that's going to work with you in that way. And so after spending 6 months or so doing that and getting the feedback, I reached out to the Dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. And I had a relationship there. In fact, In addition to being an alum at CMU, I also had the fortunate opportunity to serve as a— on the Board of Trustees for 6 years. And so I had just rolled off a year or two beforehand, maybe a year and a half before, and reached out to the dean, shared the concept. The dean got excited about it. And so we started to partner with the executive education team at the Tepper School. To build what's called the Executive Leadership Academy, which is the very first program out of the institute that we created. In fact, at the time, TALI was an initiative. It wasn't the institute at that point in time. And so it was TALI, the Advanced Leadership Initiative. And so from that point in time, we took ahead the, you know, we were able to launch our first cohort of African American professionals. In 2019, we had, we had 23. In 2020, we had 28. So, the work kept growing and we kept kind of expanding from that perspective. And then, it was in that second year, that's when COVID hit and we had to make a decision. Are we going to try to wait it out or are we going to lean into it and go virtual? And so we decided, you know, at the end of the day, we didn't know how long this was gonna last, but we couldn't stop. We had already started cohort. So we leaned in and converted virtually. And fortunately we had incredible partner in Carnegie Mellon from a technology standpoint. And just what they bring to the table is really amazing, their reputation as well as their capabilities. And so we were able to continue our program virtually in 2020, 2021. And then also, it was kind of late 2020 into 2021, we received our first 7-figure grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. I had an opportunity to speak with their director, their director, and he asked about the concept of where we're heading and those type of things. And as a result, we had a first 7-figure grant to expand TALI from being the Advanced Leadership Initiative to creating the Advanced Leadership Institute. At that point is when I approached Highmark and the CEO of Highmark and said, you know, we have our first, you know, major 7-figure grant to create the institute. I said, but I need a Lee corporate grant. And as a result of those conversations and some great support with the company, they invested a major grant from the foundation and from the company to help us take that next level. And it was at that point I had to really determine in my life, you know, would I continue to try to do both? I mean, at that time I was kind of doing two full-time jobs. And I decided to really give Tally the opportunity to really grow and expand the way that we wanted to, not here in Pittsburgh, but also nationally. I felt that it needed to be— I needed to be fully in it. So that's when I made the transition to, you know, come to Tally, and it became the Advanced Leadership Institute. So I began— I can't believe it's been 20 years. 3 years ago, you know, it was March, it was March of 2021 that I ended up starting here. And so once we created the institute, we established several other programs. We have an emerging leaders program that's for folks a little earlier in their careers, in addition to the Executive Leadership Academy for executives and mid-level managers who have higher-level aspirations. So we had started emerging leaders. And then today, we are now— I'll say last year, we had started our first national program where we bring people from across the country to Pittsburgh, to Carnegie Mellon. It's done kind of in a hybrid solution where you spend a full week here, you do virtual programming during parts of it, and then we bring people back to Pittsburgh for another full week, and still has major, major impact. And so, so we launched our first program. We now have 196 alumni. We are in our— Wow. We're in our 6th cohort for the Pittsburgh's kind of the Executive Leadership Academy that we launched here in Pittsburgh. We're in our 6th cohort, our 3rd cohort for the Emerging Leaders, and this year we'll start our 2nd cohort for the national program. So we've launched 10 cohorts at this point with 196 alumni, and we are, we are going to, we are continuing to expand. I have an incredible team right now of folks, people like Alexis Steeles, who is our VP of Operations. We recruited Kelvin Stovall, who is our Director of Executive Programs. He is actually based out of Charlotte. And just, we started to build, we have a team of about 7 of us, both employees and contractors that are, are now kind of pushing this thing out even further. So that kind of brings you up to date. And so my, my mission now is to continue to expand what we're doing locally, but also to build nationally. And one last thing I'll share is that we are seeing the impact. We, we had decided that we were going to measure We track the progress and the impact of our graduates for 2 years after they finish our programs. And I'm pleased to share that the first year we did it, the first cohort, after 2 years, 87% of them were promoted within, you know, within that period of time or had expanded response, significant expanded responsibilities, 87%. For our second cohort, it was 96%. And so we continue to look at the data. We continue to monitor the progress. We continue to see the excitement. And then once you graduate and are part of the TALIE network, that becomes a part of your network for life. And so we're doing alumni programming, we're doing events, we're keeping people connected, and it is a very, very powerful thing. And so what, when I think about the TALIE community, It's not only the 196 alumni, it's the people who are currently in our cohorts. It's the executive mentors where we do one-to-one mentors in our programming. It's the executive coaches in our, in our Executive Leadership Academy and in our National Executive Leadership Academy. We have coaches that provide support to each individual person. We have incredible partner in Carnegie Mellon We have volunteers. It has just been something very, very special. Joyce, you are one of our executive mentors, and I thank you for that. And we have a whole community of folks who are pushing to push this thing out further and to really invest in diverse talent.

You know what? I am so proud of you, and this is such a great program. So great. I hope— what is your website?

Evan, our website is taliinstitute.org. That's taliinstitute.org.

Oh, you got to go check that out, everyone. And we'll be right back with Evan. We got to take a quick news break. Uh, I think we have Gerald. Are you there?

I'm here, Joyce.

Hi, Gerald, how are you?

I'm great. Hi Joyce and hi Evan, thank you for all that you're doing in our community as always.

Thank you, thank you.

And, and if you're all wondering where's Perri Jude who does our newscast, uh, every week, she is going to be back in one month. She had to take some time off but she'll be back and until then Gerald Helmy is taking her place. So, Gerald, what news do you have for us today?

And I'm honored to get a chance to sit here in this spot. We miss you, Perry Jude, but excited to bring you some news. A few weeks ago, we talked about the exciting ruling where the U.S. Census decided not to recategorize how it defines disability, which we were so excited about. And an interesting piece about that in the— something you hear a lot about in the news today is AI. And when they were taking comments about this ruling in December and opening up from the community, there was a tool put out that allowed people with disabilities to use AI to assist them in making comments about this piece of legislation, this decision, and assisting people with intellectual disabilities and other disabilities to weigh in, which is a great tool. But there's a lot of things with AI, as you know, Joyce Bender, from your work with Ted Kennedy Jr., that also is something we need to keep our eye on in the disability community. So I thought this was an interesting thing to talk about because last week we also talked about the exciting ruling that is preventing federal health programs from using QALYs, or Quality Adjusted Life Years, from determining whether a person with a disability gets access to healthcare. And the tools that come up with measuring what a QALY is are often AI tools. That make that determination. So we need to keep an eye on AI in the disability community and how it's impacting us. It's used a lot in our world of recruiting and hiring people, and a lot of times AI can be, um, discriminatory against people with disabilities by doing— they use tools such as Interview assistants that will track eye movement to look for eye contact or facial expressions for engagement in an interview on a video call, which would be not as inclusive for somebody who has autism and may not be able to engage in the same way as somebody else with other disabilities. Or resume scanning tools that will leave out a person with a disability that has a gap in their experience because they gained their disability during that time. So we need to keep an eye on the future of AI for both instances, when it can help us and aid us in our fight, but also when it is often built by people without disabilities, without our perspective in the technology. So AI is yet another space where it can't be about us without us.

Ah, amen to that. And Gerald, thank you so much for that news update. And yes, great news, but at the same time, everyone, especially in the disability community, keep your eye out on what's going on with artificial intelligence. Thank you, Gerald, and we'll talk to you again next week.

Thank you, Joyce Bender, and thank you again, Evan.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. This is something, Evan, that can be a problem because, you know, if— I'll give you an example. Let's say you had an accident and you were off work. You've not— you're now paralyzed and you were off work for a year or whatever it is. Now you can go apply for a job and maybe possibly not get it because of that gap. So, you know, there are a lot of things going on. We got to keep our eye out, uh, and so do you, for what's going on, uh, with human resources systems that are making a lot of these decisions. Uh, I wanted, I wanted to ask you, as I said, uh, this is just a fabulous program, uh, the Advanced Leadership Institute known as TALLI. How does someone get involved as far as a company is concerned?

Yes, so, so there are numerous ways for someone to get involved within their organization. Very often companies will partner with us, and as a partner or sponsor organization, they have an opportunity to send people to our various programs, right? And, and, and so they're able to kind of reserve space as people apply to our programs for their organizations so they can kind of plan as, as a part of their future pipeline as far as development within their, you know, talent development areas. And so very often you'll have companies that will partner with us and, and make a commitment to send, sending people every year to either our Executive Leadership Academy our Emerging Leaders Program, and now we have a national program. So that's been an option for many companies who have a footprint here but also have employees all across the country. So it allows them to— even more flexibility to be able to include their folks. So that's one way people come to us. The other way that we get candidates is people apply directly, and then they go to their company and ask their company to support them., to come through our program. And we do have an admissions process. So we, we, it's all on our website. And, so we, as we open that up, we go through, you know, we have a selection committee and making sure that, you know, there's the right fit for each, each of our programs. But, very much, companies are involved. We think it's so important for companies to invest in their diverse talent. Our goal is not to put a financial burden on any individual's shoulders, and that really, we want to make sure we ensure that that corporate buy-in is there. And so, that is really key. One of the things that we'll be focused on even this coming year will be, you know, providing enrichment, kind of executive education, even for some of the companies, our corporate partners that are out there. So, doing some special things to make sure that they are up to date on certain very critical topics as it relates to diversity, as it relates to the workforce and the things that we're focused on. So, so yes, a lot of corporate involvement, very, very important.

Well, you know what else I love about this is, you know, it's hard to get access, especially when you're coming from protected class group, what, you know, whether it's African American or disability or Latina, even women. Okay, it's hard sometimes to get access to knowing people in Pittsburgh in that C-suite, and that's why I love this program, because not only do you have your mentor, but when you go to an event, you know all the other people are there, and that alone is worth so much. Just to get that is worth so much. So, you know, I think this program is outstanding in so many ways, and I have to ask you, Evan, do you have an example of a success story?

Oh my goodness, we have a lot of them. It's just trying to figure out which is the right one to share. So, let me just say a typical success story for Tally will be someone who comes into our program, you know, who felt like they were kind of limited, just felt like they got stuck in middle management and almost kind of gave up hope, you know, that there's opportunities to advance here because, you know, When we started Tally, it was really to address two things. One is those folks who get stuck in middle management and felt like they couldn't grow in our region, so they would leave to go to other cities in order to find that ability to grow. The other thing is people would leave, and particularly African Americans would leave the city because they felt isolated, they felt disconnected, they didn't see other, you know, Black leaders. Like themselves and felt like they were out there on their own. And so they would leave, not because they didn't have a good job, but they just didn't feel a sense of community. They didn't feel like they belonged, right? And so we sought to change that. And what we found is that we were able to really change that in a powerful way. I can share just numerous examples of individuals Since I didn't speak to them beforehand, I won't put them out there to live, but I just remember one individual worked for a financial institution. He felt that he really wanted to grow and he really wanted to expand, but just didn't really have that, the network that was here to create those opportunities in a short period. I'll never forget. He was part of the organization. He ended up leaving the organization to go to another organization. They had this major opportunity to be in kind of a top— I mean, literally, two reporting relationships from the CEO, and was able to secure that mainly because his relationships with Tylee allowed him the visibility and the connection was getting to know the CEO. And so the CEO was able to speak up for this person and really gave him an opportunity to advance into that very, very senior role, right? And so that's just one example. I can tell you numerous examples. I'll never forget one of the people in our very first cohort who, is from Pittsburgh who seems to know a lot, who knows a lot of people. You know, she could be the mayor. You know, and so she assumed that she would know most of the people in the class and came in and only knew of like 2. And so it turned out she met another 20 Black professionals doing just incredible things she didn't know were even here in Pittsburgh. And that same phenomenon is what we found happens every single class that we do. People are so—

that is interesting. Yeah, that is really interesting. Wow, that's good. Well, hey, I think we, I think we have a caller on the line here. Caller Scott, are you on the line?

I am, Joyce Bender. Good afternoon and hello, Evan. How are you doing today? I am great. Thank you. Evan, I just, oh, I just wanted to call and thank you, Evan, for being just an awesome board member for the, the Bender Leadership Academy. You are just an amazing person and, and does so much for the communities. I wanted to, to A, call or to thank you for that, and B, I wanted to say congratulations because I saw in the Pittsburgh Business Times that you were mentioned for the 2024 Power 100. So congratulations. Uh, thank you so much, Scott. And, and what an incredible, um, it's really incredible to be on the Bender Leadership Board. The work that is being done there, that you're doing, that Joyce is doing, uh, it is truly my honor and pleasure.

Well, it is ours also. And, and by the way, Scott runs the Bender Leadership Academy. Scott Hammerstrom. Scott, thank you so much for calling in.

You're quite welcome. Thank you so much, and thank you, Evan. Thank you, Scott. Uh, you're, you're doing wonderful things. Thank you. I appreciate that. Bye-bye.

I should just mention to all of you listening with disabilities, or two things. One, in that Tally program when Evan called me. One of the mentees, African American, female, in a wheelchair. So if you're listening, wondering, hey, what's, you know, how about disability? He included disability. That's number one. Number two, he is on the board of the Bender Leadership Academy, helping young people, high school students with disabilities about the world of work, about fighting bullying, about mental health issues, about public speaking, believing in themselves. So I want you all to know he is involved in the disability community, and I thank you again so much for everything you do for those high school students, Evan.

Oh no, no, thank you. Like I said, what a privilege it is And I'm also just pleased to share with you that the person that you're referring to who was the person with disability in our cohort, she has started a consulting business. And Tali is going to be one of her very first clients as she's getting launched into her next direction. So we just met the other day. Can't be more excited. What an incredible, incredible person she is. So I'm looking forward forward to that. And thank you for, you know, answering the call and working to be a mentor. What you have done, a great thing by putting yourself— you have so many things you can be doing across the globe and that you are doing. To take the time to be an executive mentor for our program means so much. So thank you, Joyce Bender, for what you are doing.

Oh, my pleasure. And we are talking about SuperSTAR Angela Green. If you are in Western Pennsylvania or beyond and you're looking for an executive— she is executive-level management consulting— just get in touch with me at either benderconsult.com or voiceamerica.com, and I will put you in touch. Another great example of Tally. So before we end the show today, Evan, one question I have is, you know, you're so giving, so wonderful, such a great board member, friend. My question is, who impacted you so much? You know, who is your role model?

Wow, that's an amazing question. You know, I think about There are so many folks I am so grateful for, you know, starting with my parents, but also just along the way, people who've influenced my life and my career. I'll— the person though I'm going to point to right now is someone who's been a mentor for me really through my professional journey, you know. And like I said, there have been many, many people, you know, Erin Walton, you know, to help kick things off for me, along with Dave O'Brien over at Highmark. But the person I'm going to point to is Greg Spencer right now because Greg, you know, his heart is in mentoring. His heart is in the community. I happen to be one of the just many, many, many people that he has personally mentored over the years. And I feel very fortunate. I think about, you know, integrity and the integrity that he brings to every situation, but a real, a real true heart for business and for community. You know, eventually started his own business, but I would have to say Greg Spencer is has really been that guy consistently over the years. And very, very grateful to Greg and the example that he leads. He is a— early on when we were starting TALY, he became very involved, became our founding co-chair at TALY. And so I would say Greg and the work that he has done even prior to that, he has started this incredible mentoring program for mid-level African Americans to connect them with senior-level African American leaders, you know, 15 years, 20 years before we even started Tally. And so I would have to say he's the person that really stands out in my mind when I think about the example that he's provided for not just me, but for so many others.

Oh, he is awesome. That is a great example of a servant leader and someone who really cares. I just think so highly of him. So what a great example that you have given. And I know there are so many, but if you tried to list everyone, we would be on here forever, right, Evan?

We would be on here We would be on here forever. I mean, there is, you know, I think about people like Ray Bettler who just— you talk about servant leaders. I do not know if you have met Ray, but he exemplifies that in everything he does. There is just some incredible folks. But I did at least want to acknowledge Greg in your question.

Well, Evan, thank you so much for being with us today. It was truly a pleasure. To have you on the show. And as we continue celebrating Black History Month, Carrie Stith from PNC will be our guest next week. But we end every show with a quote. And this was in President Obama's Oval Office on the— actually, I think on the floor when you walked in. And it was this quote: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What a great quote. This is Joyce Bender, America's Voice, where disability matters, at voiceamerica.com. I'll talk to you next week, and remember, In the words of Mary Proctor, when you go out today, remember to choose joy.

Voice America would like to thank you for tuning in. Please join us next Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific time and 2 PM Eastern time for another installment of Disability Matters right here on the Voice America variety channel. We are the leader in live internet talk radio. VoiceAmerica.com.