September 16, 2021 • 36 mins
Today, we meet one of America’s most prominent non-profit CEOs. Stacey D. Stewart is the President and CEO of the March of Dimes. She previously served as the U.S. President of United Way Worldwide, as well as President and Chief Executive Officer for the Fannie Mae Foundation. Stacey shares stories of growing up in middle class America as the daughter of a high school valedictorian who was expected to abandon her own dreams to support her husband, before reemerging as a leader. She also delves into her life as a mom and one half of a DC power couple. From politics to parenting and career, this is an episode not to be missed!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
(00:21):
so excited to welcome Stacy Stewart, the CEO of the
March of Dimes. So, Stacy, you started your career in finance.
What led you down that path? I wanted to make money.
You know, It's funny because boy, I was just talking
to my my youngest day. I have two daughters, one
eighteen and one sixteen, and I was talking to one
(00:45):
of them, my youngest one, about how I used to
spend my summers, and I was explaining that I had
an internship, you know, in I think it was the
first time I interned with the First National Bank of Atlanta,
which was subsequently bought by Wacoba. Now it's really well
as far ago, I guess now and was I guess
in between my junior and senior years in high school.
(01:07):
And it was back then that I knew I had
an interest in banking and didn't know where that would lead.
But my mother's best friend can remember talking about, you know,
being not well off or you know whatever, but just
doing well in my life financially, even when I was
a little girl. So I just so, I guess that
(01:28):
was it. I mean, finance seemed to be the way
to make money. So I just did. So. Tell us
what your family's relationship was like with money growing up. Well,
you know, I didn't grow up in a wealthy family,
but my father was a physician and my mother, uh,
my dad, you know, I mean this is showing my
age a little bit. When I was young, my dad
(01:51):
was there wasn't the thing to have your wife working.
Even though my mother was super super smart. You know,
she was the valedictorian of her class. She was homecome
and queen like you know, everything like that. She was
that girl, you know, like the home and then that
was like crazy. But for a physician, you know, and
I was born in the sixties, Um, you could live
(02:12):
a pretty comfortable lifestyle, you know, and so especially as
a black family, you know, you were considered kind of
upper middle class for a black family, you know. And
I lived in a really comfortable neighborhood if you go
to look in the neighborhood I grew up in, you
would call it modest at best. It was a kind
of a modest American neighborhood. But it was a really
(02:32):
really nice neighborhood when I was growing up, And so
it was really more than that. It wasn't really so
much the money about it was more my neighborhood was
more um full of very accomplished of black people. You
know my neighborhood just quickly. I'll tell you that in
Atlanta when I was growing up, after white flight happened
(02:53):
and a lot of white families left parts of Atlanta,
many of those neighborhoods where then had were full of
homes that were then bought by upwardly mobile black families,
especially in Southwest Atlanta. If you anyone knows Southwest Atlanta day,
everyone knows it's all black, and it's all full of
all black you know, lots of black middle class families.
(03:14):
And um I lived in Northwest Atlanta, just slightly above Southwest,
But it was like all a continuation of the same
kind of neighborhood. But my neighborhood was even more unique
in that it was built by the homes that were
in my neighborhood were built by black builders. It was
a black developer that developed the entire neighborhood, Black contractors, architects,
(03:36):
and then all the homes were then bought by black doctors, dentists, lawyers, businesspeople,
civil rights leaders, and so the kind of pride that
came from growing up in that kind of community. I
mean I even had we even had tour buses that
came through our neighborhood because if you can believe those
(03:58):
people in the sixties and the niece couldn't believe that
there was a neighborhood like this for black so many
black accomplished people. That was the kind of neighborhood I
grew up in around these very accomplished people that did
so much. I mean, nobody was super wealthy, but people
were very focused on succeeding in life and had tremendous credentials,
and that was inspiring for me. What was your parents
(04:21):
marriage like, Oh, you know, I think it was tough,
like most marriages. You know, they were married for my
entire life. They had more of the traditional lifestyles, like
my dad was the provider. My mom was really more
than mom right making sure the kids were okay and
doing all those things. As I got older, though, it
got to be more of a modern marriage. I would say,
(04:42):
where my father I knew what a brilliant woman my
mom was. And when my mother served on city council
for thirteen years and decide to run for mayor, you know,
he was long past the time where you know, he
didn't want his wife leaving the house. He had long
gotten down to the house by then, was doing all
these amazing things in the world. And he was her
(05:04):
biggest champion for her as a candidate for mayor. And
my dad was also you know, had four girls and
was very much a champion for girls and for us
being super successful in our in our lives. And so
you know, it was we had all the challenges that
I think families have, but they stayed married and I
(05:24):
can appreciate, you know, staying married for forty years and
through all the ups and downs of that. Right, So,
Stacy tell us about the evolution from finance to the
nonprofit world. Yeah, So, you know, one of the things
that I learned early in my life from my family,
I think and my parents was that especially because my
(05:45):
dad was the physician, but He was also in the
sixties the president of the Atlanta branch of the Double
A c Pen was very involved, as most professional black
people were also really involved in the Civil rights movement.
They were the ones for in the medical care, the
dental care, getting people out of jail, financing the civil
rights movement, that kind of thing. You know a lot
(06:07):
about the Martin Muther King's and Ralph David Abernathy, who
were you know, they were my neighbors, but you don't
often hear about those unsung heroes of the civil rights
movement who were behind the scenes. And when my dad
was one of those. And I think from the life
that my mom and dad lad it was very much
that it wasn't enough for you just to have a
(06:28):
professional career, that you had to give back and sometimes
at the same time. So even though I had this
really strong interest in finance and business and I you know,
had these internships in banking when I was in high
school and into college, I was an intern at Chase
Manhattan Bank, which was a really great opportunity for me.
(06:48):
And then that went on. I was an econ major
at Georgetown and then went to business school in Michigan
and concentrating and finance. Through all that period of time,
really understood that even though I would have this really
amazing career publicly in banking and finance, that I would
have to give back and that my and what I
(07:09):
what I really felt was that it was both important
to be a business person that was you know, that
could do good at the same time. And so there
was this So even when I graduated from business school,
I pursued a career in Wall Street, but an area
called in an area called public finance, not in corporate finance.
So I worked in the area of Wall Street that
(07:30):
was all about raising money for cities and counties and
government through fund roads and bridges and hospitals and schools
and all of those things. And that was what I
wanted to do. I had really no desire by the
time I graduate from business school to work in corporate finance.
And then from there I went to Fannie May and
and that's the definition of Fannie May was a private
company with a very public mission of providing home ownership
(07:53):
and housing opportunities for families, but it was a publicly
traded company. And then once I was a Fan May,
and I spend half the time in the company, and
then I became president CEO of the Fannie May Foundation,
which at the time was a separate entity from the company,
totally funded by the company, but it was actually a
standalone entity. That's what sort of branched me out into
(08:17):
launched me into a career in philanthropy and nonprofit and
then for me, the lines have been very blurred between
for profit and nonprofit and what's corporate and nonprofit. I mean,
the fact of the matter is you can be a
business person and still do good at the same time.
You don't have to have these definitive lines that say
I'm a business person and a horrible person who doesn't
(08:38):
care about community, or I'm on this nonprofit side and
I don't need to care about a p and L
because I just run a nonprofit and nonprofits don't have
you know, p m L s. Well that's not true either,
So Stacy, I don't think we can move away from
Fannie May without asking you about the foreclosure crisis. Well
that's a long story. Probably we need phase two of
(09:01):
that show, you know. So, yeah, I was, I was
in Fanning May. Really there's a story to this, which
was Fannie May hit a real bump in the road
in two thousand five, three years before the housing crisis,
when it faced a really big financial restatement. It was
a billion dollary statement and and I won't go to
a lot of details around that, but it really shook
(09:23):
the company at its core. There was a leadership change
UM at the company. I still remained at the foundation.
And but then when the housing crisis hit in two thousand,
you know, going in two thousand seven, two thousand eight,
and two thousand nine, it was really clear at that
point that you know, the economy was heading into a tailspin.
(09:46):
And being at Fannie May at the time was difficult
because the housing crisis got sort of blamed on Fannie
May and Freddie Mac. I mean, the narrative from that was, well,
it was Fannie and Freddie Mack this sort of wrought
down the whole housing market, and that simply was not true.
What brought down the housing market, in my mind, were
(10:07):
the poor lending standards by mainly unregulated UM financial institutions
that didn't helped the spiral the entire industry out of control,
subprime lending that really gotten out of control that was
not regulated UM, and investors who really didn't know what
they were investing in, and a lot of lacks lending restrictions,
(10:27):
so lending guidelines, And that was really the beginning of it. Now,
of course for Aney and Freddy Matt got sucked into
it and and that was a tough time, and I
was still ahead of the foundation. We brought the Foundation
back into the company. The Foundation had been doing a
lot of consumer related work right We were doing a
lot of consumer education to help people for years up
(10:49):
until the housing crisis, to help people understand about how
to establish good credit, how to move from being a
renter to being a first time homeowner. We ran as
on television to help get information out to people. We
had materials and multiple languages to speak to different um
people of new immigrant communities and things like that. Well,
by the time I came back into the company, right
(11:10):
at the midst of the crisis, I was really one
of the few people in the company of Fannie May
that really had any sense of connection to consumers, to
actual homeowners. Because Fannie May as a company was really
in the secondary mortgage market. The customers of Fannie May
were not actual homebuyers. They have were then and are
(11:31):
still banks and mortgage lending institutions, and and it was
more of a B two B model, but I had
more of a B two C experience at the Foundation.
So I spent a lot of time with our CEO
in our lost mitigation efforts, trying to help the company
work with services to navigate borrower attitudes and borrower behavior
(11:54):
during a financial crisis. And that was really interesting because
I think a lot of people weren't clear about how
borrowers would would really would they continue to pay make
their mortgage payments, could they um would they walk away
from their mortgages, which many of them did, or would
they stay? And we do know the lasting to say
about this if we do know that some of the
worst and the most egregious lending practices were were directed
(12:19):
towards communities of color, and there were lots of black
and brown people who end up losing their homes. And uh,
it was a huge and very very tragic wealth transfer
out of community of color just when we were beginning
to build up wealth with expanded home ownership, especially through
the nineties in the early two thousands. So it was
(12:41):
a tragic moment. And you know, some communities are still
trying to recover from that, you know, and and now
we're in the midst of another tragedy with the pandemic.
So it's tough and now for a quick break. So
what has it been like to lead through the pandemic.
It's been a real experience. And I think, um, you know,
I think for for anyone, if you're the president and
(13:04):
CEO of any organization, whether it's a company or nonprofit,
it has not been for the faint of heart, right.
It is something that you have to wake up every
day assess the situation. One of the things that I
have always thought about leadership is that you never have
perfect information. But sometimes you also don't have the luxury
(13:26):
of time to act and make decisions, and you have
to do it with the best information you have at
the moment. Right. So the pandemic has been a constantly
involving situation. You know, even back in March of two thousand,
when we were wondering whether or not we would go
into full lockdown mode, and or even I would say
(13:47):
February and when we started to get a sense that wait,
there's something really bad happening. But we remember, we really
didn't know, We didn't have the full story were clearly
we know now, we weren't being told the full story
of what this whatever of the story was that anyone
knew at that time, and so a lot of us
were just left to make some decisions. So, for example,
we have at the Margindimes from March until May is
(14:09):
one of our biggest fundraising seasons. It's when we have
all of our March for Babies walks. They're all outdoors,
which is which was a nice thing, but uh, in
the spring time, you know, we got hundreds and thousands
of people gathering in parks or public places to raise
money for the Margindimes and for moms and babies, and
(14:30):
we without enough information on how the pandemic was affecting
communities even by that time, what we needed to do
to stay safe. We just had to make a call
to say, we don't think it's responsible at this point
to bring people together. So we had to virtualize overnight
all of those in personal events when nobody was had
a clue how to do that, and my team got
(14:53):
amazingly creative and we just pulled together and decided on
a plan. We we we didn't as well financially, and
that was a whole other issue. As how do you
keep things afloat when revenue is down um ten um.
Fortunately about in the year we were only when a
(15:14):
lot of organizations were down revenue, we were only down
about we were able to find some really innovative ways
to navigate. And then of course it wasn't just the pandemic.
Remember we also had the George Floyd all of those
issues who deal with and Brianna Taylor and many issues
to deal with. So we you know, was just like,
I mean, we're gonna look back on twenty twenty and
(15:35):
just think, how in the world did we ever survived?
And we're still not out of the woods now and
we're midway through the year, but I think it was
you know, it's interesting I see a lot of people
resigning from their jobs now. Of course, we saw a
lot of women leave the workplace unfortunately just because they
couldn't understandably you can't deal with it in the school
(15:56):
and the virtual learning. But you've obviously I've seen now
lot of CEOs that there are a lot of nonprofits
they are looking for a new leadership because I think
a lot of people just got really exhausted from the
whole experience. And it's unfortunate because I think it was
overwhelming for a lot of people, and I understand that,
how have you tried to care for your team virtually
(16:18):
and through all of this, because it's a lot. Yeah,
it's been a lot. Well, you know. I think one
of the things that we try to do was to
try to be first real understanding. Especially we've got a
lot of women who um work at the March Times,
a lot of young mothers who are trying to navigate
work and virtual learning. So we tried our best to
be as understanding about that give people as much flexible time.
(16:43):
The good thing is we had negotiated a contract with
Zoom years ago, and so when people were sort of
trying to figure out way what a zoom again, I
don't understand the thing where we were already well on
our way. We were We've got a pretty virtualized workforce anyway,
but a lot of folks who work from home and
a lot of not everyone works in an office at
the March Times, So we we were able to transition
(17:06):
pretty well into a virtual uh daily work life right
because we were already there. But it still was trying
to be very understanding to people's flexibility with respective families.
We have very um generous paid family leave policies, So
if someone needed to take care of a family member,
we have generous policies that allow people to do that.
(17:28):
New mothers that were expecting during the pandemic, allowing them
time off to do that, paid time off to do that. UM.
And then I think, just you know, we we we
couldn't really um let our gap, let our foot off
the gas of trying to stay on track with our
goals because so many on the during the pandemic we had.
(17:48):
You can't put pregnancy on pause, right you, I mean,
you're pregnant. You had to continue with your pregnancy, and
and and there were women looking for information, Well, how's
the how's COVID gonna affect me? How mighty affect my baby?
Is the vaccine going to be safe? There are no
clinical trials to include pregnant women. How do I know
that the vaccine is gonna work for me? And it's
not gonna be damaging? So we we had a ton
(18:10):
of work that we still had to do to meet
the needs of those folks. But in some ways it
was kind of rewarding to know that that we were
still so needed and and so many families were relying
on us, women were relying on us. And I think
that that lasting I'll just say is that when George
Floyd's death happened, his murder happened, it really gave corporate
(18:35):
America big wake up call to health equity, equity issues
in the in general in the country. We were able
to have really highlight of the work a lot of
work we're doing on health equity. So that brought another
area of opportunity for us to build new partnerships and
attract new investment because we were already on our way
towards focusing on some of those issues. Because in maternal health,
(18:58):
you know, black women are still dying at the read
four times out of white women, so we were you know,
we've got black babies that died twice the rate of
white babies. We've got huge health equity issues. So the
fact that we could talk about that work in the
midst of this reckoning and awakening that that America faced
at the middle part last year was gave us a
(19:18):
big opening to create new partnerships and new new opportunities
that brought new investment to us as well. It seems
like a big challenge of yours as a leader has
been understandably, March of Times is so big and just
figuring out where to put their money and what to
fund and when to take funds away. Can you talk
(19:38):
about that as a leader and sort of some of
the criticism you have faced and how you have gotten
through that. Yeah, I think you know a lot of
folks familiar with the Marchdimes had never really heard the
Marchingdims talk about health equity as much as we have
in the past several years. And I think a lot
(20:00):
of people have been on a journey with us to
understand why we have some of the health equity issues.
We have some people that resist the idea that there
should even be these health equity issues, or that it's
the blame and the responsibility of black and brown people
that they're not as healthy as other people. Well, it
must be your fault, right, I mean that. I think
(20:21):
there may have been a little bit of that early
on when we started to say we have to focus
on these issues. If we're going to make progress on
maternally in health in this country, we can't do it
without and ignore that too many black and brown women
and babies are left behind and we just sort of
unapologetically kept on that same message and embedded it into
(20:45):
our strategy and embedded it as an important focus of
every part of our work. And I know that we
got some pushback from long term donors and supporters who
have maybe had a hard time understanding those concepts and
maybe even accepting them. But I think what we decided
to do was to embed it in the values of
(21:07):
the organization to such an extent that we would make
it a part of everything that we do at the organization.
And and and that's been important because you're not going
to make progress on these issues if you're just giving
lip service to them anyway, and if they're not, they're
so big and so hard to work on that if
(21:30):
they're not a part of the very fundamental core of
the organization, you're not going to make progress. So it's
just been um important to stay like very a degree
of fortitude about it, I think, and and remind ourselves
of what we are about at the end of the
day as an organization. If we say, when organizations about
(21:53):
fighting for the help of all moms and babies, it
has to mean all moms and babies. You can't mean
with some of them that live in these areas and
others don't know. We'll get to that when we get
to that. No, that's not what that means, right, So
what does that mean? And now for a quick break.
So you've had a number of executive roles. It's probably
different for each one, but if you could give an
example of how you were recruited or found the opportunity,
(22:15):
because these aren't jobs that are like posted on indeed
generally right. So let me just start by telling this
that when I was at University of Michigan at the
Ross Business School um and I wanted I made a decision.
I heard one of an alum come back to the
school talk and talk about public finance, and I knew
(22:36):
then listening to him that that was exactly what I
wanted to do in my career. Even though all the
other alums were talking about on this panel corporate finance,
I said, no, no, no, I want to do public finance.
The problem was is that there weren't investment banks coming
all the way halfway across the country to recruit for
public finance jobs. And why should they. They could go
to Wharton and Harvard and all the East Coast schools
(22:57):
and and recruit for those folks. So why should you
come all the way to Chikin so um, long story short,
I end up flying myself to New York. I cold called.
I got a bunch of names of people that were
in publican ants and they didn't know me. I didn't
know them. I just cold call them and I said,
I said, hey, I want to I'd love to learn
more about what you do. I'm interested in publican as
(23:18):
is what I want to do. Can I just come
and visit with you? I want to hear more about
what you do? And um, I did that. I flew
myself to New York. I got mugged in Brooklyn, staying
with a friend getting off the train while I was there.
But I had all these meetings set up with investment
bankers to talk about it. And you know, I kind
of knew that I wanted a job from one of
them if they liked me, But I didn't talk to
(23:40):
I lead with I want to learn, and I did.
I really want to learn more about it. So I
want to start with that to say that the beginning
of my career wasn't very very much non traditional. It
was very much fly yourself, get yourself in front of people.
What do you have to lose? Just go forward. And
then once I got into john jobs, and this is
(24:02):
one thing I say to young people all the time
is if you want the next job, the bigger job.
And I know this is something that your mom tells
you or somebody else tells you an adult in your life,
you have to do a good job in the job
you're in. Even if you're not happy in the job
you're in, you better do a good job in the
(24:23):
job you're in, because why would anybody give you another
opportunity if you're not already you know, hitting the ball
out of the out of the park. And I would
also say that the only way to do the best
job possible is to make the best decisions, the best
choice possible about where to go. So some people will
make choices about, oh, I'll just go do this job
(24:43):
for a while because I really want to get to
something else. Well, you know what I can guarantee you
if that's if you're sort of halfheartedly going into the job,
you're probably gonna do a half pass job right in
the position and it's not gonna and then the next
opportunity is not going to pan out. So there were
plenty of things that I the positions that I may
have thought I wanted to do or pursue, it didn't
(25:04):
work out, and then the next opportunity came and it
did work out, and it ended up that that was
actually the perfect job for me, right um Or It
was definitely a job that I felt like, I would
love to do this job, and I'm gonna and I'm
gonna go into a feeling super excited about doing it.
And every time I did take on the next opportunity,
(25:25):
I did feel that way, and I did do a
good job, and that then led to the next thing.
So for me, it's um You're right. The jobs are
not usually on indeed, because when somebody notices you doing
a good job, they come to you and say, would
you be interested That's what happened when I was at
Fannie May and I got approached about what I'd be
interested in being the presidency of the Foundation. And the
(25:45):
first thing I said was no, because I thought it
paid less right to remember I'm always I'm I'm always
trying to do better for myself. Right um. Turns out
it was financially great, and from a career perspective, it
was great um. And then when I decided that I
was ready to leave Fannie may Um, I had made
(26:06):
a lot of connections with head hunters who were calling
me for different opportunities. And that's that's really how executive
jobs happen, as you start to cultivate a relationship with
head hunters. I would always encourage people to be super
nice two people in executive search, because even if that
one opportunity doesn't pan out or you're not interested, if
you help them out and connect them with somebody who
(26:28):
might be good for the job, or if you just
develop a relationship with them, they'll keep you in mind
for the next thing. And I have a ton of
friends that are an executive search just because I've gotten
to know them over time. They've called me and I've
talked them about different things, and and it's been helpful
in terms of opening up doors for me as well
as I've moved moved through my career. So you and
your husband both have really big careers. How have you
(26:51):
managed side by side in terms of your division of
labor at home and with your girls? Yeah, well, I'm
really blessed to have a husband who is super ambitious
and also super dedicated to being the best dad he
can be. And you know, my father was was a
(27:13):
similar similar way, but the vision and the perspective of
what it looked like to be a father when my
dad was a dad is very different in what it
looks like today in twenty in the you know, in
and I'm really happy about how things have evolved, how
men a lot of them do want to have a
more active role in fatherhood, do want to play, you know,
(27:36):
a bigger role in their kids lives and and see
them and where you know, my husband and I have
seen it as really a partnership. I think it's been
incredible and there are a lot of couples that you know,
are like that. Having said all that, there is so
much that still falls on the shoulders and in the
lapse of moms. I don't know. Moms have this thing
(27:58):
where we into to pay things, like we see the
future and know where it's going, Like we have a
sixth sense about what our kids will need before they
need it, or what our kids are gonna be. Um,
you know, we're planning ahead for what school is going
to be looking like in the next couple of years.
When we have to start thinking about transition our kids
(28:19):
from one school to the next, or we're already thinking
about child care needs before our husbands are. And so
as long as the husbands are there to take the
tasks that we assign them, then that's really good because
there was a time when dad's wouldn't even do that.
But you know, the unfortunate reality of many working moms
is we're still managing the overall household uh and we're
(28:44):
making we're making those decisions for what's best for the home,
what's best for our kids. And we're fortunate if we
have a spouse or a partner who can be there
to take on the tasks like be the chief operating
officer to our seat EO role. And I don't mean
to diminish it in one be one bit. And there
certainly are things that my husband leads on that I don't,
(29:06):
and I'm happy to have him lead on things, but
I don't think it's I don't think I could be
nearly as successful in my career if I didn't have
the kind of husband who saw that his role was
to be super responsible for all aspects of what it
would take to help support our kids and their development,
(29:27):
and not only financially, but in other ways as well,
and I've been very blessed in that way. Speaking out
of your your daughters, what do they know about your work?
Like how involved have they been? What do they think
about you as this executive? I don't know they you know,
I think that well. First of all, I do know
that they're super proud of me when I have exciting
(29:48):
things going on, like if I'm going to be on
a television show or I'll tell about this podcast, for example,
and they'll say, okay, mom, whatever you know, and they'll
give me that um like oh yeah, it's another one
of you and talking about your march anddives saying I
got it. But I think behind the scenes they are
super excited and I'd like to think that they're super inspired.
(30:10):
Um my daughter, both my girls are Girl Scouts and
and my daughter one daughter, the younger one, is working
on a Gold Award, which for a lot of people
they may not know. The Gold war is kind of
like an Eagle Scout award. And my older daughter did
her Gold Award on maternal health and addressing the maternal
health crisis in Washington, d C. And was just successful
(30:31):
in getting the mayor to designate is Maternal Health Education
and Awareness Day in the District of Columbia, and so
clearly I I think I must have influenced her in
that way to focus on that, although she made her
own choice about what to work on. I think I
want to be that mom that is both showing that
(30:55):
you can be successful but also being a loving, caring
mom at home too, And that's what I hope they
take away from me. Although I'll be the last one
to know from them how they actually think about me,
because they'll never tell me. I'm sure I'll have here
from somebody else. So you had a mom who was
(31:17):
very involved in politics and ran for mayor of Atlanta.
What is your political future going to be like? Probably nothing,
because I don't I think once you go through a
campaign like that of running through a mayor, you quickly
realize that it may not be something you want to do. UM.
I think there are many ways for me to have
(31:39):
an impact on people's lives without necessarily being an elected official. UM.
I respect people that do run for office a great
deal because it's a huge sacrifice. But I UM and
I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing because I
do think I have a huge impact on people's lives,
and that that, at the end of day, is what's
(32:00):
most important to me. Is that I use my skills,
even my business training, to do good for others. And
that's what's really most important to me. All Right, we
are going to launch into our speed round where we're
just gonna ask you a few quick questions and you
can give us a spontaneous answers. Amy, you want to
kick us off, Stacy, what book are you reading? Actually,
I'm reading The Bluest I and I've been kind of
(32:22):
muddling my way through it by Tony Morrison. Who are
your closest friends and how did you meet them? Oh? Wow,
this is gonna make me cry because one of my
very best friends just died about a week and a
half ago. Yeah, and her daughter is my god daughter.
And most of my very good friends, I only have
a handful of them, and they're mainly women that I
(32:45):
grew up with in Atlanta. One of them is my
sorority sister. But but my friends are their friends I've
had for all my life, most of my life. What
is your nighttime routine? I um, usually watch sports, some
sort of whatever sports are on. We just had at
the Olympics and I was watching a w NBA game.
I'm a huge sports fan. My alter egos sports mom
(33:07):
d m v um. I'm a big advocate for girls
sports in the Washington, d C. Area, So I'm usually
looking at sports and then I look at TikTok and
I go to bed. Who leaves you star strack, say
Michelle Obama. Alright, My question is basically I always want
to know what CEO spend their money on. And then
(33:28):
in the process, before you spend the money, is there
something that you're saving for? Oh my god. So for me,
what I spend my money on is private school and
college tuition, So that's like, that's like the big thing. Um,
I'm saving for my European River cruise, and I hope
I don't have to wait till my sixtieth birthday. That's
(33:50):
not that far away. But but maybe that's what it is, um,
is I'm saving for that and then saving for a
bunch of travel when my kids are finally out of college.
So two things stood out to me Amy from this interview.
I mean, Stacy is extraordinary, but one of the fascinating
things is a her mom, who is this dynamo who
(34:11):
was validatorian over high school, and it was just understood
that she was basically not allowed to use all of
her talent and work and reach her potential, which it
sounds like she maybe did later on, but it was
all of those lost years and and then the other
thing that struck me was just this incredible place she
grew up, because I do think we don't think enough
(34:32):
or talk enough about how your environment shapes you in
terms of ambition, and how being around certain kinds of
people just makes you want to be your best self.
I think those are two very good points to the
first one. When Stacy was talking about her mom, I
just kept going back to Nancy Pelosi in my mind
because not a lot of people know this about Nancy Pelosi,
(34:53):
but she did not work. She raised kids for decades,
and then after her five kids were older, she went
back to work. She developed this career and pretty successful,
I would say, a Speaker of the House, you know, well,
one of the most powerful women in America. But anyway,
it's just into your point. I think it's so true.
I think that was really the expectation of brilliant, ambitious women,
(35:17):
you know, decades ago that they wouldn't work, that wasn't
a path for them. My mother worked my entire life,
but she talks about her career choices as limited to
being a teacher or a nurse. Oh. Absolutely, I remember
when my mom. I remember there was a preschool teacher
who said to Ella, oh, you'd be a great teacher.
And my mom trained me to think like we could
never be a teacher because that was the only opportunity
(35:40):
for women in a certain generation. So you never wanted
to be the one thing you were limited to. My
mother told me I couldn't be a teacher because I
would be a horrible teacher. Not that my mother was
an amazing teacher, but she was right. I would have
been a horrible teacher. It's too hard, but it goes
to this point of what you're talking about where Stacy
(36:00):
grew up, which sounds like a very remarkable place. Thanks
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with
us on social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's
Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
The Riveter. At the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company,
(36:23):
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
to our producer Stacy Para, our social media manager Phoebe
crane Fest, and our male perspective, blue Burns
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
(00:21):
so excited to welcome Stacy Stewart, the CEO of the
March of Dimes. So, Stacy, you started your career in finance.
What led you down that path? I wanted to make money.
You know, It's funny because boy, I was just talking
to my my youngest day. I have two daughters, one
eighteen and one sixteen, and I was talking to one
(00:45):
of them, my youngest one, about how I used to
spend my summers, and I was explaining that I had
an internship, you know, in I think it was the
first time I interned with the First National Bank of Atlanta,
which was subsequently bought by Wacoba. Now it's really well
as far ago, I guess now and was I guess
in between my junior and senior years in high school.
(01:07):
And it was back then that I knew I had
an interest in banking and didn't know where that would lead.
But my mother's best friend can remember talking about, you know,
being not well off or you know whatever, but just
doing well in my life financially, even when I was
a little girl. So I just so, I guess that
(01:28):
was it. I mean, finance seemed to be the way
to make money. So I just did. So. Tell us
what your family's relationship was like with money growing up. Well,
you know, I didn't grow up in a wealthy family,
but my father was a physician and my mother, uh,
my dad, you know, I mean this is showing my
age a little bit. When I was young, my dad
(01:51):
was there wasn't the thing to have your wife working.
Even though my mother was super super smart. You know,
she was the valedictorian of her class. She was homecome
and queen like you know, everything like that. She was
that girl, you know, like the home and then that
was like crazy. But for a physician, you know, and
I was born in the sixties, Um, you could live
(02:12):
a pretty comfortable lifestyle, you know, and so especially as
a black family, you know, you were considered kind of
upper middle class for a black family, you know. And
I lived in a really comfortable neighborhood if you go
to look in the neighborhood I grew up in, you
would call it modest at best. It was a kind
of a modest American neighborhood. But it was a really
(02:32):
really nice neighborhood when I was growing up, And so
it was really more than that. It wasn't really so
much the money about it was more my neighborhood was
more um full of very accomplished of black people. You
know my neighborhood just quickly. I'll tell you that in
Atlanta when I was growing up, after white flight happened
(02:53):
and a lot of white families left parts of Atlanta,
many of those neighborhoods where then had were full of
homes that were then bought by upwardly mobile black families,
especially in Southwest Atlanta. If you anyone knows Southwest Atlanta day,
everyone knows it's all black, and it's all full of
all black you know, lots of black middle class families.
(03:14):
And um I lived in Northwest Atlanta, just slightly above Southwest,
But it was like all a continuation of the same
kind of neighborhood. But my neighborhood was even more unique
in that it was built by the homes that were
in my neighborhood were built by black builders. It was
a black developer that developed the entire neighborhood, Black contractors, architects,
(03:36):
and then all the homes were then bought by black doctors, dentists, lawyers, businesspeople,
civil rights leaders, and so the kind of pride that
came from growing up in that kind of community. I
mean I even had we even had tour buses that
came through our neighborhood because if you can believe those
(03:58):
people in the sixties and the niece couldn't believe that
there was a neighborhood like this for black so many
black accomplished people. That was the kind of neighborhood I
grew up in around these very accomplished people that did
so much. I mean, nobody was super wealthy, but people
were very focused on succeeding in life and had tremendous credentials,
and that was inspiring for me. What was your parents
(04:21):
marriage like, Oh, you know, I think it was tough,
like most marriages. You know, they were married for my
entire life. They had more of the traditional lifestyles, like
my dad was the provider. My mom was really more
than mom right making sure the kids were okay and
doing all those things. As I got older, though, it
got to be more of a modern marriage. I would say,
(04:42):
where my father I knew what a brilliant woman my
mom was. And when my mother served on city council
for thirteen years and decide to run for mayor, you know,
he was long past the time where you know, he
didn't want his wife leaving the house. He had long
gotten down to the house by then, was doing all
these amazing things in the world. And he was her
(05:04):
biggest champion for her as a candidate for mayor. And
my dad was also you know, had four girls and
was very much a champion for girls and for us
being super successful in our in our lives. And so
you know, it was we had all the challenges that
I think families have, but they stayed married and I
(05:24):
can appreciate, you know, staying married for forty years and
through all the ups and downs of that. Right, So,
Stacy tell us about the evolution from finance to the
nonprofit world. Yeah, So, you know, one of the things
that I learned early in my life from my family,
I think and my parents was that especially because my
(05:45):
dad was the physician, but He was also in the
sixties the president of the Atlanta branch of the Double
A c Pen was very involved, as most professional black
people were also really involved in the Civil rights movement.
They were the ones for in the medical care, the
dental care, getting people out of jail, financing the civil
rights movement, that kind of thing. You know a lot
(06:07):
about the Martin Muther King's and Ralph David Abernathy, who
were you know, they were my neighbors, but you don't
often hear about those unsung heroes of the civil rights
movement who were behind the scenes. And when my dad
was one of those. And I think from the life
that my mom and dad lad it was very much
that it wasn't enough for you just to have a
(06:28):
professional career, that you had to give back and sometimes
at the same time. So even though I had this
really strong interest in finance and business and I you know,
had these internships in banking when I was in high
school and into college, I was an intern at Chase
Manhattan Bank, which was a really great opportunity for me.
(06:48):
And then that went on. I was an econ major
at Georgetown and then went to business school in Michigan
and concentrating and finance. Through all that period of time,
really understood that even though I would have this really
amazing career publicly in banking and finance, that I would
have to give back and that my and what I
(07:09):
what I really felt was that it was both important
to be a business person that was you know, that
could do good at the same time. And so there
was this So even when I graduated from business school,
I pursued a career in Wall Street, but an area
called in an area called public finance, not in corporate finance.
So I worked in the area of Wall Street that
(07:30):
was all about raising money for cities and counties and
government through fund roads and bridges and hospitals and schools
and all of those things. And that was what I
wanted to do. I had really no desire by the
time I graduate from business school to work in corporate finance.
And then from there I went to Fannie May and
and that's the definition of Fannie May was a private
company with a very public mission of providing home ownership
(07:53):
and housing opportunities for families, but it was a publicly
traded company. And then once I was a Fan May,
and I spend half the time in the company, and
then I became president CEO of the Fannie May Foundation,
which at the time was a separate entity from the company,
totally funded by the company, but it was actually a
standalone entity. That's what sort of branched me out into
(08:17):
launched me into a career in philanthropy and nonprofit and
then for me, the lines have been very blurred between
for profit and nonprofit and what's corporate and nonprofit. I mean,
the fact of the matter is you can be a
business person and still do good at the same time.
You don't have to have these definitive lines that say
I'm a business person and a horrible person who doesn't
(08:38):
care about community, or I'm on this nonprofit side and
I don't need to care about a p and L
because I just run a nonprofit and nonprofits don't have
you know, p m L s. Well that's not true either,
So Stacy, I don't think we can move away from
Fannie May without asking you about the foreclosure crisis. Well
that's a long story. Probably we need phase two of
(09:01):
that show, you know. So, yeah, I was, I was
in Fanning May. Really there's a story to this, which
was Fannie May hit a real bump in the road
in two thousand five, three years before the housing crisis,
when it faced a really big financial restatement. It was
a billion dollary statement and and I won't go to
a lot of details around that, but it really shook
(09:23):
the company at its core. There was a leadership change
UM at the company. I still remained at the foundation.
And but then when the housing crisis hit in two thousand,
you know, going in two thousand seven, two thousand eight,
and two thousand nine, it was really clear at that
point that you know, the economy was heading into a tailspin.
(09:46):
And being at Fannie May at the time was difficult
because the housing crisis got sort of blamed on Fannie
May and Freddie Mac. I mean, the narrative from that was, well,
it was Fannie and Freddie Mack this sort of wrought
down the whole housing market, and that simply was not true.
What brought down the housing market, in my mind, were
(10:07):
the poor lending standards by mainly unregulated UM financial institutions
that didn't helped the spiral the entire industry out of control,
subprime lending that really gotten out of control that was
not regulated UM, and investors who really didn't know what
they were investing in, and a lot of lacks lending restrictions,
(10:27):
so lending guidelines, And that was really the beginning of it. Now,
of course for Aney and Freddy Matt got sucked into
it and and that was a tough time, and I
was still ahead of the foundation. We brought the Foundation
back into the company. The Foundation had been doing a
lot of consumer related work right We were doing a
lot of consumer education to help people for years up
(10:49):
until the housing crisis, to help people understand about how
to establish good credit, how to move from being a
renter to being a first time homeowner. We ran as
on television to help get information out to people. We
had materials and multiple languages to speak to different um
people of new immigrant communities and things like that. Well,
by the time I came back into the company, right
(11:10):
at the midst of the crisis, I was really one
of the few people in the company of Fannie May
that really had any sense of connection to consumers, to
actual homeowners. Because Fannie May as a company was really
in the secondary mortgage market. The customers of Fannie May
were not actual homebuyers. They have were then and are
(11:31):
still banks and mortgage lending institutions, and and it was
more of a B two B model, but I had
more of a B two C experience at the Foundation.
So I spent a lot of time with our CEO
in our lost mitigation efforts, trying to help the company
work with services to navigate borrower attitudes and borrower behavior
(11:54):
during a financial crisis. And that was really interesting because
I think a lot of people weren't clear about how
borrowers would would really would they continue to pay make
their mortgage payments, could they um would they walk away
from their mortgages, which many of them did, or would
they stay? And we do know the lasting to say
about this if we do know that some of the
worst and the most egregious lending practices were were directed
(12:19):
towards communities of color, and there were lots of black
and brown people who end up losing their homes. And uh,
it was a huge and very very tragic wealth transfer
out of community of color just when we were beginning
to build up wealth with expanded home ownership, especially through
the nineties in the early two thousands. So it was
(12:41):
a tragic moment. And you know, some communities are still
trying to recover from that, you know, and and now
we're in the midst of another tragedy with the pandemic.
So it's tough and now for a quick break. So
what has it been like to lead through the pandemic.
It's been a real experience. And I think, um, you know,
I think for for anyone, if you're the president and
(13:04):
CEO of any organization, whether it's a company or nonprofit,
it has not been for the faint of heart, right.
It is something that you have to wake up every
day assess the situation. One of the things that I
have always thought about leadership is that you never have
perfect information. But sometimes you also don't have the luxury
(13:26):
of time to act and make decisions, and you have
to do it with the best information you have at
the moment. Right. So the pandemic has been a constantly
involving situation. You know, even back in March of two thousand,
when we were wondering whether or not we would go
into full lockdown mode, and or even I would say
(13:47):
February and when we started to get a sense that wait,
there's something really bad happening. But we remember, we really
didn't know, We didn't have the full story were clearly
we know now, we weren't being told the full story
of what this whatever of the story was that anyone
knew at that time, and so a lot of us
were just left to make some decisions. So, for example,
we have at the Margindimes from March until May is
(14:09):
one of our biggest fundraising seasons. It's when we have
all of our March for Babies walks. They're all outdoors,
which is which was a nice thing, but uh, in
the spring time, you know, we got hundreds and thousands
of people gathering in parks or public places to raise
money for the Margindimes and for moms and babies, and
(14:30):
we without enough information on how the pandemic was affecting
communities even by that time, what we needed to do
to stay safe. We just had to make a call
to say, we don't think it's responsible at this point
to bring people together. So we had to virtualize overnight
all of those in personal events when nobody was had
a clue how to do that, and my team got
(14:53):
amazingly creative and we just pulled together and decided on
a plan. We we we didn't as well financially, and
that was a whole other issue. As how do you
keep things afloat when revenue is down um ten um.
Fortunately about in the year we were only when a
(15:14):
lot of organizations were down revenue, we were only down
about we were able to find some really innovative ways
to navigate. And then of course it wasn't just the pandemic.
Remember we also had the George Floyd all of those
issues who deal with and Brianna Taylor and many issues
to deal with. So we you know, was just like,
I mean, we're gonna look back on twenty twenty and
(15:35):
just think, how in the world did we ever survived?
And we're still not out of the woods now and
we're midway through the year, but I think it was
you know, it's interesting I see a lot of people
resigning from their jobs now. Of course, we saw a
lot of women leave the workplace unfortunately just because they
couldn't understandably you can't deal with it in the school
(15:56):
and the virtual learning. But you've obviously I've seen now
lot of CEOs that there are a lot of nonprofits
they are looking for a new leadership because I think
a lot of people just got really exhausted from the
whole experience. And it's unfortunate because I think it was
overwhelming for a lot of people, and I understand that,
how have you tried to care for your team virtually
(16:18):
and through all of this, because it's a lot. Yeah,
it's been a lot. Well, you know. I think one
of the things that we try to do was to
try to be first real understanding. Especially we've got a
lot of women who um work at the March Times,
a lot of young mothers who are trying to navigate
work and virtual learning. So we tried our best to
be as understanding about that give people as much flexible time.
(16:43):
The good thing is we had negotiated a contract with
Zoom years ago, and so when people were sort of
trying to figure out way what a zoom again, I
don't understand the thing where we were already well on
our way. We were We've got a pretty virtualized workforce anyway,
but a lot of folks who work from home and
a lot of not everyone works in an office at
the March Times, So we we were able to transition
(17:06):
pretty well into a virtual uh daily work life right
because we were already there. But it still was trying
to be very understanding to people's flexibility with respective families.
We have very um generous paid family leave policies, So
if someone needed to take care of a family member,
we have generous policies that allow people to do that.
(17:28):
New mothers that were expecting during the pandemic, allowing them
time off to do that, paid time off to do that. UM.
And then I think, just you know, we we we
couldn't really um let our gap, let our foot off
the gas of trying to stay on track with our
goals because so many on the during the pandemic we had.
(17:48):
You can't put pregnancy on pause, right you, I mean,
you're pregnant. You had to continue with your pregnancy, and
and and there were women looking for information, Well, how's
the how's COVID gonna affect me? How mighty affect my baby?
Is the vaccine going to be safe? There are no
clinical trials to include pregnant women. How do I know
that the vaccine is gonna work for me? And it's
not gonna be damaging? So we we had a ton
(18:10):
of work that we still had to do to meet
the needs of those folks. But in some ways it
was kind of rewarding to know that that we were
still so needed and and so many families were relying
on us, women were relying on us. And I think
that that lasting I'll just say is that when George
Floyd's death happened, his murder happened, it really gave corporate
(18:35):
America big wake up call to health equity, equity issues
in the in general in the country. We were able
to have really highlight of the work a lot of
work we're doing on health equity. So that brought another
area of opportunity for us to build new partnerships and
attract new investment because we were already on our way
towards focusing on some of those issues. Because in maternal health,
(18:58):
you know, black women are still dying at the read
four times out of white women, so we were you know,
we've got black babies that died twice the rate of
white babies. We've got huge health equity issues. So the
fact that we could talk about that work in the
midst of this reckoning and awakening that that America faced
at the middle part last year was gave us a
(19:18):
big opening to create new partnerships and new new opportunities
that brought new investment to us as well. It seems
like a big challenge of yours as a leader has
been understandably, March of Times is so big and just
figuring out where to put their money and what to
fund and when to take funds away. Can you talk
(19:38):
about that as a leader and sort of some of
the criticism you have faced and how you have gotten
through that. Yeah, I think you know a lot of
folks familiar with the Marchdimes had never really heard the
Marchingdims talk about health equity as much as we have
in the past several years. And I think a lot
(20:00):
of people have been on a journey with us to
understand why we have some of the health equity issues.
We have some people that resist the idea that there
should even be these health equity issues, or that it's
the blame and the responsibility of black and brown people
that they're not as healthy as other people. Well, it
must be your fault, right, I mean that. I think
(20:21):
there may have been a little bit of that early
on when we started to say we have to focus
on these issues. If we're going to make progress on
maternally in health in this country, we can't do it
without and ignore that too many black and brown women
and babies are left behind and we just sort of
unapologetically kept on that same message and embedded it into
(20:45):
our strategy and embedded it as an important focus of
every part of our work. And I know that we
got some pushback from long term donors and supporters who
have maybe had a hard time understanding those concepts and
maybe even accepting them. But I think what we decided
to do was to embed it in the values of
(21:07):
the organization to such an extent that we would make
it a part of everything that we do at the organization.
And and and that's been important because you're not going
to make progress on these issues if you're just giving
lip service to them anyway, and if they're not, they're
so big and so hard to work on that if
(21:30):
they're not a part of the very fundamental core of
the organization, you're not going to make progress. So it's
just been um important to stay like very a degree
of fortitude about it, I think, and and remind ourselves
of what we are about at the end of the
day as an organization. If we say, when organizations about
(21:53):
fighting for the help of all moms and babies, it
has to mean all moms and babies. You can't mean
with some of them that live in these areas and
others don't know. We'll get to that when we get
to that. No, that's not what that means, right, So
what does that mean? And now for a quick break.
So you've had a number of executive roles. It's probably
different for each one, but if you could give an
example of how you were recruited or found the opportunity,
(22:15):
because these aren't jobs that are like posted on indeed
generally right. So let me just start by telling this
that when I was at University of Michigan at the
Ross Business School um and I wanted I made a decision.
I heard one of an alum come back to the
school talk and talk about public finance, and I knew
(22:36):
then listening to him that that was exactly what I
wanted to do in my career. Even though all the
other alums were talking about on this panel corporate finance,
I said, no, no, no, I want to do public finance.
The problem was is that there weren't investment banks coming
all the way halfway across the country to recruit for
public finance jobs. And why should they. They could go
to Wharton and Harvard and all the East Coast schools
(22:57):
and and recruit for those folks. So why should you
come all the way to Chikin so um, long story short,
I end up flying myself to New York. I cold called.
I got a bunch of names of people that were
in publican ants and they didn't know me. I didn't
know them. I just cold call them and I said,
I said, hey, I want to I'd love to learn
more about what you do. I'm interested in publican as
(23:18):
is what I want to do. Can I just come
and visit with you? I want to hear more about
what you do? And um, I did that. I flew
myself to New York. I got mugged in Brooklyn, staying
with a friend getting off the train while I was there.
But I had all these meetings set up with investment
bankers to talk about it. And you know, I kind
of knew that I wanted a job from one of
them if they liked me, But I didn't talk to
(23:40):
I lead with I want to learn, and I did.
I really want to learn more about it. So I
want to start with that to say that the beginning
of my career wasn't very very much non traditional. It
was very much fly yourself, get yourself in front of people.
What do you have to lose? Just go forward. And
then once I got into john jobs, and this is
(24:02):
one thing I say to young people all the time
is if you want the next job, the bigger job.
And I know this is something that your mom tells
you or somebody else tells you an adult in your life,
you have to do a good job in the job
you're in. Even if you're not happy in the job
you're in, you better do a good job in the
(24:23):
job you're in, because why would anybody give you another
opportunity if you're not already you know, hitting the ball
out of the out of the park. And I would
also say that the only way to do the best
job possible is to make the best decisions, the best
choice possible about where to go. So some people will
make choices about, oh, I'll just go do this job
(24:43):
for a while because I really want to get to
something else. Well, you know what I can guarantee you
if that's if you're sort of halfheartedly going into the job,
you're probably gonna do a half pass job right in
the position and it's not gonna and then the next
opportunity is not going to pan out. So there were
plenty of things that I the positions that I may
have thought I wanted to do or pursue, it didn't
(25:04):
work out, and then the next opportunity came and it
did work out, and it ended up that that was
actually the perfect job for me, right um Or It
was definitely a job that I felt like, I would
love to do this job, and I'm gonna and I'm
gonna go into a feeling super excited about doing it.
And every time I did take on the next opportunity,
(25:25):
I did feel that way, and I did do a
good job, and that then led to the next thing.
So for me, it's um You're right. The jobs are
not usually on indeed, because when somebody notices you doing
a good job, they come to you and say, would
you be interested That's what happened when I was at
Fannie May and I got approached about what I'd be
interested in being the presidency of the Foundation. And the
(25:45):
first thing I said was no, because I thought it
paid less right to remember I'm always I'm I'm always
trying to do better for myself. Right um. Turns out
it was financially great, and from a career perspective, it
was great um. And then when I decided that I
was ready to leave Fannie may Um, I had made
(26:06):
a lot of connections with head hunters who were calling
me for different opportunities. And that's that's really how executive
jobs happen, as you start to cultivate a relationship with
head hunters. I would always encourage people to be super
nice two people in executive search, because even if that
one opportunity doesn't pan out or you're not interested, if
you help them out and connect them with somebody who
(26:28):
might be good for the job, or if you just
develop a relationship with them, they'll keep you in mind
for the next thing. And I have a ton of
friends that are an executive search just because I've gotten
to know them over time. They've called me and I've
talked them about different things, and and it's been helpful
in terms of opening up doors for me as well
as I've moved moved through my career. So you and
your husband both have really big careers. How have you
(26:51):
managed side by side in terms of your division of
labor at home and with your girls? Yeah, well, I'm
really blessed to have a husband who is super ambitious
and also super dedicated to being the best dad he
can be. And you know, my father was was a
(27:13):
similar similar way, but the vision and the perspective of
what it looked like to be a father when my
dad was a dad is very different in what it
looks like today in twenty in the you know, in
and I'm really happy about how things have evolved, how
men a lot of them do want to have a
more active role in fatherhood, do want to play, you know,
(27:36):
a bigger role in their kids lives and and see
them and where you know, my husband and I have
seen it as really a partnership. I think it's been
incredible and there are a lot of couples that you know,
are like that. Having said all that, there is so
much that still falls on the shoulders and in the
lapse of moms. I don't know. Moms have this thing
(27:58):
where we into to pay things, like we see the
future and know where it's going, Like we have a
sixth sense about what our kids will need before they
need it, or what our kids are gonna be. Um,
you know, we're planning ahead for what school is going
to be looking like in the next couple of years.
When we have to start thinking about transition our kids
(28:19):
from one school to the next, or we're already thinking
about child care needs before our husbands are. And so
as long as the husbands are there to take the
tasks that we assign them, then that's really good because
there was a time when dad's wouldn't even do that.
But you know, the unfortunate reality of many working moms
is we're still managing the overall household uh and we're
(28:44):
making we're making those decisions for what's best for the home,
what's best for our kids. And we're fortunate if we
have a spouse or a partner who can be there
to take on the tasks like be the chief operating
officer to our seat EO role. And I don't mean
to diminish it in one be one bit. And there
certainly are things that my husband leads on that I don't,
(29:06):
and I'm happy to have him lead on things, but
I don't think it's I don't think I could be
nearly as successful in my career if I didn't have
the kind of husband who saw that his role was
to be super responsible for all aspects of what it
would take to help support our kids and their development,
(29:27):
and not only financially, but in other ways as well,
and I've been very blessed in that way. Speaking out
of your your daughters, what do they know about your work?
Like how involved have they been? What do they think
about you as this executive? I don't know they you know,
I think that well. First of all, I do know
that they're super proud of me when I have exciting
(29:48):
things going on, like if I'm going to be on
a television show or I'll tell about this podcast, for example,
and they'll say, okay, mom, whatever you know, and they'll
give me that um like oh yeah, it's another one
of you and talking about your march anddives saying I
got it. But I think behind the scenes they are
super excited and I'd like to think that they're super inspired.
(30:10):
Um my daughter, both my girls are Girl Scouts and
and my daughter one daughter, the younger one, is working
on a Gold Award, which for a lot of people
they may not know. The Gold war is kind of
like an Eagle Scout award. And my older daughter did
her Gold Award on maternal health and addressing the maternal
health crisis in Washington, d C. And was just successful
(30:31):
in getting the mayor to designate is Maternal Health Education
and Awareness Day in the District of Columbia, and so
clearly I I think I must have influenced her in
that way to focus on that, although she made her
own choice about what to work on. I think I
want to be that mom that is both showing that
(30:55):
you can be successful but also being a loving, caring
mom at home too, And that's what I hope they
take away from me. Although I'll be the last one
to know from them how they actually think about me,
because they'll never tell me. I'm sure I'll have here
from somebody else. So you had a mom who was
(31:17):
very involved in politics and ran for mayor of Atlanta.
What is your political future going to be like? Probably nothing,
because I don't I think once you go through a
campaign like that of running through a mayor, you quickly
realize that it may not be something you want to do. UM.
I think there are many ways for me to have
(31:39):
an impact on people's lives without necessarily being an elected official. UM.
I respect people that do run for office a great
deal because it's a huge sacrifice. But I UM and
I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing because I
do think I have a huge impact on people's lives,
and that that, at the end of day, is what's
(32:00):
most important to me. Is that I use my skills,
even my business training, to do good for others. And
that's what's really most important to me. All Right, we
are going to launch into our speed round where we're
just gonna ask you a few quick questions and you
can give us a spontaneous answers. Amy, you want to
kick us off, Stacy, what book are you reading? Actually,
I'm reading The Bluest I and I've been kind of
(32:22):
muddling my way through it by Tony Morrison. Who are
your closest friends and how did you meet them? Oh? Wow,
this is gonna make me cry because one of my
very best friends just died about a week and a
half ago. Yeah, and her daughter is my god daughter.
And most of my very good friends, I only have
a handful of them, and they're mainly women that I
(32:45):
grew up with in Atlanta. One of them is my
sorority sister. But but my friends are their friends I've
had for all my life, most of my life. What
is your nighttime routine? I um, usually watch sports, some
sort of whatever sports are on. We just had at
the Olympics and I was watching a w NBA game.
I'm a huge sports fan. My alter egos sports mom
(33:07):
d m v um. I'm a big advocate for girls
sports in the Washington, d C. Area, So I'm usually
looking at sports and then I look at TikTok and
I go to bed. Who leaves you star strack, say
Michelle Obama. Alright, My question is basically I always want
to know what CEO spend their money on. And then
(33:28):
in the process, before you spend the money, is there
something that you're saving for? Oh my god. So for me,
what I spend my money on is private school and
college tuition, So that's like, that's like the big thing. Um,
I'm saving for my European River cruise, and I hope
I don't have to wait till my sixtieth birthday. That's
(33:50):
not that far away. But but maybe that's what it is, um,
is I'm saving for that and then saving for a
bunch of travel when my kids are finally out of college.
So two things stood out to me Amy from this interview.
I mean, Stacy is extraordinary, but one of the fascinating
things is a her mom, who is this dynamo who
(34:11):
was validatorian over high school, and it was just understood
that she was basically not allowed to use all of
her talent and work and reach her potential, which it
sounds like she maybe did later on, but it was
all of those lost years and and then the other
thing that struck me was just this incredible place she
grew up, because I do think we don't think enough
(34:32):
or talk enough about how your environment shapes you in
terms of ambition, and how being around certain kinds of
people just makes you want to be your best self.
I think those are two very good points to the
first one. When Stacy was talking about her mom, I
just kept going back to Nancy Pelosi in my mind
because not a lot of people know this about Nancy Pelosi,
(34:53):
but she did not work. She raised kids for decades,
and then after her five kids were older, she went
back to work. She developed this career and pretty successful,
I would say, a Speaker of the House, you know, well,
one of the most powerful women in America. But anyway,
it's just into your point. I think it's so true.
I think that was really the expectation of brilliant, ambitious women,
(35:17):
you know, decades ago that they wouldn't work, that wasn't
a path for them. My mother worked my entire life,
but she talks about her career choices as limited to
being a teacher or a nurse. Oh. Absolutely, I remember
when my mom. I remember there was a preschool teacher
who said to Ella, oh, you'd be a great teacher.
And my mom trained me to think like we could
never be a teacher because that was the only opportunity
(35:40):
for women in a certain generation. So you never wanted
to be the one thing you were limited to. My
mother told me I couldn't be a teacher because I
would be a horrible teacher. Not that my mother was
an amazing teacher, but she was right. I would have
been a horrible teacher. It's too hard, but it goes
to this point of what you're talking about where Stacy
(36:00):
grew up, which sounds like a very remarkable place. Thanks
for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with
us on social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's
Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
The Riveter. At the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company,
(36:23):
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
to our producer Stacy Para, our social media manager Phoebe
crane Fest, and our male perspective, blue Burns
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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