You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. So you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week on Carol Master along with Jason Kelly and one of the great dividers in our society. We have definitely talked about this over the last few hours. M is education and higher education. Working to reduce that gap
is the Posse Foundation. It provides scholarships and partners with schools and universities, founded back in eighteen not eighteen, nineteen eighty nine and really finds those public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes. Debor Beale is president and founder of the nonprofit the Posse Foundation. She joins us on the phone in New York City. Debora, so delighted
to have almost that would be a miracle. Yeah, exactly. You shouldn't. You should be in lots of other businesses too. If you can pull off stories you could to tell us. Um I did a brief introduction of who you are, but just share with our audience. Michael Ainslie has talked about you. He's been a guest on our show. I know he's a member of your board, but has talked about the great work that you do. So give us
a fuller picture if you would. Well, I I thanks for having me, first of all, and you know, I think the easiest way to understand what posse is about is to explain how it got its name. Um, because possey is an unusual name for a program. And in the nineteen eighties there was a student who had dropped out of college and he said, I never would have
dropped out if I had my posse with me. And we thought, well, that's a brilliant idea, right, why not send a team of students a posse together to college? And that way, if you grew up in the Bronx and you ended up in Middlebury, Ver month, you'd be a little less likely to say I'm I'm leaving. So how does it work? How do you put that all together? Because it seems like a good idea. I mean, I don't think anybody would argue it was like, yeah, that
makes total sense. But I can't imagine that it's that easy to pull off, or is it? Right now? It's a great question because you know, and especially now, we could talk a little bit about what the pandemic has done to programs like ours, But you know, POSSEY evolved over the years and we've become, you know, really one of the most unique college success, diversity and leadership programs
in the entire country. We probably interview about seventeen thousand students a year and these it's a lot, and we we picked seven hundred. So these are young people that are nominated by high schools and community based organizations, people who really know the students, UM, and we say, can you please nominate someone who is brilliant and motivated to do big things in the world, but who might be missed, as you said earlier, by traditional admissions measures that focused
historically on test scores and high school ranking. UM. So we've been around thirty one years doing this thing called the Dynamic Assessment Process our our alternative way of finding talents. UM. We're operating out of ten cities. This fall, we will take our ten thousand POSSE scholar, which I can't even believe. And what's amazing is they've won over one and a half billion dollars in scholarships from our partner colleges and universities and it works. They graduated rates of over and
they go on to become leaders. We we want to see them as ceo s and you know, senators and college presidents. We hope that they will represent a new kind of leadership out there. Well, you have a college president in your lum ranks, don't you. I know. I love telling her story and I know you're going to have her on the show. We're talking about the president of Ithaca College. Yeah, do you want to hear her? The way I like to talk about shirl is is
because she was just a superstar. I knew her when when she was only fourteen years old she becomes a member of the First Posse. Shirley is the Dominican kid who grew up in Brooklyn. Her her dad drove a yellow taxi in New York. Um and she didn't have the best test course, and I'll tell you she was not thinking about going to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. So she gets into the first Posse and it's a pilot program. We're testing out the idea and it was
incredibly successful. Shirley graduated in four years with honors. She went on to get her doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke University. She became the dean of the College at Middlebury, and a couple of years ago, Shirley became the president of Ithaca College. She is the first Dominican American to be president of a four year college in the United States. And that's what we're talking about, finding talent, connecting that talent to these great institutions of higher education so they
can go lead. We need them, We really need them leading. We need people who represent the versity of this country. You know, I thought it was interesting what you said you look for brilliant and motivated students, and I feel like, you know, there are some students out there, whether it's their home life, what they're born into, you know, just there are a lot of odds stacked against them that
don't give them an opportunity to necessarily be motivated. And I do wonder against the backdrop of everything that's going on, especially the last three weeks um you know, we're looking at racism in America, and I do wonder, you know, how do we make it so that more students feel motivated and have those opportunities to shine and be brilliant. I don't think there's any shortage of motivated students. I
think you're raising a great point. You know, we're we're taking a look at our own institutionalized racism in this country in a way that we have not focused on it before. You know, we have a history that shames this country of racism. And you know a lot of people are saying, is look, what's happened with George Floyd is not new, but it has garnered the attention of the American people in a way that's powerful and and it's dominating the news in a in a way that
it should be. In a program like Posse is saying, come on, you know, there's all these young people out there who are very motivated to go succeed in their lives, have huge, big dreams, and I think now, you know, maybe this is a wake up call that we've we've got to make significant change in how we operate as a nation. Let's get back to our conversation with Deborah Deal, President, founder of the Posse Foundation, joining us on the phone
from New York. So, Deborah, I love the context that you give us earlier about the Posse Foundation and what it does. I've got to ask you, as someone who is about to have. I believe you said your posse member posse scholarship. What is different about higher education as we go into this fall because Carol and I both have high school juniors. Obviously, they are you know, very privileged high school juniors, so they're not facing a lot of the things that a lot of the kids you're
working with are. But they are anxious, as are their classmates of you know, various socioeconomic backgrounds about what college looks like. And I wonder what you're hearing and thinking about that. Yeah, and that's on so many you know parents minds to what's going to happen in the fall. And you know, I also sit on the board at BRANDI,
so I have this interesting perspective, you know, bandage points. Yeah, we are worried about what's going to happen with the pandemic obviously, and schools sent students home early UM and then really didn't have them back on campus. So young people were getting their curriculum through remote classes and that may continue. So many schools are thinking about some kind
of hybrid re reopening. You can ask surely when you interview her about Ithaca, which is one of the few schools that's planning to just completely reopen UM in the fall. But many schools are thinking about having some students back on campus or doing alternating classes, you know, where they where half the students go to class one day and
then the others another day. But all of this is really complicated and and they're also you know, we have to remember that colleges and universities have been the home to students who are involved and engaged in the world. And they're talking about UM racism now in a way that's UM in the front of the discussion. UM campuses or places where students can can talk about those things and can protest and can make their voices heard. So there's a lot going on for in hire IT right now.
These institutions are really afraid about what's happening with the economy, you know, with forty million people who have filed for unemployment it UM, and we're watching what's happening with the stock market. UM. The endowments are affected at these institutions. They're worried about their financial aid budgets and how they're going to cover all of the financial aid they need
to cover. They're worried about their revenues, you know, income from tuition paying students, international students who may not be coming to the United States. Um, I mean, I know I'm giving you a long list of things. You're all all their effects and it's important. Well, yeah, absolutely, And you do wonder if there is an economic downturn, you know, for those who are graduating, what kind of job market
do they come into and do they get lost? You know, we've we've done a lot of stories, you know, the young population that came off the financial crisis where they got kind of stuck in jobs because there was just nowhere to go. And you do wonder what this does to the momentum kind of coming off of you know, a college or you know a great college and getting a great degree. You know what happens to that momentum. Oh, you're so right. I mean you're asking the exact great question.
And you know, I run a nonprofit that's that is um pretty well resourced. But you know, we're worrying and we've depend so much on our donors. But there are many nonprofits and for young people who are coming out of college and who are you know, civically minded, a lot of nonprofits are worried that they're going to close their doors. You know, there's not going to be enough money for them to survive. It's just a scary time
in that way. But I I believe we will rally, and so Debora, just to sort of round out the conversation and take it back to the Posse Foundation, I mean, what have you learned, you know over these you know, thousands and thousands of kids that you've put together into these polics, Like, how is the program different now? What are you doing differently now? Uh? And especially in light of everything that's going on in the world than when you started. You know, we're constantly evolving. We are a
diversity in leadership organization. UM. You know, we we were often talking from the beginning about what anti racist work looks like when you are a multi racial UM institution that's fighting it. And we're specifically now talking about anti
black racism in this country. UM. And so we even though we've been working on this for a long time, we know that we need to bring in UM more speakers and do more training for our own staff as well as our scholars to make sure that we are learning all the time and not getting complacent and not feeling like well, you know, because we've been doing it for thirty years. We're done. Um, you know, we need to be more than allies. We need to be actors. We need to make sure we're doing things to change
our society and make it better. That is so true. One last question. You know, I think about you know, these students that you work with and they go to college, they get a degree, and then of course it's off to recruiters to recruit with them. One of the things that we've heard is that companies need to think about, you know, more aggressively, that they recruit diverse you know employees. They you know they do, but they've got to do it even more. Just got about forty seconds here. No,
you're right. I mean, look Goleman, Sacks and Travelers in Deloitte Bank of America, these are companies that deliberately recruit students from posse. They focus on it in a programmatic way. So you're absolutely right, Carol. It's critically important that they pay attention and they're they're deliberate. Yeah, we all have a role in all of this, and you guys are obviously playing a very big role. Um, Michael was right. He said, you've got to talk to Debor Bale over
at the Posse Foundation. So I'm so glad um Deborah, we got some time with you, and good luck, certainly with the next group of students that you're working with. Debor Bill, President and founder of the Posse Foundation, on the phone in New York City. What a very cool program, Jason. You need to be more than all that, you need to be an actor. I like that. That's good. Gonna remember that. Going to take that away. Uh, Debra deal terrific.