Wes Moore

good to be with you. As always, David. Thank you tell people what the robin Hood Foundation is because recently some people think robin Hood. They think it's stock trading. But that's not what you do, right, You're not in that robin Hood, right that, that is not what we do. It was amazing during the whole uh Game Stop episode I had people were blowing up my inbox and saying, you know, unblock my trades. And I'm like, I had no idea how to unblock your trades, but I wish

you'd luck with that. Um. But the Robin and Foundation is a is a thirty two year old organization with an exclusive goal of ending poverty and uh. And it was started by Paul Tutor Jones and and Peter Borish and the collection to other people who are actually in the investment business. And they started this foundation where they say, we want to be able to take uh take metrics in best practices and invest in the organizations that we think have the highest probability of being able to end

this scourge of poverty. And they started off making about forty dollars worth of investments. Now thirty two years later, we have allocated just shy of four billion dollars into this work and into this fight. And we fund everything from education to housing, transportation, mental health and physical health, criminal justice reform. Anywhere where poverty is either the cause or the consequence, we will find fund, build, if necessary, all these mechanisms that we think put us on our

better pathway of creating more equitable society. So how much money does Robert Hood giveaway annually? Side? Yeah? So so over the you know, when we think about the process of the of the last year. Uh, you know, we ended up raising around two hundred and forty million dollars. Uh. You know, just in the in the past four year that I've been I've been the CEO. We've raised over

two over six hundred and seventy five million dollars. But the unique thing about our model is actually this is that, you know, there are certain foundations that will say, okay, we'll take a portion of our endowment and allocate the portion of our endowment into our grandmaking. Robin Hood's endowment is essentially zero. Right. There's there's a uniqueness of our model is that every dollar we get in it will go out within that next within within the time period

of that next calendar year. And so every year on January one, it's like, you know, it's like press go again, we raise and then we get the money out in the capital as quickly as possible. But you have staff who pays for the staff all the administrative costs that usually in some foundations that could be uh, you know, five or ten percent absolutely if if not, if not more. And but you know, the other unique model, the other mechanism of Rominan's model is actually the fact that our

our board actually covers all operational expenses. And your focus is New York City? Is that right? Principally it is it is even though you know, since our since uh, since the time that that we've come on board, we really you know, continue to capture the imagination around the idea that that while poverty is nowhere near beaten in New York City, poverty is not a New York City issue either, right, So we we we are a very

proud place based platform and place based organization. But also, for example, two years ago, we launched an initiative called Mobility Labs and LABS actually is an acronym that stands for Learning and Action BETS and we have found seven different communities around the country to really explore the issues of urban, rural and suburban poverty and areas that include you know, my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland and your hometown

of Baltimore, Maryland. But COVID must have made it more difficult to raise money or to figure out how to give it way and to run the the foundation remotely. So how did you do that? Yeah, I mean code COVID was um COVID in This past year was a remarkable year, David, And there was a lot of uncertainty, uncertainty about how does what does that mean in terms of how we continue to move at a quick and a fast pace despite the fact that we weren't going

to be together. How do we consider the fact that we knew how damaging this was going to be on our communities and our community partners as as you know, we saw eleven years of job growth go away in eleven weeks, and we knew which communities would be hit hardest by that. It was our communities and so so but I I'm so proud of the way that we

responded and rebounded. You know, we activated uh something called the Relief Fund, which was the you know, for only the third time in the organization, in the history's organization that we've activated the Relief Fund. Once was after nine eleven, the other was after Hurricane Sandy, and now the third was COVID nineteen where we had a specific a few

specific focuses. One was supporting the nonprofit sector, which we knew was going to take an extraordinary hit, and these were all the organizations that were doing the social service work in the city and beyond that needed it. And the second piece was emergency cash assistance, just getting cash into people's hands. We knew that from data that we that we supported and funded and helped build that that that over around to people could not afford a four

shock with cash. Well, that shock, that shock was here and it was a lot more than four hundred dollars. So we knew immediately what you had to do was get cash supports into people that needed it most and specifically people who we saw government intervention was not touching. Let me ask you during uh COVID, many nonprofit organizations have suffered because they would say their donors don't feel

as wealthy as they did before. Did your donors say, you know, not right now, I know it's a problem, but I don't make as much money as I used to, Or did you get more money from your donors? Yeah?

We we actually saw people who have who stepped up signing nificantly, and and and and I think there's a couple of things, uh you know that we learned and really helped to n package with all that, um you know, one was that one was that, you know, the reality was that not everyone was getting financially hurt during this time. That while you did have certain people who did see their incomes their incomes decrease or or in many cases their incomes go away, you saw some that actually saw

their businesses increase and their businesses jump. And part of The challenge that we also continue to see was how this separation in this divide and the wealth divide, how it shows itself. And so you had people who that dynamic and that reality showed itself also in philanthrop and giving. The second piece was I think we saw a measure of human pain and a universality of the human pain

that was impossible for people not to respond to. Let's talk about how you became the head of the Robin Hood Foundation, because you're not You've worked in New York, but you're from Baltimore, as you mentioned earlier, and you're minding your own business this you're in Baltimore, you're living in Baltimore. How did they come to hear of you? And had you been doing anything like this that would have given you the qualification that for them to think

that you'll be the right person. David, I I call myself the most accidental uh foundation head that you could ever possibly imagine, you know, because I had no background and in in in philanthropy, Uh, you know, I and I and I thought to myself when they first approached me and they said, uh, you know, uh, they were like, you know, we'd like for you to consider being the CEO of Robin Hood. And I said, I don't know

if that makes sense. And I said, I'm thinking of a bunch of reasons why, but let me give you three. And I said, the first reason is, you know I live in Baltimore. You know I'm a Marylander and I don't plan on moving, and so I don't know how i would run a New York based organization when I'm here living in Baltimore. The second piece that I said to them was, you know was I'm enjoying the work

that I'm doing here in Maryland. And then the third piece was I said, you know I've been I've been critical of philanthropy historically, and in fact, the head of the search committee was became the chair of the board. And a good friend said, you know, we've it's all over the internet. We've seen it. We've done our diligence, and have you realized you're not that persuasive? Then you couldn't persuade them not to go after you. But let's

talk about your incredible life story. We were born in Baltimore. And then, um, your father died when he was when you were young? Is that right? He died when I was when I was about four years old. He died in front of me. Uh, from a from a a rare but a but a treatable virus. Your mother said, okay, we're gonna move you to New York or she wanted to move to New York. Did you move to the Bronx then? Yeah, so, so she was having a really

difficult time with the transition. Um, you know, she became a widow in her twenties with three children that she was going to raise on her own, and had a really difficult time with it, And eventually she called up her parents, my grandparents, who lived up in the Bronx. My, you're right. My grandfather was a minister in the South Bronx. My grandmother was a school teacher for twenty five years

in South Bronx. Both immigrated to uh, to this country and uh and uh it their their house was barely big enough for them, but they figured out a way to make it big enough for all of us. Sorry, she moved up there, and you were the perfect child. You never got in trouble and everything worked out where I was that right in my in my own mind? Yeah, No, I mean I had a that was a really hard

transition for me. Um. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was you know, I was literally kicked out, and you know, I found myself hurting people that actually did love me, so I could impress people that could care less about me. I mean, I felt I first time that I was handcuffed was when I was eleven

years old. And uh. And so by the time I was thirteen, after years of threats of sending me away to this school or send me away to that school or whatever it was, when I was thirteen, my mom made good on her threats and she sent me to military school. All right, you went to a military school. And I assume you weren't dying to go to a military school. And it wasn't my was my first choice. I straighten you out a little bit or something like that.

They did, well, you know it. It took a little while, David, And you know, I read away. I think I ran away five times in the is four d ease? All right, So eventually you go to military college. Is that right?

That's junior college. I did. I graduated from high school and then I uh uh, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and and Honestly, for many people in my life, particularly a lot of the men in my life who were my mentors at that point in my and the people I admired, they all had one thing in common, and that's they all wore the uniform of this country. And uh so I went to I joined the army, and then I went

to a military college. All right, But then you eventually went to Johns Hopkins, right, And at Johns Hopkins you must have done reasonably well because you were elected as a Rhodes scholar. Now, sometimes people that win Rhodes scholarships, they go to Oxford, they get a degree, or they don't get a degree. Then they come back and say, Okay, I'm gonna go to Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, I'm gonna go um into something important like private equity,

whatever it might be. Right, what did you decide to do? How Come you didn't go to Harvard or Yale Law store some other grade law school. How come you decided to do something? Probably not that many Rhodes scholars were doing well. You know, at first I actually went to you know, I went to the World of Finance, and I was there for a little while, working at Deutsche Bank in London, and it was great and it was nice.

And then I tell you, David, I was. I remember getting a phone call uh and I thought I was I was brand new, a brand new analyst working on deals and uh. It was from my good buddy UM at that time, Major Mike Fenzel, who was with the eighty second Airborn Division. And he said something me uh that he said, uh, so when are you going to

get into the fight? And that was indicting for me, as you know, because I trained, I'm a paratrooper, I had gone through gone through all my training with my soldiers, and and as as my soldiers are now deploying to Afghanistan and deploying to Iraq, you know, I was working in in high finance and I literally went back and thought about it and prayed on it and and I went back and and and called him back up I think a couple days later, and said, Mike, I'm in. And so I ended up doing a They end up

doing a by name request for me. Uh. And I left finance and I went and I joined up with the eighty second Airborne Division. I went actually down to Fort Benning, Uh to go uh, to go do my training and and and mobed up. And then literally probably around nine months after that conversation that I had in this stairwell of Deutsche Bank with Mike Fenzel, I was getting ready to deploy with the eighty second Airborn to Afganistan.

All right, so you go to Afghanistan. But did you ask for an office job there, something that you could be kind of not be shot at or something like that. No, not at all. We uh, I was very clear. You know, I went over and I led a group of paratroopers as as a special operations officer. They're working you know, information operations psych psy ops, which is you know, psychological operations,

and we were very much in the field. And you know what was interesting is that, uh, so much of the conversation at that time two thousand five was was iraq Um. You know, we had about a hundred and fifty thou groups in the rock at the time. In Afghanistan,

we only had about seventeen thousand troops. And so I remember actually when I got deployment orders for Afghanistan, there are a lot of people like who, you know, a leash's not going to Iraq uh, not knowing the kind of fighting that was going on in Afghanistan at that time. And literally within the first days of Afghanistan, Uh, I started seeing firsthand, you know, literally you see first firefight, you start seeing, um, just what kind of fighting was

going on in Afghanistan. So how long were you over there? I was over for a little, a little shy of a year, Monk. Then you came back to the United States? Did and what did you do that? Uh? Then I actually started working back and now so I did. First did a White House Fellowship. Mike Fenstin Gentleman was a former White House Fellow, and actually I came back from a mission one night and he said, I want you to apply for this thing called the White House Fellowship.

And he said, you know this is it's important for people back in Washington to get a first understanding of the year that you're having right now, so they can actually see what's going on on the ground. So I applied for a White House Fellowship. I was blessed to receive it, and I had the honor of working under under Events Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice uh And and her team, which was just an unbelievable and and a life shifting experience for me to be able to go

through that. Okay, so you after the White House Fellowship, you work for Condoleeza Rice. Did your mother say, now can you get a serious job that's a full time thing makes some money? Is that what you finally decided to do? What did you do? I? I did at that time my mother was like, all right, slow down

and started actually preparing a family. And also I was newly married now at that point too, So so now you really are starting to think about, all right, what are the things that you want to be able to do? And I started thinking about the things that I was interested in, this in the skill sets that I had had. Uh, And so I decided that so maybe I should try

to give U give finance a shot. And then I had to had the pleasure then of working at City and working for for a few years at City as at first as an analyst associate than a vice president U, you know, just working on collections of deals. So you moved to New York. I then moved to New York. Yes, yes, so we were living in Maryland. I got back Afghanistan and moved to New York for a few years. Then

when did you move back to Baltimore. Yeah. I, UM, I remember having a conversation UM with UH, with another mentor of mine, person who was running investment banking. Uh now is running premier Ray McGuire and UH. And I went to him and I said, you know, I think I'm I think it's time for me to do something different. I just finished actually writing a book called The Other Westmore UM, which was an important process in time for me just will also be reflective about my own life.

And UH. And that's when I said, I made the decision that I really wanted to leave finance and and to go focus on on these issues that are really my life's burning issues. Being a Rhodes Scholar and a White House fellow isn't enough. You have to write a book as well to make everybody else look bad because you're doing too many things. So tell people now who are watching, who the Other Westmar was. It was. It was actually during that same time period of the Rhodes Scholarship.

Um that that it was right after I got the Rhodes Scholarship. Of The Baltimore Sun, which is our hometown paper. UH, you know, wrote this article about this local kid who just got an award and was now getting ready at help to England on this scholarship, and at the same time they're writing a whole series of articles about four guys who walked into a jewelry store and um and attempted to rob the jewly store, and in this botched jewelry store robbery ended up murdering an off duty police officer.

And there was a twelve day national manhunt for these four guys, and finally, after twelve days, all four guys were caught. One of the people that was eventually caught was a guy who's uh we were living in the same area, We're around the same age. We both grew up in single parent households and his name was also Westmore. And I reached out to him and I wrote him this note. He wrote me a note back, and eventually those that single the note turned to dozens of notes.

Those dozens of notes turned to dozens of visits. I've now known west for for for almost two decades. But um, but at the same time I was getting ready how to England, he was getting ready to start his life sentence in prison. And so the other west Moore was a book that really evolved from our years of of of of friendship and about these two kids and what ends up happening that causes this split amongst these two kids with similar backgrounds to include names. So you've now

written five books. Um, one of them is about Freddy Gray, and this was a person who was taken uh into a police patty wagon and en route to the police station I guess died and cause riots in Baltimore and so forth. Um, what is your own view now on whether the racial situation in the United States, because of examples like Freddie Gray or George Floyd, have gotten worse than when you were growing up. Where do you see any progress being made? Yeah, I mean I I see,

I see the potential for progress being made. And the potential for progress being made is the fact that that we're now understanding and talking about this is not just isolated incidences, but we're understanding the the the the longevity and the lineage of this that that the damage of of George Floyd wasn't just the fact that we watched a homicide on camera, but it was the fact that his name gets added to a much longer lineage of

names that there's just been no accountability for. Right. But it also comes down to the fact that we watch how these acts and we watch how these issues of systemic racism do show themselves, and not just policing, whether you're talking about educational attainment, whether you're talking about wealth, whether you're talking about uh, where you're talking a maternal mortality, whether you're talking about whether you're talking about um, you know,

basic acid allocation. It's race. And it's impossible to understand this without disaggregating the importance of it. And so I think that the platform for progress is the fact that we are now having a mature and an honest conversation about what is it going to take for us to move into a better space and a place where we're watching, We're watching. It's not just the press populations who are

demanding justice. And that's the power of this moment. So many African American men of your age or older have told me of their own life experiences where they were stopped by place for things that didn't seem appropriate at the time to them. Certainly, have you had those run ins with the place since you've been an adult? Oh?

Absolutely absolutely, And and you know, and but it's it's it's both the fact that we've had these interactions, um, and and and the fact that the sound of a police siren, it just has a different pitch depending on what neighborhood you're in, and and and and your heart rate speeds up in a different way when you're already anticipating the fact that this this encounter could go wrong, and and how it could be interpreted by other people.

But it's also the fact that you know that I as a as as as a as a father, now, um that I know that I'm going to be forced to have conversations that other people are not gonna be forced to have with our children. So now you are, um gonna be leaving shortly Robin Hood. You're gonna go live in Baltimore. Are you going to pursue what I've called the higher calling of private equity or are you thinking of doing something else. I've read in the newspapers

that you're thinking of running for governor of Maryland. There's there any truth to that. I am exploring running for running for governor of Maryland, and um, and you know, and and I'm thinking about it just in terms of I know, I want to focus on on true systems change.

I think we're just at a very crucial point where on issues that I have spent my entire adult life on, whether they be ending child poverty, whether it be uh eliminating the racial wealth gap, about how do we think about education in a fair way that we're actually providing real pathways for our students. These are all issues that are right in front of us right now, and we're making generational decisions right now. And so I know the work, I know the issues I want to get done. I

know the work I want to try to do. I'm thinking about what's the right platform, um, and I think that there is not just a unique potential, you know, a lane, but there's a unique way to be able to, you know, finally put in any of issues I care about. Suppose the President of the United States is watching this and he says, Yest, look, running for office, that's tough. Why don't you come in. I'll give you a senior job in the administration, to become a cabin officer or something.

Would you go in they buy the administration or you really want to run for office and the governorship of Maryland? Yeah, No, I mean I have I have a deep admiration for all folks who choose to serve in administrations. UM. I also know that I'm at the stage of my career as well where I know my skill sets uh, and I know what I'm good at um and and I'm a pretty good executive. I know to run things and um and and run large organizations. And I work within government.

I've worked within and with government my entire career, and I know that that for me, this is not about I want to go into politics. UH. For me is this is about the fact that the executive role who actually controls a budget, who is has a chance to actually change a destiny for a generation of children and families. That that's something makes my heart beat faster, and that's

what makes me excited. So UM. For people who are watching, uh, they would say, Okay, after he got his life together, he want to Rhodes scholarship, white House fellowships, written five books, heads Robin hood, happily married, two kids. Uh. This is a perfect picture. Make us feel that we're not so

inadequate ourselves. UH. Tell us something you're doing that doesn't work out, where you've failed, there's something so we can feel that we're just not watching a superhuman We want to rutch somebody has mistakes or fail there's something you can say you're not good at. There there let me tell you something there is uh there. There is plenty that I am not good at, and plenty that I've

failed at. But I tell you one thing about me, David, is I'm not afraid to fail um and and that's one thing that I think I've really tried to try to push on. It's an incredible story. I always like to see somebody from Baltimore who's made good, and you obviously have. So thanks very much for being with us today, and you too. Thank you. It's great to be with you. Thanks for listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen