YouSaid · the spoken record

Darren Walker

lines on the record: 44
first: 2016-03-04
most recent: 2016-03-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That philanthropy has a role in influencing and shaping public opinion and public perceptions and hopefully building a narrative about the solutions for our society, that philanthropy has an R&D role to play in developing solutions. I like to say that at the Ford Foundation, we're in the business of hope because America is a nation that depends on hope. And we need it now more than ever.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a nonprofit working in government, working in the private sector, and getting a very deep understanding of the problems at the ground level, sometimes being in a foundation can put you in rarefied air. And I think it would be a mistake for a young person to go right into a foundation and start their career and stay in a foundation without working in the rural villages of Africa or the streets of the south side of Chicago or in a health clinic, in a low-income community in Oakland, California to understand the lack of access that people have to health in this country. These are all the things that I think prepare you when you're young, doing that kind of work makes it possible for you to be better when you actually come into philanthropy.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have not invested enough in it. That's the issue. We know what works. The issue is do we have the will to invest in what works? Often people say our problems in this country are just intractable. They are not intractable. We know that many of our problems can be solved and we have in fact demonstrated solutions. We have not been willing to invest in those solutions.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a huge success, but let us not forget that in New York City Rosanne Haggerty Common Ground in the nineteen eighties and nineties demonstrated the efficacy of supportive housing, which is what you're describing in Utah.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What books have been influential to you? I am right now reading Evicted. This is a remarkable book. Actually, I should say I just ordered it because it was on back order. On a group of people who had been evicted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And it crystallizes for us the challenge of housing and the distorted housing marketplace we have in this country, and particularly if you're low income. And of course we see it here in New York City with the number of people on the streets. The homeless situation here get much worse. Not just in New York, but across the country. I was just in Houston. And it seemed that on every street corner there were people”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“domestic violence, a very dysfunctional home life. And I think always had courage and determination. The other person was my grandfather, who was in some ways, not my grandfather. He was my great-uncle, but it's too complicated to go into. However, he only had a third grade education. And yet he had so much wisdom and knowledge, and I learned from him the need to be focused and the need to be disciplined as well, because he was a very disciplined person. He was also angry. He was angry that America had not lived up to its obligations to him, because in his little racist town in rural Louisiana, school for Negroes ended at the third grade because after the third grade, the boys and girls picked cotton. That's astonishing. He never had an opportunity to get a formal education”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my mother was a great mentor because my mother did not have formal education beyond high school, had a horrific childhood in rural Louisiana. I couldn't imagine. and overcame”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the organizations we support like the Bard Prison Initiative, in fact, do just that. They build the evidence. They work with research firms like MDRC and the Urban Institute to demonstrate the efficacy. And they in turn speak to policymakers, decision makers, editorial boards about the need to change policy.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“named various programs like the Bard Prison Initiative, which the Ford Foundation Open Society and others fund. That's an example if we can get those kinds of programs demonstrated the efficacy of them demonstrated and replicated in prisons across America, we in turn will contribute to reducing recidivism. So that's one example.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And those policies which were promulgated by both Republican and Democratic administrations have in fact contributed to these high rates of recidivism. So let's change. That policy to ensure that more people while incarcerated get educated and rehabilitative services. So that's one thing. So when President Obama said that he wishes to change that policy and”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's terrible in part because prisoners are no longer eligible for federal education support while incarcerated. Yes, most Americans whatsoever. But that is in fact the law.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say there are two things we want to reform. One is the rehabilitation process to ensure that prisoners actually have a chance for education and rehabilitation.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's just take the example you gave. Let's talk about the criminal justice system and reforming that system. So we would.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We needed to generate a generation of business leaders who needed to be professionally educated about business, business administration, new disciplines of finance and accounting were created during this period. So what we think of today, the MBA, was not what it is today in the 1950s.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in the 1950s, their endowments weren't so large. Really? Indeed, and in the nineteen fifties they didn't have Departments, for example in various studies, there were certain academic areas. For example, Business schools, before the 1950s. Business degrees were in some ways technical degrees. They weren't quote unquote professional degrees. The professional masters of business administration really came into the fore in the 1950s in part because of Ford and Carnegie Corporation's investments in professionalizing business administration and business learning in part because the belief was, and I think ultimately was proven, that we needed to”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You apply pressure in that instance by going to the people who are the carriers of culture. So it may be a religious leader. It may be a senior elder of the rural village or the community. And you've got to influence them to see that women have to be valued, that girls have to be valued and shouldn't be married off at age nine or ten to get them out of the way. We've got to attack root cause issues and sometime money alone isn't enough.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there are situations where We have to recognize that culture, that behavior, that What is normative in a society? The fact, it is true, that we can invest in girls' education, but the That will only go so far if you live in a culture where men demean women as a matter of belief. How do we get at those belief structures that hold us back, that hold women down in those cultures? And money alone won't solve that problem”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most Americans unfortunately, according to polls, believe that our system is increasingly rigged, rigged for the wealthy or political elites, and that our historic notion of shared prosperity is slipping away from us as a nation. That's partly why many Americans are angry.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will it also manifest because another driver of inequality is the rules of the economy? that people don't have confidence that our economy actually works in a way that delivers shared prosperity.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are leapfrogging us, but it's not too late, because the American people want to invest in public infrastructure. They want better public transportation, better public parks, they want our public housing to work for the people who live within those communities. And without investing in public goods and public infrastructure, our democracy simply won't be effective. And at the end of the day, this is why inequality has to be a rallying cry. Because at the core of the American experience is opportunity. Our aspiration to be a better society and a better people. Reduces opportunity. It squelches our aspirations and our ambitions. And it makes us cynical and angry, and it affects our politics.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To understand what it feels like to go from walking in a public facility and being uplifted To walking into a public facility and feeling despair.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in fact, our public infrastructure represents an investment in public goods, whether it's public libraries, public transportation, public schools, public parks, public housing. All of this together undergirds our democracy, our society, American civilization, and we have consistently been under investing and in fact disinvesting in the very infrastructure that we depend on for our democracy to work.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“less reliable technically ineffective. And what it has yielded, of course, we know, is one of the greatest calamities and greatest embarrassments in this country in many, many years.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and this is one of the drivers of inequality, which is this idea that we are failing to invest and protect vital public goods. A vital public good like infrastructure, our water system is essential. It's vital to the very operations of a city, of a civilization, in fact. And yet this city of 100,000 people does not have a decent infrastructure because a decision was made to switch systems. Cheaper”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Grand Today ACLU made it possible for them to hire a journalist who blogged about issues of governance and started covering what was going on in Flint. He was among the first to bring to the public's attention what was happening in Flint, Michigan”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, philanthropy could never play the role of government. We're a rounding error in the federal government's budget. All of our assets together is a rounding era in the federal government's budget. So let's be real about. the potential. What we can do is catalyze, innovate, demonstrate, solutions. So I've given you an example of a large grant. Let's talk about a smaller grant. A grant for $500,000, and that grant supports investigative journalism through our media program because we believe that in a democracy we need strong media. Well, a recent grant led to much of the public knowledge around what's happening in Flint, Michigan. Pro-Publica? This was the ACLU.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Co investors with a Kellogg Foundation Knight Foundation, Kresgi Foundation, the Fisher Foundation locally, the Mott Foundation, these are national foundations and local philanthropies together that came Rescued Detroit.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we have large grants and we have smaller grants, and for us a large grant would be one that we made last year one hundred twenty five million dollars. Wow. Towards the grand bargain to help resolve Detroit's bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of America, and it was a daunting task, but ultimately the bankruptcy was resolved because a group of foundations and the governor of Michigan came together with the Detroit Institute of the Arts to raise $800 million that made it possible for the city to pay its retirees their pensions. and to help the museum which was owned by the city. to keep its art on its walls, which it was at risk of having to sell. So that was $125 million towards an $800 million pool of money. So that's a large grant for big impact.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it's fair to say that we were very, very distressed by what happened during that period. But it was a slow, thoughtful, deliberative process that led us to our rebalancing of the portfolio. We have a policy that ensures that we at all times have sufficient liquidity. So there was never a question as to our being able to meet our obligations for grants or operations. And so we could look for the long haul. And over these last six to seven years, we have had outstanding performance. And I'm proud to say that Eric and his team continue to deliver great results, which means we have more money to give away.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we've got to also give credit to our trustees. We have an outstanding group of trustees who manage with Eric our portfolio from a governance perspective. So we have a very clearly articulated investment policy. Those guidelines of that policy establish the guardrails within which Eric and his team can invest. And we don't panic. We don't become overly concerned about what's happened today or tomorrow or even next month necessarily, what we are concerned about or what are the long-term trends? What are the implications over multiple quarters of Fed policy, of what's happening in emerging markets? And we have great managers. So we listen to those managers. We synthesize and harmonize their input, their counsel, their wisdom. And they have done very well with us. And so we continue to stick with them.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't manage any of our investments in-house. We have a traditional mix of asset classes, primarily hedge funds and private equity. But we've got a long-term investment horizon. We aren't looking to beat the market in any short-term way. Our investment strategy is very much like our grant making strategy. We are long-term investors because we believe over the long term by not being slavish to near-term concerns, we're able to generate more value, more stability, less volatility, and better returns”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I'm ultimately accountable to our trustees for the enterprise of the Ford Foundation, which includes our investment portfolio, but I'm very lucky because we have one of the best people working in investment management today, Eric Dobstadt, as our CIO. Eric is aided by a terrific team of staff who are professionals who have come from all walks of life and from the public and private sector and bring a remarkable capacity to make smart investments, to choose high impact managers, and to do very, very well.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, the American people are fair. They want the evidence. And so when we start to produce the evidence, for example, through films, through media, through evidence and good research that demonstrates, for example, that there is a differential prejudice in treatment of people who are arrested for marijuana or powder cocaine and people who are primarily white, and people who are arrested for crack, who are primarily black, that there is differential treatment in our judicial system. One example is manifest across the entire criminal justice system in this country.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So one driver is what we call entrenched cultural narratives, and these are narratives that undermine fairness, tolerance, and inclusion. And those narratives could be narratives, for example, in the India context that Dalits, the lower caste, are in fact supposed to be the lower caste. or in the United States that the fact that most of the people in American prisons are African American and Latino, that maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. So we allow narratives to justify why injustice exists in our society and to validate that it's okay.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I don't think we should be distracted by aggregate numbers, we have to look within countries and society. So China has certainly had poverty reduced, but income inequality there is at its greatest level. India is the same, the US. Much of the Latin American countries, and of course in Africa, we're seeing a widening gap. So we should be alarmed by this. Now, the question is, how do we help reduce inequality? And we believe we've got to focus on those drivers of inequality. And we believe those drivers include a few profound elements in our society.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now within that we ask, who are the populations of people who traditionally have had the least opportunity and whose welfare have been more at risk? And we begin with girls and women. Because around the world girls and women have traditionally been excluded and marginalized. We talk about minorities, ethnic, religious, racial minorities, rural communities, urban communities, people who in the United States, for example, are isolated in prisons and in a criminal justice system that isn't serving our country at all. These are the populations we focus on. These are the people whose lives we seek to improve because when their lives are improved, they contribute to a better society.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, today we work in eleven regions of the world, including the United States, so we work in place-based strategies. But we start by asking the question, what's the greatest threat to human welfare? What's the greatest threat to our objective of a more just, fair, and peaceful world? We believe the greatest threat is growing inequality in the world. Now, of course, climate change and insecurity, these are major threats of our time. But the threat that we have chosen to focus on is growing inequality. Because in many ways, it represents the greatest threat to opportunity. Because without opportunity, it's impossible to have social mobility and human achievement. And that's our North Star.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What it means is encouraging human achievement, reducing poverty. Allowing the poor, the marginalized in all parts of the world to have their dreams realized through education, through livelihoods, through human and civil rights and participation in governance, through the environment. These are all areas where the Ford Foundation programs.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was able to do that. And for me, that was enough. But what I didn't have was passion. I didn't have the day-to-day excitement about doing good in the world. And that's what I was yearning for. And I was lucky enough to meet a man named Calvin Butts, who is the minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. In Har”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one thing happened for me, I have to be honest. I didn't find my way into the nonprofit sector, the charitable sector early in my career. I was very clear with myself when I was in college and law school that I never again wanted to be poor. feared more than anything else being poor. And so because of that, I used my law degree. I went into business. I had a good run on Wall Street. But for me, It was never about piling up money. It was about comfort and finding myself in a position so that I could, for example, take care of my mother, support my sisters as they were going to college.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely I was aware of it and I was aware of the consequences because it was right in front of me. I would hear my mother talk about stories of what was happening in our family. I'd see it in our community and I'd hear about it from others. So I was aware that if you were a bad boy, bad things happen to you.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I understood because I saw some of my cousins what was happening to them as early as the third grade, for example, being put in special education. Some of my cousins who I played with as a little boy by high school were already in juvenile centers. And sadly, seven of my cousins ended up in prison and one of my cousins committed suicide. A Paris jail in Louisiana.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My third grade teacher, Mrs. Majors, took me aside after class, and she sat me down and she gave me a stern talking to as we say back home. She said, Little boys like you who get in trouble too often end up not succeeding. And I worry that you are going to get in trouble and are going to end up not succeeding in life. And you can succeed. And it was having her tell me that I could succeed, but that in order for me to succeed, I needed to gain control of my emotions. My temper, dealing with issues I was dealing with at home in the classroom, and manifesting a lot of bad behavior.”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was born in America, and that meant that I was born in a country where even a poor African-American kid could have dreams. And those dreams, those aspirations could be realized. That's the country that we have lived in. And at the Ford Foundation, we are asking that question. Can we continue to be a land of opportunity where little Darren Walker's and lots of others like me can dream and have those dreams be realized?”
2016-03-04 · Masters in Business · Interview With Darren Walker: Masters in Business (Audio) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source