Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Kevin Wilkins, CEO of Trepwise, a New Orleans-based strategy firm that has worked with over 550 purpose-driven organizations. Kevin talks with Sara about what life events changed his career path and why Trepwise is such an important step for him. They explore what it takes to build a sustainable business in the present day and what leaders need to know.
Kevin describes moving his family to New Orleans 4 and ½ years after Hurricane Katrina had hit after his wife got a great job offer. Once in the city, he began to look at how nonprofits had sprung up to assist New Orleans after Katrina but how despite the money flowing in, they were all vying for same funding and not many had a sustainable plan. That ultimately led him to found Trepwise. He unpacks what Trepwise is designed to do and how it functions, especially amongst the specific needs of New Orleans.
Sara and Kevin talk about the driving motivation behind Trepwise and the human-centred approach Kevin focuses on taking. He points out that not only has he learned a great deal about nonprofit business and sustainability in that format but that the work he’s doing has taught him a lot and brought him immense personal satisfaction when goals for child welfare or improvement initiatives are realized. Kevin’s passion for his work and the city he lives in is evident throughout and his vision, through Trepwise, has created a sustainable foundation for many organizations wanting to help.
About Kevin Wilkins
Kevin N. Wilkins is the Founder and CEO of Trepwise, a growth consulting firm with a mission to unlock the potential of purpose-driven organizations by aligning people, process, and vision.
Kevin moved to New Orleans in 2010 and served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence and COO for The Idea Village from 2011 – 2013. His experience working closely with entrepreneurs in the New Orleans area led him to launch Trepwise in 2013. With more than 30 years of experience in corporate and private ventures, Kevin has built a strong team of consultants at Trepwise who collectively have worked with over 500 organizations within private and public sectors, nonprofits, and foundations.
Kevin has also served on several nonprofit boards, currently for YPO Louisiana, Tulane Hillel, Institute of Mental Hygiene, City Year New Orleans, Touro Synagogue, Collegiate Academies, Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, The Foundation for Science and Mathematics Education, and formerly for Louisiana Children’s Museum, Pelican Bomb, Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation.
Kevin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, as well as holding executive leadership positions with Procter & Gamble, Fidelity Investments, and State Street Research & Management. In addition, Kevin is a lead mentor for the national Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program and a mentor to startups in the Spark10 accelerator program based in India.
Resources discussed in this episode:
- You Are Not Them: The Authentic Entrepreneur’s Way by Sid Mohasseb
- The Caterpillar’s Edge by Sid Mohasseb
- “From Reason to Profit” Forbes Article by Sid Mohasseb
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Kevin Wilkins | Trepwise Strategy Consulting
- Website: Trepwise.com
- Kevin Wilkins on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:03] Hi there, I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I’m joined by Kevin Wilkins, CEO of Trepwise, a New Orleans based strategy firm who has collectively worked with over 550 purpose driven organizations. Kevin found his greatest impact serving nonprofit, foundation and public private spaces with one goal in mind: developing thriving and equitable communities nourished by good ideas. Kevin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has held executive leadership positions with Procter and Gamble, Fidelity Investments, and State Street Research and Management. Kevin, I am so glad to be chatting with you today and to have you on my show. Welcome.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:01:09] Thank you, Sara. I appreciate being here.
Sara Sheehan: [00:01:11] Wonderful. So Kevin, I’d love to hear from you what led you to, and motivated you, to create your business?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:01:24] That probably requires some additional background. First of all, thank you for sharing my bio so I won’t dwell on that too much. The one headline from my bio that was not there is that I married a woman from New Orleans, and that will become relevant in a few minutes. Apparently when you marry someone from New Orleans, you do end up living in New Orleans at some point in your life, it just took us 28 years to get here. We met in college many years ago, and we spent most of our married life in New England. I started my career in packaged goods at Procter and Gamble, as you mentioned, and then I went to Harvard Business School and transitioned into financial services. What I learned at Procter and Gamble was tremendous and transforming for me. They really invest in training, they really invest in helping you understand what it means to run a business. I was able to do that as part of their brand management program, I really liked it. I was in the household cleaning division and I was 22 years old, and to be honest with you, household cleaning was not the biggest passion of my life, but I learned a lot about how one manages and how one engages with consumers, and how you get some insights and how you can do the marketing and the finance and all the manufacturing behind the scenes. It was very interesting work, I just didn’t love the category.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:02:36] When I went to Harvard Business School, I got exposed to the financial markets. I was intrigued by them, and I thought they were very dynamic. I liked what I did at Procter, can I do my general management concept? But instead of household cleaners, let’s talk about the financial markets. That’s what led me to Fidelity Investments, as you mentioned. That began a 20 year path for me in financial services, which was interesting because every time I went back to Harvard Business School, people would say to me, you’re still in financial services? I’m like, yeah, somewhat surprised. I was more the marketing guy maybe, I was more the creative, so I don’t think people saw me in that space, but I really did enjoy it. I was running organizations within financial services. I was often doing innovation and product development, I was doing some change management work, so it allowed me to leverage a lot of general management skills. 20 years later there I was, still in financial services. I reflect on that, but 20 years later I was president of an organization that we ended up selling to a larger organization in financial services in New York.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:03:42] At that point, my time at financial services paused. I was reflecting on my time, and realizing that I was put on a path right out of school. I went to the right company, I went to the right business school, I ended up going to the other right company. I always linked to big brands, although that wasn’t necessarily my intent, that’s just where I ended up. I knew what to do to be successful. You’re on a path and they tell you, to get to the next level you need to do A, B, C, and D. You work hard, you excel and you do your best and if you do well, you can continue to pursue the path. 20 years later I had reached a pinnacle on the path, but what I began to realize was this path was given to me. I made decisions to stay on the path, but in order to stay on the path, you had to do A, B, C, and D. I did A, B, C, and D and was able to succeed. I didn’t really think through the choices I’m making in my career. I was on a career path, I followed the rules and I did well. 20 years later I was still in financial services.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:04:49] That’s when you pause and say, what just happened? I reflect on this phase of my life, I benefited and I enjoyed my time. I don’t want to minimize that, I did enjoy the time, I did enjoy the people I worked with. I enjoyed what we were able to accomplish, but at the same time, maybe it wasn’t as intentional as I would have wanted it to be. I believe that it’s really important when you’re managing your own career, I’ve got three children and I say this to each of them, you want to make sure you’re making the right choices for you in any given moment, and you need to make sure that you’re not being dictated by others in terms of what you need to do to succeed, but you’re instead making choices around what you feel you need to do to succeed. I think many people of my generation, maybe less so in this generation, find themselves on these paths unintentionally. 20 years later, there you are. I joke about mid-life crises, maybe this is why people have midlife crises because they begin to realize that they really haven’t made many choices in their careers.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:05:55] They stick to what they know, and they stick to what they’re good at, and they just follow the rules and they get to a certain level. I share that with you because, when we moved to New Orleans in 2010, everything shifted for me. My wife, as I said, is from New Orleans. The transaction had happened with the firm that I’d been at, so I had some flexibility to do different things. My wife is a professional fundraiser in the university setting, she was raising money for Harvard for many years, and she got a phone call from Tulane. She said Tulane was curious in terms of whether she would consider raising money for them. Never had she gotten a headhunter call from Louisiana, let alone New Orleans, let alone Tulane. All of this was something that would really be good for her career and her choices. We’re like, is it time? We’ve been in Boston for over 20 years, we loved it there. We didn’t have family there so we build our own networks. The kids were established. It was a big decision to shift. The one constraint that we didn’t have was my career. I could do what I was doing at that time, I was doing some advertising work, I was doing some investing work, I could actually do that anywhere.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:07:00] So we decided in 2010 to move. Packed up the truck and we moved on down. My boys were 7, 9 and 13 at the time. My 13 year old said that we were ruining his life single handedly, those special parental moments. We’re like, let’s see if we can find a smile and let’s move on down. Then three years after being here, he was like, this is the best place to be from, this is the best place to be a teenager. I’m like, yes, in fact it is. Nevertheless, it was a very good move for the family and a very good move for my wife’s career. It gave me a moment to ask an intentional question. That question is, what do I want to do? My wife asked that right when we decided to move. She’s like, what are you going to do? What do you think about doing? Do you want to do early retirement? You can do some volunteer stuff. I’m like, I don’t know, that doesn’t sit well, no I don’t think so, way too young, not going to do that. I’ll explore, and maybe I’ll see what I want to do. What what was interesting is never did it come to me, never in my consideration set did I say, I wonder what I can do in financial services. Instead I said, I wonder what I can do to help the community in a post-Katrina world.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:08:23] We moved here four and a half years after Katrina. The city had made progress, clearly, but still had a lot of recovery to do. The money was drying up, the cameras had all gone away, and suddenly the city is faced with some challenges around, how can we sustain momentum? How can we continue to recover? The good news is a lot of people move to New Orleans after Katrina, really wanted to come and help the city. A lot of money flowed into New Orleans after Katrina. A lot of nonprofits were built, a lot of social services were put in place, and a lot of really well-intended people wanted to come here and help the city. Unfortunately when I got here, as I said, the cameras had all gone away and I was seeing a city that had a lot of non-profits that were established, but perhaps they were all chasing the same money, and some of them would not be sustainable. I began exploring the city. What does the community need? What kind of impact can I make? I started in, what I call, the incubation and acceleration space. A lot of money had come into New Orleans to help fund organizations, to help startups get off the ground. I worked for a few organizations that were helping entrepreneurs get their ideas off the ground. The idea was, if we could build different companies within the New Orleans ecosystem, we would then help create jobs, and we would help build out a middle class. New Orleans really did not have a strong middle class as part of its community design, so how can we create more industry that would create more jobs? That’s interesting, I think I can understand how to build companies, I can help with that. I began building curriculum out, I began teaching, I taught at Tulane as an adjunct for a few years, and was diving in to how to help entrepreneurs get their organizations off the ground. There were several types of incubators in the city. Some were for profit, some were nonprofit, but they both had the same idea. How can we get these organizations off the ground in generating jobs? What I noticed, though, is that there were not a lot of organizations that could help these organizations stay off the ground. I joke that Louisiana was very good at launching ideas, we need to help these organizations sustain and grow their ideas.
Sara Sheehan: [00:10:51] Staying in business is definitely harder than many people plan for.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:10:56] 100%, because everyone focuses on the launch. Get it off the ground, it’s so exciting. We have to talk about year two and year three and what that looks like. What was interesting is, I met with the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is a fantastic organization in the city, a community foundation that’s doing transformational work. When I met with them, it was around ten years ago, right before I started Trepwise. They wanted me to look at some of the nonprofits that they had been funding, and they wanted to get my perspective on what’s it going to take to make them sustainable. I said, listen, I’ve sat on boards before, but I’m not a nonprofit leader of any kind, I’m more of a business background. They’re like, exactly, we want to have a business acumen placed against this nonprofit structure. The light bulb went on. I’m like, isn’t that interesting? If I could help these nonprofits put together a plan to sustain themselves and grow their impact, wouldn’t that be great for the community? My background is actually pretty well suited. I know how to run organizations and I know how to grow organizations. You have to familiarize yourself with the operations of a nonprofit and how the fundamentals work, but it’s not rocket science. It was really interesting to see the diversity of ideas and the diversity of purpose that existed within New Orleans.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:12:19] If I was able to help just one of these organizations do well, than it would have been worth the trip. I talk about intentionality, because for the first time it wasn’t about me. My career was about me, let me be clear. When I was in financial services, it was about me. What was my title? What was my role? What was my responsibility? What was my stature? It was about me, for the good and the bad. In New Orleans, it wasn’t about me, it was about the community. It was about the needs of the greater whole. It was about how can I help contribute, and wander into places that, if you told me that I was going to start helping nonprofits grow their impact, I’d be like, what education do I have to do that? But when you wander your way into something because you’re curious, because you’re making intentional choices, because you’ve asked yourself the question, what do I want to do? What do I really want to do? What is the impact? What is the legacy that I’m looking to build here? Then the outcomes tend to be slightly different.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:27] Definitely. That’s a wonderful way to frame the time that led up to you creating Trepwise. Can you share with me what lessons you have learned from building and scaling Trepwise so far? I’m sure there are many.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:13:49] I’ve learned a whole lot. First of all, I never intended to build this type of consulting organization. When I started Trepwise, it was more, what can I do to help support these specific nonprofits that I’ve been working with? I need some support behind me. I started Trepwise with the idea that we can help purpose driven organizations. I wasn’t thinking about the scale, and I wasn’t thinking about the breadth of work that we could be doing. It was literally, in the moment I had a lot to do, so I’m going to start a company to help me do this, I’m going to hire someone who can help support me. Ten years later, there are 15 of us. We’ve got subject matter experts that we work with, which would make us a larger organization as well, that we do that as contractors. We’re working with not only nonprofits at a national level, but we also do strategic planning work for the nonprofits, we do systems planning work, helping organizations work together to solve a common challenge. Then we do a lot of organizational effectiveness work, how can we strengthen what you have and how can we maximize what you do? Those three areas started in New Orleans, and I say I built this for New Orleans and it will always be for New Orleans, but having this national platform right now and working with nonprofits from around the country has been so fulfilling.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:15:10] I think one of the first lessons was, do not limit yourself. Don’t say, I can only do a few nonprofits right now and we’ll see how that goes. Think big, think about what you can do to maximize your impact, and think about how you can perhaps scale yourself. That was the question that I was dealing with early on, how do I scale me? My team often laughs at me because I would ask the question, is Kevin bigger than Trepwise, or is Trepwise bigger than Kevin, as a bellwether. The answer often was, Kevin’s bigger than Trepwise. People come here because of Kevin, and he’s helping these organizations. 10, 11 years later, Trepwise is much bigger than Kevin. We have clients that I have never met. We have work that perhaps I wouldn’t even know how to do specifically, but I’ve built an incredible team to do this type of work, and you stay on point. The other lesson that I’ve learned, number one don’t limit yourself. Number two, stick to your vision, stick to your mission, and stick to your values. If you can stick to your values and live your values every single day, then you’re going to continue to do the next right thing.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:16:22] We’re also very much of a human centered firm. What that means is, we understand who the stakeholders are for any given opportunity that we’re working on, and we want to understand what their perspectives are, what are their needs. We do that with all of our clients. When you’re working with a nonprofit, you talk to staff, you talk to board, you talk to funders, you talk to the beneficiaries of the nonprofit because you want to understand what exactly is working and where some of the challenges are, and you want to get the full picture of it all. Then everything you do is human centered in terms of what’s driving you. What I often say is, lesson 3 or 4, do not fall in love with your own ideas. Do not fall in love with what you’re doing. Stay consistent, consistently show up and do what you do and stay agile. Listen to what the clients are really saying, listen to the diversity of stakeholder voices that are really important. If you can do that for yourself just as much as we do it for our clients, that’s the huge win. We continue to evolve this team, as we continue to strengthen our team and to deepen our team’s talent. As we got larger engagements, as we got larger systems work, it was all a very logical set of choices we were making as a firm.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:17:42] The pandemic changed everything for us in many ways. One, it really helped us help the community because the community was in crisis. New Orleans is a tourism town, 80% of revenue for tourism. Suddenly the pandemic hits, and hotels and restaurants, the layoffs and the musicians and the cultural economy, it was all so challenged. We were able to take that moment, and we did a ton of pro-bono work. We’re like, we’re going to help you, we’re going to stay focused, we’re going to stay present, we’re going to stay the course in terms of what we need to do as an organization, and we’re going to help these organizations maximize this opportunity of transition. We’re going to make sure these organizations feel like they are supported. In doing so, we were able not only to help the New Orleans community, but our reputation led us to help other communities as well around the country and helping different nonprofits and different organizations weather this pandemic. Whether it be in the hospitality space or across across the board. When you are facing a huge pandemic, the funders aren’t necessarily going to be funding your programing because your programing isn’t necessarily happening. So how do we help organizations reimagine how they do what they do in a very uncertain time?
Sara Sheehan: [00:19:05] There’s no question, the pandemic really changed the rules for so many people. Hospitality was disproportionately affected overall, but take into consideration that there were 1 billion adults globally that were laid off during that time frame, and that data point alone, and that is from the Gallup organization, that is an absolutely shocking statistic that tells you how far ranging the economic downturn from the pandemic really was. Very compelling and interesting. Kevin, I’d love to hear, based on some of your comments, you’ve talked a little bit about the lessons that you’ve learned from building your business and the focus that you have in the nonprofit space. I can only imagine, from the efforts that you’ve taken to influence and impact others, that you’ve gotten a lot in return personally for the impact that you’ve made in your market. Can you share with me what the three most significant things you’ve gotten in return for the work that you’ve done with nonprofits?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:20:36] That’s a great question. It is the most satisfying work that I’ve ever done. Let me be clear, I’m running a small consulting organization. I am not making nearly as much money as I made when I was in financial services. No one has heard of Trepwise until your reputation continues to grow. It’s not Procter and Gamble and it’s not Fidelity Investments, let’s be clear. All of that criteria for me absolutely went away, yet I’ve never been happier and I’ve never been more satisfied with what we’re doing. When I think about impact, I think about seeing our plans come to life and actually working. I see leaders, who we coach in terms for leadership and executive development and professional development, I see them thriving and I see them making choices, and I see them giving credit to what Trepwise has done in order to help support them. I think some of our biggest impact has been not only working within organizations to maximize their impact through planning work or through organizational effectiveness work, and to see organizations transform themselves, but I’ve also seen the impact of organizations working with each other. We have an interesting seat because we work with a lot of different organizations, both locally and nationally, and we’ve been able to introduce different organizations to each other to combine efforts to make even a bigger impact.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:22:11] What I’ve seen, and I didn’t actually see it coming to be honest with you. Again, you need to be intentional, you need to make the choices. We do a lot of systems work, and systems work is, how can we address a community need collectively to ensure that we can get the outcomes that we’re striving for. We are stronger together than we are alone. An example of that would be a plan that we did for the state of Louisiana two years ago called Whole Health Louisiana. What we did is, how can we address childhood adversity across the state? Let’s understand what childhood adversity looks like. Let’s talk about what trauma means. Let’s understand what we need to do to identify trauma and childhood adversity. What do we need to do to help address it, and what do we ultimately need to do to help prevent it from happening going forward? If you think about it, we worked with over 100 organizations together, funded by the First Lady’s office of the state. It was not a political office, it was the First Lady’s foundation, Donna Edwards. We worked over a two year window to understand the space, understand the players, understand outcomes that we’d be looking for collectively, understand who would play what role within the system, understand the system leverage points that need to be shifted and need to be addressed, and then see it come to life.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:23:45] That is the work I am most proud of. If we can help move the needle in Louisiana when it comes to childhood welfare, that is a win beyond a win. People were in a room talking with each other, and we were facilitating conversations, and we were designing experiences where people could work together to come up with common solutions. Was 100% satisfied. Since then, we’ve done the youth master plan for New Orleans, how can we help opportunity to youth create pathways to success? We are doing the Vision of New Orleans plan, what is New Orleans going to look like in 2035 because of the work we’ve done here? We did the cultural economy plan in Houston. I often say New Orleans is a fantastic incubator because they’ve got lots of new ideas here, and we’re very strong in culture and we’re very strong in the arts, and we’ve got a lot of youth that need support. If you can manage it in New Orleans, you can manage it in other cities as well. Again, I didn’t think this way when I started. I was like, I just want to see if I can help the community. I want to see if I can help these organizations. I loved what we did so much, it continued to grow.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:00] It sounds like some of the things that you got in return were some incredible opportunities to dive into areas of interest that had even more impact in the community and the state. Very interesting and compelling, that’s fascinating. I know that you are in the process of writing a book on intentionality, which is a very compelling and interesting leadership topic. I was wondering if you could share with me what your books through-line is.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:25:44] The idea is defining what an intentional career really is, and understanding the pathways that you are on and the choices that you are making, and ensuring that you are moving in a direction that you personally want to move into, and that you can control what you choose to do in your life. The minute you shift to an intentional concept, the more satisfied you’re going to be, the more ownership you’re going to feel, and the real outcomes that you’re looking for are personal. You feel like you own your path and you can own the outcomes that you’re able to achieve. It’s not about the brand you’re linked to, it’s not about your title, it’s not about your money. Those are all nice trappings, that’s fine. I’m not going to minimize the importance of that in terms of people’s ability to live a full life. I don’t want anyone waking up one day and say, I’ve been on this path for 20 years, the path can go away. If you’re not intentional, and you are living by someone else’s rules, and you just keep doing the next right thing on this path and you keep excelling, fine. The path can go away. For example, in my situation, when we had the transaction with the firm in New York City, that was it. I stayed on for a little while, but I wasn’t moving to New York City, and that was it.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:27:16] That path had a moment and it stopped. I could have hustled to get another job on the path and I could have jumped back in without thinking and just keep focused on what I had been doing, but I didn’t want to. I took a moment to breathe, and I think that moment to breathe was the lever to say, you know what? Let me shift it. It’s not what they want me to do. What do I want to do? Shifting your mindset to intentionality and to choice is so important, and it’s never too late. I think the generation of my kids, perhaps, I think they tend to be more intentional. I think they are making choices because they want to do good in the world. I think this is slightly different with this younger generation. I think they want to work for organizations that are making a difference. Yes it’s a paycheck, and yes they want to do well and they want to have benefits and all that, and they want to make a difference. I think if we can help this generation be intentional about their careers and the benefits that come with intentionality, then that’s going to be the huge win.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:35] That’s fascinating and very interesting. I’m very interested in exploring the book when it’s available. When do you anticipate the book would come out?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:28:48] The goal is to have it completed in 2025. Hopefully halfway through, so the summer of 2025. We’re aggressively working on it right now.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:56] Perfect, that’s not very long at all. That’s very exciting, excellent. So Kevin, what are three things that you would like to impact most by working with nonprofit clients?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:29:17] Are you referring to social impact work, or are you referring to what I want to help a client do?
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:23] I’m referring to, for instance, if it were an opportunity of your dreams and you could make a difference in these three areas, what would you like to do?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:29:40] The good news and the bad news is, society is not lacking in social issues. I love the idea of being able to help move the needle in different spaces. The cultural economy is so important to the fabric of New Orleans. What you find, you talk about our vision of a thriving and equitable community. Oftentimes who we call the culture bearers of the city, whether they be the Mardi Gras Indians, whether they be crews that dance in the Mardi Gras parades, often are featured as part of the tourism story, but don’t necessarily benefit from the tourists coming here, they don’t get compensated, but they draw the people here. How can we create a system that’s so valued within New Orleans and help build out that economy, such that all culture bearers benefit from the tourism that comes here? That is not a unique idea, and that is not a unique issue. There are cultural assets across other cities that fall into that same area. There’s also so much culture here in terms of the types of activities that New Orleans provides. How can we help coordinate that system to ensure that everyone’s benefiting and that we’re creating a major impact in the tourist space? I really love that work, I value that work. I know culture bearers in the city who are so passionate about this, and I just want to make sure that everyone can benefit from the tourism that comes into this city and the tourism that’s generated by other cities as well. Mental health is a huge issue out there and our youth are suffering. We did the mental health work supporting Tulane at the university level and put together a significant plan that helps support the mental health challenges of youth within the university.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:31:37] Taking that concept, and we’ve been applying that to other schools as well because mental health is so important. How can we help move the needle on that space? Food access, food insecurity is a big deal. One of our first systems effort, I didn’t even think of it as a system. I was like, how can we help these organizations coordinate? When the pandemic hit, people were going hungry, and the city and FEMA and the Greater New Orleans Foundation came together and said, we need to create a process that all these restaurants that we have, a ton of restaurants that we have per capita, more than any other city in the country, all the food that they had on the shelf, what can we do to help them make meals and distribute that through a system to the people who needed them most in New Orleans, and how can FEMA help support this? It was an economic challenge to say, we need to build a system. Although I didn’t use those fancy words back then, we just need to help these organizations coordinate. We stepped in like we did with a normal organization. Instead of working within an organization, we began working across organizations. FEMA was involved and the Greater New Orleans Foundation was involved, and the cities were involved, and the end users were there, and we did it quickly.
Sara Sheehan: [00:32:57] Those are three really compelling areas. You’re talking about success of the cultural ecosystem in your market, you’re talking about food insecurity is huge, and mental health is absolutely a giant area to make a big impact. Those are pretty tremendous. It sounds like that you might have something else on your mind there, you were about to share something else. Was there something else in that space that you wanted to share?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:33:35] Oftentimes when I was in financial services, you were able to say, I did this. I built this organization or I helped manage this money or whatever the claim might be. Almost heroic in a way, but not truly by any means. I look at this work that we’re doing now, the work that I’ve chosen to do, and I realized, you know what, we’re going to help move the needle. We are not going to solve this problem, and we need to be okay with that. We need to be okay with the idea that we’re here to help coordinate, we’re here to help maximize the impact of any given organization, and we need to be comfortable with the incremental concept. As opposed to, I’m going to solve world hunger. That’s a fantastic claim to make, and that’s a fantastic goal to have, but I think you need to be more realistic with this work. We need to continue to move the needle, we will never, ever be done, and being okay with that. It’s not about the problems of solving something, it’s about the ability to help move things forward.
Sara Sheehan: [00:34:46] Very much so. Moving something forward and being patient, sometimes you can have an even bigger result if you are patient. When you move too fast or you’re doing something that may not have a good strategy or vision behind it, you may not have, what I would call, a path to success that you would have if you were just a little bit more patient. It may not be a straight line.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:35:27] Never, and being okay with that is key.
Sara Sheehan: [00:35:30] Exactly. I’d love to hear from you, Kevin, if you could influence other businesses or business leaders out in the world to do one thing in the nonprofit sector, what would that be?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:35:49] That’s a great question. I want to go back to my comment about this current generation of workers want meaning in their life. They want to work with organizations that can provide meaning, both through the work they do for the core premise of the organization as well as the social impact it can do. In fact, studies would show that people will take less salary if they feel they’re working with an organization that’s trying to do good in the community. That’s the framing. There’s a motivation for organizations to want to do good. It’s not necessarily about the profit that they can make all the time, it’s more about that triple bottom line of trying to do some social good at the same time. I would encourage organizations to find their passion. What is their philanthropic strategy? What do they want to do to give back? Question number one, do you want to give back? Is that something that is important? Some organizations might be like, I got to focus on other things. I would argue that baked into your fundamentals needs to be this concept of giving back. Let’s understand what you can do as an organization from a philanthropic strategy. Choose what you want to do and where you want to make a difference.
Kevin Wilkins: [00:37:07] Then encourage your employees and encourage your leadership team to look at the time, look at their talent, look at their treasure, and see what they can do to help support the issue that you, as an organization, want to make an impact on. Then finally, align vision with the actual work. If your vision is A, B and C, your vision to reimagine the world, if you’re a technology company. Cool, let’s reimagine the world, we can use technology, and then we want to create a cultural literacy class that helps individuals learn how to use technology and create pathways for them to build a career in technology. You’re aligning with your vision, but you are doing something that’s really good and strategically in line. That’s one approach, or you can survey your employee base and say, where is the energy right now? Is the energy in climate, is the energy in food access? Then build programs around where that energy is. For Trepwise, we have this program called ‘Trepwork for Good’, and it was established because I, during the pandemic, we did a ton of pro bono work. I saw the benefit of it, and I never want people to be priced out of what we can do. We have a ‘Trepwork for Good’ platform where we were able to choose every quarter, two engagements that we can help maximize their impact.
Sara Sheehan: [00:38:36] That’s phenomenal. It creates that cycle, the pay-it-forward cycle I like to say, which I absolutely love. I love doing it on an individual level and I love doing it in the marketplace, it’s very compelling. So Kevin, are there any other big goals or aspirations that you are currently working on accomplishing that we haven’t talked about today?
Kevin Wilkins: [00:39:07] Not really. Continuing to lead and manage this growing firm and making sure that we’re making the right choices in terms of the work that we’re doing, I think is super important. I do want to complete the book and get that done on time and have it be impactful and relevant.
Sara Sheehan: [00:39:25] Wonderful. Well, Kevin, I can’t thank you enough for our conversation today. I think that business leaders and businesses can make a bigger difference in the marketplace if they just consider how they are impacting others and how they would like to impact others in a more significant way. Thank you so much for your time today, Kevin.
Sara Sheehan: [00:39:27] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. My conversation with Kevin Wilkins is filled with interesting and remarkable insights. In today’s episode, Kevin sheds light on the importance of intentionality in your life choices and shares his insights on fostering meaningful work that benefits the community. Here are three key takeaways from our discussion. First, intentional pathways. Kevin emphasizes the significance of making deliberate choices that align with personal values and the broader goal of making a positive impact. He discusses how younger generations are increasingly driven by the desire to contribute to societal good through their work. Second, philanthropic strategies in business. He encourages organizations to integrate philanthropic efforts into core values and align these initiatives with their vision by focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. Businesses can create lasting community impacts. This approach also enhances employee satisfaction even when salaries might be lower. Third, focus on incremental progress in nonprofits. Kevin shares insights into how nonprofit work is often about incremental progress and coordination, rather than solving all the problems outright. He talks about supporting culture bearers, addressing mental health in educational institutions, and tackling food insecurity through collaborative efforts. This episode is a must listen for anyone interested in creating a meaningful and sustainable nonprofit business path. No matter what sector you’re working in, if you want to make an impact on your community, you can do it. Tune in and explore Kevin’s remarkable journey and his insights. Thanks so much for listening today, subscribe and never miss an episode.
