Producer:
This episode of Social Work Talks is brought to you by the University of Central Florida. Built for those who don't wait for permission to change the world.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
From the National Association of Social Workers, this is Social Work Talks and I'm your host, Elisabeth Lamotte, and I am so excited to welcome Jocelyn Berndt to our conversation today. She is a financial wizard. She is the founder of Palladium Capital. She is a founding investor in the Amherst Group. She is the managing partner of JLB holdings, and I know, I know, I know. This podcast is Social Work Talks, not finance talks. And we don't usually have the chance to sit down with financial powerhouses like Jocelyn Berndt. However, she has been working closely with the University of Texas School of Social Work for years now, and she is a true visionary in public private partnerships. She has started not one, but two social work initiatives within corporate settings. And her real estate fund has a full on social work department. So she's going to tell us all about it. Jocelyn, welcome to Social Work Talks. Thank you so much for joining us.
Joslyn Berndt:
Thanks, Elisabeth . And what a nice introduction. I'm looking around like, who are you talking about?
Elisabeth LaMotte:
But you, it's you. Tell us a bit about your early career and how you got started in finance.
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for having me because I love, you know, I was so excited because I love social workers. They're some of my favorite people. And I've been on the board, like you said, for 15 years at the University of Texas School of Social Work. So I consider that to be extremely lucky and a privilege. And I'm kind of a social worker wannabe. So I've enjoyed tinkering with social science and trying to figure out, you know, how to solve problems or fill gaps. And this exposure to the social work school helped me do that in a business setting. So my background was a little bit unconventional to most finance people. I started in Houston at a place called Criterion Investments. I didn't really have the background to work there. However, I played national. I was a nationally ranked tennis player and the owner loved tennis, so he interviewed me. I spent my formative years in the part of Houston called the Second Ward. And then I went to school in a place called Pasadena. And the Second Ward was like the emigrant neighborhood. And Pasadena is where they make 85% of the world's petrochemicals. Houston is a very industrial town. And what a lot of people don't know about Houston is that it was the industrial capital in the early 20th century. So we have a Ship channel, we had railroads. We make 85% of the world's petrochemicals. So with all of that became generational wealth. So Criterion was one of the first to mutual funds, if not the first. And then we had huge families that we managed family offices for. Before we knew that that was actually
Elisabeth LaMotte:
a term like real pioneer in the family office.
Joslyn Berndt:
Yes, we, Houston had so much wealth in there and wonderful families. So due to all this industrial capacity that we have here, I mean, it's still the global capital of the world in terms of energy and petrochemicals. So those families then donated also. So we have like great sports teams, we have performing arts, visual arts. We, we pretty much have it all. And it's a huge city with a great vibe. But I was very lucky to have a start here. So New York would sort of structure deals and then come to Houston a lot of times to get them funded. So I'm 22 when I start to work there. And I worked there until John Hancock purchased the firm. So I had no idea the exposure we were doing. We called it private investment and we call that private equity now. We were the kind of the old family doctor. We took care of the 90% of the financial needs. If they needed to go public, they wanted to do an offering, we would introduce them to people in New York or a debt offering, or we managed the portfolio, construction, the risk, all the strategic ins and outs of a family office.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
So then what led you to connect with social workers and with our field?
Joslyn Berndt:
Actually it was Hurricane Katrina. So I lived in Austin, in and out for 20 years. But Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, if you remember, it was a horrible scene.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Who can forget? I mean, it was devastating.
Joslyn Berndt:
Devastating. And it was sewer water. I mean, the neighborhoods were decimated. The people couldn't go home. They couldn't collect any of their bellows at all. So Texas, big hearted Texas opened its doors and we were shipping New Orleans. We were having them to come to Texas and sort of get their feet on the ground, perhaps start over. Our preacher at church that morning, everyone's shell shocked at what they were witnessing on the tv. What happened to be from New Orleans. And he gave a different lens to this. He said, look, some of these kids were never going to get out of these neighborhoods. Here's the silver lining. They're going to have a new experience and a bunch of them are coming to Texas, like right now. So we decided to donate. I know my little daughter was a few months old. My son was about 2, so I had loads of baby Stuff. And we loaded the car and we dropped it off, and then we went to a place called Project Help, and that changed everything. So Project Help is a homeless school liaison office associated with the Austin Independent School District. I'm sure you're familiar with homeless school liaisons, but I had never heard of one in my life. So I walk in, and these ladies are preparing to receive these children and put them in school. So we said, how can we help? And one thing led to the next, and she said, look, we're getting 100. We don't know, 100, 200 kids, and you have to have a backpack to go to school, and they don't have any clothes. And it was Labor Day weekend, so we said, well, we have a company, and we'll help, and let's see what we can do. So we called up people that were in town, and we've made backpacks, and we made little duffel bags that we made bureaus, kind of because we knew they were going to be living in shelters. And we put clothes for the kids, and so we could get the kids in school as fast as possible and at least mitigate some of the disruption in their lives.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
So in that moment, you turned to your company and said, we need to do this. And you became the liaison between the social worker and. And the company.
Joslyn Berndt:
Right. But I also. Nothing happens in a vacuum. I had tremendous support by the partners at our company. Executive management was all on board and facilitated this. So that was the great thing. And we turned our conference room into a backpack station center. And every day we would go. We dropped off our 200 backpacks or whatever it was. And then Kathy Raquejo, who was the head liaison, incredible woman, and she said, oh, great, we're getting 200 more. And this went on for six days.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Just kept going.
Joslyn Berndt:
So by the end of the week or Saturday, we got about a thousand kids into school.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And what was the impact on you of this experience, both personally and professionally?
Joslyn Berndt:
It was transformative for me, actually, from two perspectives. One, I was living in Austin, Texas, with two children, and I had no idea how many homeless kids there were per night. She told me there's somewhere between 7 and 9,000 homeless kids. So that was hard to hear. And then secondly, I sort of ran this mayhem for the six days, and it was a lot. I mean, we had to pack the backpack specifically for grades. So I was grabbing Bible study groups. Anybody I could find in the building, come help us. And tragedy does bring out the best in humanity. I mean, I love that aspect of it. I mean, everybody was on board to help help these kids. Inside the company. You had people that work in the mailroom or the lunch ladies were rubbing shoulders with the million dollar bond traders. And that energy, I just loved it. It was a great energy and it was a unity and we were all together solving this problem for a greater good. And the bonds that we formed lasted for a long time. It was a different way to interact in the company. You know, on Wall street we go to dinners, we go to happy hours now we pack hygiene kits sometimes.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Right. But this is more real and it's more meaningful. And so then what?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, it was interesting the first decade. So we decided that we would do this. Like these 7 or 8,000 kids bothered all of us. Like, well, we can't unhear that, as I like to say, so what are we going to do? So I developed a close relationship with Kathy and she, over the next decade taught me a lot about the needs and the gaps that needed filling and just started innovating. We're kind of known for that anyway, in finance. And so I sort of just put that lens onto the social work and tried to help her out where we could.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And then that became a formal organization housed in the Amherst Group eventually. Is that correct?
Joslyn Berndt:
Yes. So it was interesting the first decade. So Capsity kids is over 20 years old. The first decade. I received a little resistance, not from executive management at all. I had their buy in and support, but some of the partners were like, don't you give money at church? What are we doing here? And it was interesting the first decade. I didn't listen. We just kept doing it. And then the second decade, it's phenomenal, the transformation in the next generation. A lot of people at I'm told would join our firm for our outreach
Elisabeth LaMotte:
programs of Cap City Kids. We knew about Cap City Kids started by you. And it was part of why they would choose working at the Amherst Group over somewhere else. Isn't that something?
Joslyn Berndt:
It's something how it changed. And so we decided to. It wasn't in the company originally. First we did backpacks and we just grew. We would learn about a need and sort of develop a program. And I tried to do things that other people didn't do. I love when my programs get copied.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Right. That's flattery.
Joslyn Berndt:
Yes. So we had a program, Get Copy, but another organization took it over and perfect. That frees up resources for me to go develop another one.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
You're saying Cap City Kids under other names has been replicated in other companies throughout the US I Don't know about
Joslyn Berndt:
that so much, but in Austin. So I had some tutors in homeless shelters that would come in. They were teachers. So it was kind of a win win that teachers can moonlight and make some extra money and the moms or the dads in the homeless shelter could have childcare for their homework, help for two hours every night. This was wildly successful. And we learned a lot from this program too. The kids would improved in school and they couldn't wait. If you were one of the teachers, like Elisabeth . I made an A on my spelling test. It became interesting. And then they added soccer. And so I think it was the junior league. But one of those groups said, can we just do this? And we. I said, sure, right. So they, they took it over and we went on to develop other programs. So that was the first one. We did end up taking Cap City Nation get nationwide. Once our company grew into the different offices. But at this point, I mean, it all runs via playbooks. I don't even really administer much anymore.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
The.
Joslyn Berndt:
The offices do it. We have a social work intern and she facilitates the ordering and it all just rolls.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And so then how. And at what point did you connect with the University of Texas School of Social Work?
Joslyn Berndt:
That was one of our programs. To get ideas, we hosted a dinner. You know, social workers don't have a lot of dinners. We have hosted a roundtable dinner downtown, invited all the homeless school liaisons in central Texas, and we said, tell us your needs. So each one there again, this is my social work flag. They're so articulate. I mean, social workers really know how to. The education is unbelievable. I think everybody could benefit from it personally. But they told us about the needs in Central Texas. And a former superintendent joined the meeting. She was leaving town, but she explained to me that at the University of Texas that they had 20, the students in the graduate level would have to complete two years of field service, which would be 20 hours a week. And she said in the schools, they didn't have any social workers, particularly in the marginalized schools where they were really needed. The counselors were overwhelmed. So she said, look, why don't you pay one master level social worker and she or he can supervise as their field service component, eight to 10 interns. And you can put those interns in these marginalized schools and help the children, help the teachers, help counselors. And then came the fun part, the fun part of the execution.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And what would you say was the biggest hurdle there?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, Kathy, the homeless school liaison, set me up with the dean of field services at the University of Texas. So that was my first intro. Tanya Voss, I always thank her for her trust. And then we had aisd and Tanya said, look, I think this sounds like a phenomenal idea. I'm in charge to make sure that these social workers get an incredible education. I will do it. I love the idea, but you have to have Kate Emerson. She's the only person I'm going to sign off on. I'm like, great. So I phone up Kate Amerson, tell her whatever I can to get her to take the job, which she does. And she basically says, look, we'll, we'll pioneer this. I'll do it. And she was very sophisticated. So the program wound up. She did a great job getting national award. And I think Kate got social worker of the year in 2016 or 2017. So it became wildly successful. We've trained about 150 social workers with 50,000 hours of direct counseling and about 6 or 6,800 to 7,500 children. We were losing count a little bit. And that doesn't count. Group therapies, you know as well as I do like to take a traumatized child and put someone with them for nine months is huge. You know, you can really make a lot of progress. So these social workers, we have a dinner every year and they tell us about their experience and the stories are just so good.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
How many of those who do field placements in this realm, like, like roughly how many of them do you think stay in the school social work setting, at least initially? And what else do you hear about in terms of their social work career paths?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, we invite our alumni, Cap City Kids, alumni that are around town to the dinner to celebrate the current cohorts. So I do know what a lot of them are doing, the range and the gamut. We send the list out, you know, to everyone and people will answer, hello, I'm in Ghana, I'm doing social work in Ghana. But Caroline Crawford worked at Women's Empowerment that to help girls and now she's a consultant to business, to companies like an executive coach. We have someone running the food bank. We have social workers working in policy. We have some that do private counseling, hr, all sorts of things.
Producer:
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Elisabeth LaMotte:
Jocelyn, what's next? So you're overseeing all of this and it's growing and hundreds of emerging social workers are doing their field placements through this program. And some people I think would stop there and focus on that. And that would be your social work endeavor. And that is, to my understanding, not what happened. So what happens next?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, I was living in D.C. at the time. It was during the financial crisis of 2007, really to about 12. So every summer I would go back to Texas and start another program with Kathy. I don't really manage, like I said, these programs, I just innovate them, I pioneer them, I get them running with results and then hand them over. And so that's, I've started a few more programs.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Tell us about cares because CARES is a really interesting one.
Joslyn Berndt:
That is an interesting one that I have some gray hair over that one. Imagine putting social workers in a Wall street investment bank, real estate investment bank.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Most people wouldn't imagine it. And you have. And our listeners and viewers have specifically asked us to learn more about outside the box social work careers. And so this just is fascinating to me.
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, we didn't call it public private partnerships. I used to call it triangulation. You know, it was the social workers, the real estate investment bank and the University of Texas. But it is a public private partnership. So what happened is we, after the financial crisis switched to be a single family residential platform. And that's kind of a bad word in today's language. But really the truth is there's 100 million Americans that can't get a mortgage. And we saw that being in D.C. that they were going to not be able to get a mortgage and they needed somewhere to live. So we started to buy houses and we renovate them and they're in good school districts. Right. Maybe year two, most of the bad problems would sort of end up on my desk. I wouldn't say bad problems, but things that were out of the box. Well, this one was a bad problem. A woman in Florida had a not ideal personal circumstance and couldn't pay her rent. But she was in nursing school and she was going to be able to pay around three or four months. So that was sort of the catalyst. Of course the answer was yes, you can stay in the house. She was super Articulate. And she explained to me why she needed to stay in the house. And it just sort of gave me the idea that this was going to be a factor. Right. Evictions. Another friend of mine mentioned it to me, too, because I had such a close relationship with the University of Texas. So I think this program could go in any financial firm or anyone collecting money.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Right. So basically, you understand social work. You hear about this problem, and if I'm following you, then start to house social workers in the firm to help somebody like this woman access appropriate resources to do everything possible to stay in her home and thrive.
Joslyn Berndt:
Well. So what are social workers the best at de escalating situations? Right. So I was really close to the dean, Dean Zayas at this point, and as well as Dean Cole at the University of Texas. And so I went to them, and they are entrepreneurial deans, and they loved them. They said, this is pioneering. So they were on board. So that. And there was a lot of trust because of the cap city was. And I was already on the board. So we went to work and they gave us a very talented professor, Joan. And she took foreign turns, and she just started developing best practices. It took two years to really get it off the ground and really understand how to, you know, on both ends. The business people don't understand what these social workers are doing. The social workers don't major in social work school to work at a Wall street investment bank. They just don't. Okay. You know that. But after one year in Joan's program, it was so wildly successful. We had 111 people up for eviction. Eviction. Like the letter's going to go on the door. The family's got to move. It's a hard thing to understand, but you can't live in a house for free because there's property taxes, there's school taxes. It's. The margins aren't as high as everyone thinks they are. I mean, by the time you paid the maintenance and.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Right.
Joslyn Berndt:
We wanted to have a gentle way things happen in people's lives, you know, and so instead of putting a big note on the door and making it humiliating, and then God only knows what can ensue in the family. Trauma for sure. We wanted to give them a soft landing. So 111 people were up for eviction about 35% within. We saved half. Half didn't have to move where there
Elisabeth LaMotte:
had already been a decision that they simply could not stay in their home. They were therefore able to do so because of social workers helping them access appropriate resources to Stay right some.
Joslyn Berndt:
If you had cancer, we had a way to keep you in the house if you were a former veteran. You know, social workers, they figured out different channels and we helped. And by the end of this year, half were able to stay in the house within 30 days. 30%, I believe by 90 days were completely paid up. It was phenomenal results. And the next year was better and better. And so fast forward to Covid. We have all this sort of set up and of course people had a hard time, you know, couldn't pay their rent. And the rent rebatements from the government were announced. And so our social workers were able to go access $56 million of rent rebatement for our residents during COVID And it's like completely. That's just great for everybody.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Do you think that those social workers housed in a corporate setting were even more poised to be able to understand how to access the appropriate resources? Because they were already there. Is that possible? Just already being in a corporate setting and understanding the social work principles and the resources.
Joslyn Berndt:
It wasn't just like all of a sudden you showed up and you couldn't pay your rent. Like we, we had it, we were organized so that we could go right to a resident who had a problem, say, what's the, what's the matter? You know, and they'll, they'll. And we might be able to work something out. Let me. Things happen in Covid was a special situation, but in the normal world, things happen. People lose their jobs, things happen.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
And it's obviously, I mean, part of what really struck me learning about the CARES program is it benefits everyone. I mean, most importantly, it benefits the family to stay in the home, but it benefits the property owners and managers as well. Of course. And social workers became the linchpin for that. I mean, as you describe in part of the literature of the program, it's integrating social work principles into property management. That's just extraordinary. And I agree with you. I think there's versions of this that could be replicated in so many corporate settings. How do we do that?
Joslyn Berndt:
I was lucky. Again, the executive management at Amherst never tells me no. They let me tinker with these social sciences. And it was expensive too, to bring this on and incubate it. It might not work. We had to have a few sit downs with people that didn't understand. I mean, nobody wants that. So find management that is interested in, you know, it's a win, win helping whatever it is. Say it's a car company. I mean, they don't want to repossess a car. I'm just making this up. I don't know anything about car companies, but I know that we want people to cost money to have to evict people we don't want to A, we don't want to do it, and B, it's expensive. And so I think this benefits everybody. Maybe credit card companies, too. I don't know anybody who has a collection department.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
So, Jocelyn, it's incredible that you started this CARES program. What is the status today?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, I incubated the program and our government liaison, a very talented woman called Ginger Charles, really took it by the horns and expanded it and grew it. And now we have hired actually some of our interns. And we have full time social workers that work in the firm who help with not only the evictions, but sometimes we have natural disasters too, like hurricanes and tornadoes and things like that. So I incubated it and Ginger gave it life.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Incredible. Well, thank you.
Joslyn Berndt:
Thank you.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
As we're talking about this, one thing, I'm thinking like with, with these interviews for social work talks, I often send them along to people I think will be interested. And I am going to do my very best to get this conversation heard by as many schools of social work as possible, including board members. Because more and more the social work programs, it's my understanding at universities tend to have boards that have more of a corporate structure. You know, people in business who care about social work and social services, and yet they may not have thought of this kind of innovative solution. And I want board members at social work schools to hear about your work. That just popped into my head. So what do you think?
Joslyn Berndt:
I think that's a great idea. But that's another thing that happened. Dean Zias started. I moved back to Austin from D.C. my daughter was in first grade, and Dean Zias started at that time. And Tanya Voss introduced me to him. That was a pivotal point, too. I was the first person he appointed to his board. And I said, look, he wanted to be the scholarship dean because the University of Texas had incredible research.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Incredible research. The University of Texas has perhaps the highest research funding of any. I mean, it's. I don't have it right here, but. But super high, super high research dollars. I do have it right here. It is 37.5 million research dollars. I mean, that's incredible.
Joslyn Berndt:
It's incredible. And the professors and the people doing the research was incredible. So I learned all of this and how amazing the research was. Dean White was there before Dean Zeiss, and I knew her too. And she had to approve all of my cap city kids. So Dean White set the school up beautifully for this research. Well, we. But what we didn't have was an endowment. So the endowment was $3 million or something in social workers, as, you know, have the same debt as everybody else, and they don't get paid what they should.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
This is why the boards at some of the schools have really diversified. I think it used to be that the boards of the schools were all social workers. And because of the endowment, that has changed. And that could be part of how we funnel this idea out there.
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, that's kind of where I was going. I mean, he brought me to the meeting, and I don't want this to sound disrespectful, but he wanted to be the scholarship dean. He said, look, we're losing students to Berkeley, Michigan, because we don't have any endowment. And I want to be the number one. I loved him. I love him still. I want to be the number one dean. I said, all right, I'm with you. And he took me, and they were reading poetry in the advisory meeting. And as much as that's great, I said, dean, that is not going to get us scholarships. And so we then started recruiting business people. And then the business people would go out. I would say, like, okay, it's great to be in the business school advisory board, but, you know, come to our meetings, too. And over time, we were out shaking our can, I mean, everywhere we could. And the endowment grew 600% in those six years that I was the chairperson.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Amazing.
Joslyn Berndt:
We had the great responses, too, from the president of the school, President Powers and President Fenves. Both were supportive. So you just sort of start at the top and say, look, this is what we want to do. And they couldn't have been more supportive.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I mean, in that lane, but sort of in the reverse direction. What advice do you have for social workers who are looking to be in a more corporate setting or entrepreneurial setting?
Joslyn Berndt:
It depends on what someone wants to do. I mean, a lot of times social workers don't go to the social work school to be in a corporate setting. I mean, but the ones that do are incredibly valuable, in my opinion. I mean, there's a lot of things that they could do. Think of a gap and fill it. You can. I love this idea of having a heartbeat department in that company. So that's where you celebrate employee anniversaries, and you have team building events. And if somebody is putting fish in the microwave every day and smelling up the office for the afternoon, the social Worker can kind of mediate the situation and they can even work in hr. It's unlimited.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
I agree with you. I mean, I think it is such a valuable education. And social workers are undervalued often in the marketplace. You called yourself a wannabe social worker. I would say it's more like my mom is also a social worker and she would say you are an honorary social worker, not a wannabe social worker. You're an honorary social worker. And I'm curious, how would you say starting these social work led organizations has changed, if at all, you and your approach to finance?
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, I think that my approach to finance was a little bit different anyway, coming sort of from the blue collar background. What social work really did for me was it confirmed what I always knew, that it's not just about the numbers. Finance is about the numbers, who does the deal, who makes the money. But I always felt that the human element was also very important. I think one of the famous investors, Peter Drucker, says culture eats strategy for breakfast. And it does. And what a social worker can do is bring in the human component. And it made me see risk differently. I mean, I see risk differently than my peers.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Yeah, tell us about that.
Joslyn Berndt:
Well, social work gave me language for what I always felt. If you don't have a good culture, it's going to show up on your balance sheet eventually. You know, if you don't take care of people, you're not going to have a business. I mean, growing up in Pasadena, I watched being. We didn't call it macroeconomics, but you know, I watched volatility before I knew what the word volatility was, because Houston used to live and die based on the price of oil. And what a lot of people don't know is that a high price of oil is a global tax because petrochemicals make everything or involved in anything. So whenever you have the price of oil go up, rise, everything goes up. So interest rates, all of those things that were happening on the ground level in the blue collar neighborhood. I wasn't calling it macro, global macroeconomics, but you know, it was so understanding, like it goes to the dinner table. I mean, global macroeconomics was Tuesday in Houston, Texas. In the blue collar neighborhood.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Right. Well, Houston, Texas, I believe, is the most integrated city in the US 142 nationalities.
Joslyn Berndt:
I think living in Harmony Houston is amazing.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Jocelyn Berndt, you are amazing. Thank you so much for joining Social Work Talks. We really appreciate it and I hope that we can continue this conversation over time and I hope to see more from you in the social work sphere.
Joslyn Berndt:
One, I wrote a lot of these programs up and I'm posting them to give them out for free. I think that's kind of the best way to grow the programs. So they're on my LinkedIn.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Okay, great. Well, we will put that in the show notes portion for our listeners and our viewers. And thank you so much.
Joslyn Berndt:
Oh, thanks for having me, Elisabeth . I love social workers. And thanks for everything that you all do. I see you. I take care.
Elisabeth LaMotte:
Thank you.
Quotes:
- "Social workers are some of my favorite people. They're articulate and know how to solve problems."
- "Tragedy brings out the best in humanity. We were all together solving this problem for a greater good."
- "You can't unhear that. So what are we going to do?"
- "Social work confirmed what I always knew: It's not just about the numbers."
- "If you don't have a good culture, it's going to show up on your balance sheet eventually."
- "It's a win-win helping whatever it is. Think of a gap and fill it."
- "Social workers bring in the human component. They make me see risk differently."
- "We wanted to give them a soft landing. Social workers figured out different channels."
- "Public-private partnerships can pioneer solutions. It's about integrating social work principles."
- "Social work gave me language for what I always felt. Culture eats strategy for breakfast."