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Paul Butler, Chief Operating Officer at sparks & honey, joins the program to reveal his diversity story and what leaders and organizations can learn from the current disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul shares how crises can often bring blind spots to the forefront, and shares his thoughts on how to make sure that emerging issues are truly “seen” and addressed.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- Paul’s diversity story, including the influence of his grandparents (12:30)
- Paul’s background in the entertainment industry (18:00)
- The core effort at sparks & honey (27:00)
- Why marginalized communities are even more at risk during the pandemic (33:00)
- The lingering effects of racism (37:00)
- The multiple roles that the school system plays in communities (40:00)
- The “silver lining” in the current crisis (44:00)
- The need for re-alignment and re-imagining (49:00)
- How to notice and fill organizations and societal blind spots (52:00)
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Listen in now, or read on for the transcript of our conversation:
JENNIFER BROWN: Paul, welcome to The Will To Change.
PAUL BUTLER: Thanks Jennifer. So happy to be here.
JENNIFER BROWN: So Paul you act as Chief Operating Officer of Sparks & Honey and have a long career in various business development roles and business affairs roles in a variety of media companies. And you’re also for 20 years on the board of directors for The Brotherhood-Sister Sol an evidence based nonprofit in Harlem that develops Black and Latino youth into critical thinkers and community leaders. So you are all of those things and I know that you bring all those things to bear when you practice your craft and as you think about how we’re going to flex through this crisis. But frankly a lot of the things that you and I are going to talk about today existed pre-crisis and have been perhaps exacerbated by the crisis and particularly your work with that nonprofit. So I’m really looking forward to hearing your viewpoint on how the youth that you support are coping and what we all need to be mindful of, not just for ourselves flexing through this but also for that next generation.
So I’m looking forward to hearing all that but I do want to give you an opportunity to get acquainted with our audience directly about your diversity story. Everyone has a diversity story. I don’t know if I’m that acquainted with what you would consider to be yours. So I’m really looking forward to learning a little bit more about you. Where did you come from and how did you come to be so passionate about equality and equity and your own identity and your own story and how you utilize that to create change?
PAUL BUTLER: Yeah, thanks. I mean, on a personal level I would start with a number of diversity intersections in my mom’s from the Philippines, my father’s African-American. I was raised by my mom and my grandfather. So I had a multi-generational household. I know we were talking before about just grandparents and that’s a huge part of my story. My grandfather was our primary caretaker for me and my sister. And I really grew up in his shadow. I mean, I think I’ve always been told I’m a little bit of an old soul and I think it stems in large part by having that influence and guide two generations above me while my mom was a single mom working around the clock and very present in our lives but my day to day caretaker was my grandfather.
I can just remember many, many stories. I mean, he always had a very clear passion about family. That was most of our family on my mom and my grandfather’s side were back in the Philippines. And I felt them very presently in our lives, even though I wasn’t seeing them every day. Just in the way that he talked about them. His responsibility that he felt for them to make sure that we were doing and my mom was doing everything that she could to be responsible and help support them living over there. So that was a large part of my upbringing and empathy about family. And really being mindful of your presence in the world and how we showed up.
It’s funny, he raised me to think that I was going to be a doctor. I think that was just kind of a… for any Filipinos out there-
JENNIFER BROWN: That’s so true, I was going to say.
PAUL BUTLER: … doctors, nurses, dentists, all of that as part of the lineage that we are supposed to carry forward. It wasn’t something that I was interested in at all. I didn’t have the aptitude for that but I wanted to essentially make him happy, which I think is also just a part of that generational kind of responsibility. So I said, “well, I”… he was a teacher and my grandmother was also a teacher and I wanted to teach and it was the last thing that he wanted for me, which was kind of interesting. And I think this will tie into many of the conversations we might have but just teachers have a hard time.
They’re not adequately paid for the amazing contribution that they have. And my grandfather, just having been through it himself having to raise a family of four or five and trying to do that on a teacher salary, it was just really hard. And so he wanted a different path for me and he wanted me to go into medicine. But I wanted to teach. We compromised on me going to law school and so I ended up going to law school and I think the way that I tried to preserve that passion for teaching and education was I spent my most of my time in law school other than my basic requirements in criminal justice and specifically juvenile justice. I spent a lot of time working in and out of the Boston Juvenile Court where I had an internship there, but then we started a program when I was in law school around street law and how to teach young people what to do when they get stopped by the police.
It’s just practical things that they needed to know in terms of their interaction and their rights. Some of it was legal just knowing what your rights were, but some of it was just be smart. I mean, what we talk about now we’ve seen a lot of campaigns around this and stop and frisk and the work that’s being from a social justice initiative, just to make sure that people have the talk that parents have that talk with their sons in particular. And so we did a lot of that work and that’s how I kind of connected my passion for teaching into the work with young people and did a lot of work mentoring young people, whether it’s at the Boston Boys and Girls Club or in and through my work at Boston Juvenile Court.
And my career then just kind of happened over the course of many years. So the diversity story kind of continues in that regard. I didn’t actually go into the practice of juvenile justice for reasons we can talk about. When we get into that I just saw things in the system where structural inequities that I think we’re all seeing, especially now were just amplified for me and it on some level, it just turned me personally into a different direction. And I know and appreciate so much the work that my colleagues and many who came before me do in the criminal justice system, absolutely necessary and critical. But for me, I wanted to point my energy at a different at a different point in a different place. And which is in part how I got involved with The Brotherhood-Sister Sol but my professional career took me into music and entertainment.
And I ended up just by happenstance working in a music company and a record label when I started my first job in the music industry was working for Queen Latifa as her general counsel for her record label and production company. And one thing just led to another. I ended up doing business affairs for a little while at VH1, and then ended up doing business development there. And one thing led to another in terms of my business development path, very diverse from where I thought would have been coming out of law school. And then ended up kind of at another point in leaving the entertainment space.
But my last job in the entertainment industry was working for Magic Johnson and his network Aspire. So I kind of book ended my… what I call my entertainment career with two incredibly powerful, amazing once in a lifetime experiences working for people who I continue to admire, who have done amazing work for the community. I ended up at Sparks & Honey really through our diversity network. And The Brotherhood-Sister Sol, the organization that you mentioned I’m on the board on, and one of my co-board members is Tiffany Warren. The Chief Diversity Officer of Omnicom who you know and we ended up talking about an opportunity at Sparks & Honey and one thing led to another and here I am.
JENNIFER BROWN: Oh my gosh. Wow. So much to say. First of all, I don’t know folks on The Will To Change. I don’t talk about Michelle, my partner that much, but she’s Filipina. She went to law school and made a deal with her parents that it would only be social justice law if they were going to make her do that. She did not want to be a doctor or a nurse even though four of her sisters are medical professionals. So it’s just… and the cultural values of that culture, which I’ve had kind of a front seat with for the last 20 years, which we’ve been together for. I really resonate with everything you said about the intergenerational communications. And the ways that Filipino parents and grandparents guide and what they expect. And then for those of us like Michelle who have a commitment to social justice, it may not be the language that our family members understand, but she definitely kind of made the same choice and ended up advocating for reproductive rights, environmental justice in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
And that’s actually where we met because we both worked in nonprofits in Jamaica Plain in Roxbury so anyway, it’s just, we met as activists and I’m so, I’m so glad you made that compromise as well. And clearly you’ve carried your grandfather’s values forward and you do teach, I’m sure constantly much of your commitment and your knowledge and your identity and your experiences weave through everything you do. And clearly with Sparks & Honey, I see the agency covering some topics that are very near and dear to my heart. And that’s why I’m involved. Whether it’s the redefinition of masculinity, for example, or the global pandemics. I’m sure you’ve covered the rise of hate.
PAUL BUTLER: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
JENNIFER BROWN: And in fact, you were working on the hate briefings that you all did I think, did you focus like a week’s worth of programming on it? I think recently before the pandemic?
PAUL BUTLER: Yeah. That was before the pandemic. In our conversations with other members of the advisory board just trying to… we got to this point in this place where given what we’ve seen in particular over the last few years and the rise of polarization and the manifestation and on some level resurgence of hate in many different forms: sexism and misogyny, MeToo and the rise of antisemitism, the acceptance of public displays of hate. There was just this confluence of many different factors that gave all of us concern. And I think part of the effort here is to really understand what are the partnership models between government policy, corporate businesses and stakeholders where we can take on this large global existential crisis of the resurgence, and on a very concerning level, the acceptance of hate as a norm and how do we disrupt that?
What can we do together as a community to tackle that issue and to try and solve it and disrupt it and looking at different models where that kind of partnership across what we call the horizontal looking at different industries and bringing different skill sets like we have on the advisory board together to think about that in the collective and try to solve for that. That’s I think where we want it to begin and that’s the work that we’re continuing to do and we’ll keep doing. And we want to involve our clients in that because obviously they are a part of culture very much so. They have access and audience to consumers and people who are on the front lines of really communications. And that’s I think going to be a big piece of the puzzle. And so that’s something that we’re working on and we’re developing some more forums for the advisory board and other partners to really join in that conversation and bring all of these expertise together.
JENNIFER BROWN: Oh my gosh. I can’t wait to be hopefully a part of those conversations. It’s the interdisciplinary nature of what Sparks & Honey pulls together that I find so sort of mind expanding, heart expanding and also the solutions we’re going to need to come up with coming out of, particularly this crisis we’re living through, are going to need to be intersectional and interdisciplinary and public and private partnership. And we’re, we’re going to need to figure out a new way of being together that I think takes much, much, much better and different care and addresses the structural inequities, right? Because we are feeling our connections with each other now and the sort of links in the chain more than ever. I think… well, some of us are I hope, and I hope more of us kind of come to that realization through this experience that there’s so much we’re learning that’s shocking to us right now that’s not shocking to other people because it is their daily life.
And I think that it is humbling. It is maddening for some of us who’ve been looking at diversity and inclusion and equity issues, it’s always been there, but it’s been the struggle of bringing that to the fore and ensuring that people are tuning into that reality that’s being experienced by so many. It’s that you and I talked about the notion of tuning. I asked you what are you advising the big brands that are coming to you in this time? Relying on the data and the analysis of Sparks & Honey and saying, “So what do we do now? How can we prepare ourselves for what’s going to unfold?” And you characterize it as a retuning you talked about consumer, customer, employee sentiment, you talked about the shifts that are going to happen and all the feelings that are being experienced, the fears and the optimism, right?
JENNIFER BROWN: There’s sort of a gamut of thing and designing orgs around that requires a tremendous emotional quotient, I think, on the part of companies that frankly sometimes haven’t been so emotionally astute. And frankly haven’t always been very equitably minded. Right? And so, and then we’ve got the younger generation of talent coming in where I hope and pray that they represent the consciousness, the conscience of business, right? Coming in to say, “We matter, I matter, all matter.” And it’s not going to be okay anymore for brands to just steam roll over and say, “Well, the bottom line, right? Shareholders.” That’s it. Now we’re talking about stakeholder capitalism. And who is capitalism harmful to? I mean, you and I have lived in this conversation but you and I also… the reason I like you so much and appreciate your thought leadership, Paul, is we hold all of it together.
We don’t create an us and them. We actually believe that business can be an enabler of positive change. And it actually needs to be because there’s so much power that lives in these brands and in these massive multinational companies and what they do really matters. And what they do is being watched. And I think they’re going to come through this understanding that they need to play a different role in the world. And I wondered if you agreed with that and I know I asked a lot of things in that question, but I’d love to hear your reactions.
PAUL BUTLER: I think you’re absolutely right on so many levels. I mean just as a preface for your listeners a part of what we do at Sparks & Honey and the core effort is to really look at culture and to bring structure to what is unstructured. And so part of that work is done in our day to day process of how we execute the work and what we do in our daily culture briefings but it’s also in critically giving a common language. Going back to that point about all of the different stakeholders that need to come together in order for those stakeholders to really be effective and make impact, they have to share a language around change. And one of the things that we’ve done is provided an entire taxonomy around what cultural change is happening today and what will be happening in the future.
And so as you and I carry on this conversation, I’ll throw in some of that taxonomy, but the one that kind of immediately jumps out, picking up on your last point is the moral imperative. And businesses have to have a tune and be attuned to the moral imperative: one, that their businesses have to play a role in. But in the present in this moment of crisis which is really where we are right now, but eventually we’re going to move beyond this crisis into some other state of being where we are moving into some kind of new normal or some kind of adjustment to that normal. And then eventually we’re all going to be back into some kind of reset and resettling. But through that entire process, I think businesses are going to re-examine and be confronted with the moral imperative of their business on some level.
And that’s going to translate and trickle down through the organization in terms of what they’re saying to their audience and what they’re saying to consumers, what they’re actually doing as a responsible organization, as a responsible business in the world. Not just in response to crisis, in their own endeavors to grow their business and be successful businesses. I think what we will see happen over the next few months and we’re already starting to see in this moment of crisis, is that businesses are really thinking about that. How do I play a role right now in a responsible way that is empathetic, that is human, whether it’s for my workforce and what I do in response to their crisis and their needs of the moment and what do I do long-term? And that’s, I think the work that one, we’re definitely helping our clients, right now answer and ask the right questions along that journey.
But I think it’s something that we all need to be engaged in and all bring our expertise to that table so we can have that conversation. And I mean, this is the work in part of diversity is to really be innovative in the way that talent and consumers are considered in that moral imperative question. And I think where we’ll go and where we see really a need is for all experts and people to bring the thinking that may help fill in blind spots as we ask those questions and find solutions to those questions. And I think ultimately that’s what diversity in the work of diversity inclusion has always done, is to help uncover those blind spots. Maybe introduce voices that have not been at the table in order to introduce issues that have never been considered. And I think if ever there was a time where we are now being aware and now made aware of the things that have not been considered before, I think we’re seeing that now more than ever.
JENNIFER BROWN: Hmm. I know I’ve been thinking of it as kind of hyper growth and hyper learning right now that if we choose to see it and I’m not sure how we can not choose to see it because it’s everywhere, it is not impacting communities the same. Right? The whole kind of… I think it’s roundly disparaged in social media. Say this is sort of this equal opportunity crisis because it hasn’t been some of us are enjoying relatively lots more comfort and resources and digital access and right now than others. And I wanted you to talk about through the lens of the nonprofit you’re a part of and your work for 20 years with Black and Latino youth and just young people in general and the educational system because I know you’re really deep into that work.
You and I were talking about the fact that already pre-crisis, so many were lagging behind and now that there will be this period of falling further behind six to nine months in the best case scenario and the compounding effect of school being interrupted, of tech being interrupted, of access, of stress, mental health, all the impacts that are felt by certain communities more intensely. And I know that that’s been on your heart and mind a lot. So, how would you describe that part of the crisis to those of us who may not be living it directly? And I guess I’d love to hear your analysis about how do we play catch up when those who were already tenuously thriving are going to experience a compounding effect?
PAUL BUTLER: Yeah, it’s something that I’ve been just concerned about as I’ve been watching the news and on some level even, especially this past week just seeing more of the reporting around the embedded structural inequities that we’ve seen in our culture and how marginalized communities are even more susceptible to the impact of this crisis. And for me The Brotherhood-Sister Sol, I came to them 20 years ago and immediately just was attracted to the model of the organization, which is to really spend deep amount of time providing holistic services. And I think that’s an important part of our work to really think about the person in their complete self. Not just education but what is happening in the community around them?
What is their family life like? What are their needs in terms of learning and education? And I think the biggest concern that I have right now in this moment as an example, we know that many schools are going to be closed for the rest of the school year and even summer programming could be suspended. And when you have young people in many cases, Black and Brown communities in particular, where they were already behind in terms of their educational attainment. So reading at an eighth grade level, when you’re a senior in high school as an example, and then losing six to nine months so already being behind. And then on top of that, losing six to nine months of education and an opportunity to catch up,that has not just an impact in the moment of what is lost in that school year.
But that has a compounding effect on their long-term opportunities because as we see, education is in many ways, and not in every way, but in many ways is a stepping stone to socioeconomic mobility. And that being hampered and stunted in the moment, that it doesn’t just have an impact in the now it has an impact on the future. And I don’t think we have yet the system in place or the data to track that kind of lingering impact but I think there are potential models that we’ve had in the past if we ask the right question and if we take that moral imperative in that the importance of looking at these issues to heart. And so we know that previous redlining in the housing crisis in housing in general has had long-term effects in terms of building wealth for marginalized communities.
That kind of racism that has had a lingering effect in generations over time in their ability to grow wealth is a very real structural issue that we have not confronted and have not solved for. And now we’re going to be adding more to that list. And I think that we now as people in this culture as responsible and caring and mindful and thoughtful individuals have to be asking these questions and really think about what do people need? We are seeing now the impact and the gaps that have been exposed in the systems for access to technology on one level. We immediately in a matter of days went from being in a school building to being educated from home and immediately tried to ramp up these systems where people could learn remotely and online, but that only works if you have a computer and if you have internet access.
And that gap is something that we have to solve for the future. At The Brotherhood-Sister Sol for example, we simply purchased and distributed laptops and hotspots to the members who didn’t have. We were able to do that but not every community based organization can do that. And certainly we can’t do that to meet the entire need of the community that we serve. I mean, we’re able to do that for some. School was the place where young people got food. That was where they ate breakfast, where they ate lunch so what happens then? Some schools have continued to provide food, which I think is great, but the structural system that allows young people to only have access to healthy meals when they’re in school and not have access to that at home or in other community forums and spaces.
That’s something that we all have to wrestle with and we have to address. Again, The Brotherhood-Sister Sol was able to provide meals and has provided almost 5,000 meals since the beginning of the crisis, at least here in New York. That again is something that we feel responsible for. But it raises larger questions about how we are building a more humane society where access to the basic human needs are met not only by organizations but also by corporations, by government. And this is I think something that we have to wrestle with. We talk a lot about at Sparks & Honey about building culture centric organizations. And that I think is the long-term effort that we have to be engaged in. Culture centric… not just pop culture. That’s not what we’re talking about.
We’re talking about really building systems and building data systems, building intelligence, and building a vocabulary that recognizes, and going back to the word you used earlier, Jennifer, that is tuned to culture and to the needs of culture. And can calibrate and adjust to human needs, human anxieties, human fears, and can also calibrate to new opportunities and innovation. And I think that ultimately is the work that we all need to do. Whether you’re a business, whether you’re a school system, whether you’re a local government. And I think we’re seeing it play out so much today. The need for a broader recognition of all of the things that come in the effort of really making a better place in the world.
JENNIFER BROWN: Hmm. So would you say you’re optimistic about this opening we have, I think to embed inclusiveness into mindsets going forward out of this? And I guess I might say do you think… what will it take for these big organizations that have been very bottom line focused to shift their value set and be more sort of morally involved and see business through that lens? I mean, are you at the base like optimistic about that and what is going to take for us as influencers to ensure that that is being paid attention to? That it’s valueness and it’s worthiness is not only seen but taken seriously and becomes a new business as usual going forward? Do you believe that that’s what’s going to happen? And I guess maybe what are the countervailing forces against that happening that we need to be aware of?
PAUL BUTLER: Yeah, I think… to be honest I don’t know yet if I’m totally optimistic. I do see opportunities and I do see some really, really good work being done. I’m actually sitting here at my desk just to be totally transparent and in this moment I’m looking at a post-it in front of me that has a quote from another one of your advisory board members, your co-advisory board members, Jonathan Jackson, who sat on one of our briefings last week. And he said in the briefing it’s possible to be visible and unseen. And that just stuck with me and kind of helps me answer this question that you’re asking. I do think that we are making some of the questions visible.
I think just based on what we’ve seen over the last few weeks, clients that have reached out to us about their business and what questions do they need to be asking and what did they need to be in tune with from a consumer perspective or from an audience perspective? They are asking those questions and they’re looking to us to help them find those solutions, which we’re working hard to do, but they’re asking about what did they need to adjust in their purpose? What do they need to adjust in their products and services? What do they need to adjust and calibrate to in terms of their messaging and communications?
So I think we are making some of these issues visible by asking these questions. And then same thing with The Brotherhood-Sister Sol, we are working hard and we have always been working hard to solve some of these structural inequities. Unfortunately in the last 20 years we haven’t eliminated them but the work continues. So I’m optimistic about that because I do think that we are satisfying on a very human level, some of the basic needs and forcing people to ask these questions and be confronted with these issues around the structural inequities. And so ultimately going back to that quote from Jonathan I think that the unseen will… my hope is that the unseen will be seen by the effort that we’re all engaging in now.
And I think on some silver lining in this crisis that we will all be better at asking the right questions to make sure that we are addressing some of the gaps that we have as a society at large and culturally, and this is where I think the work of a diversity and inclusion expert is going to be most important and most critical in organizations that are thinking about any kind of roll back on diversity inclusion initiatives. Really they need to rethink that strategy because I think this comes down to having more diverse voices. And this is something we push at Sparks & Honey, an openness meaning bring in as much thought leadership as you can, from experts like you, from people who are studying at a very deep level in deep verticals.
One particular issue that is connected to all of these other issues. That’s the power of the advisory board for example, is we pull in experts from across different industries and thought leadership initiatives. And I think that’s in part what diversity is meant to do, is to bring as much thinking and critical thinking to the table in order to get to the right question, to expose the things that have historically been a non-visible and ask the right questions. And it’s only through that kind of dialogue will you ultimately get to a better place and make sure that nothing or as little gets missed as possible. And I think for me, I am hopeful and at least to see some indication that we as a group collectively in this effort, whether it’s business, whether it’s community based organizations that we are now even more so introduced to each other in this crisis and see our interconnectedness.
As you mentioned at the beginning of our interview here that we have to be working together on these issues that we are so much more interconnected than we thought we were. Unfortunately it took something like this to get us there. And hopefully we’ll be more prepared if something like this, God forbid, happens again, but even if it doesn’t, we will be better connected and more aware of our interdependence and more aware of the need for exposing those gaps and making sure those blind spots get covered.
JENNIFER BROWN: So there’s so much in there. Oh goodness me. You know what I love that you just said on the end there is, we’re being introduced to each other. It’s like we didn’t really know each other. Right? And that depth of connection that’s happening right now not through choice, honestly with so many people, is going to lead, I hope through to deeper trust to the collaboration that’s possible between trusting people who are going after a task together but literally there’s so many barriers that have come down in this environment that I’m seeing a lot of potential for getting to know our full selves in a different way, showing our full selves in a different way and so effectively. And also in getting introduced to communities of identity that have been visible but not seen to the quote you shared.
And how can we not just see but hear and remember and how can we then act upon what we’re seeing, right? That’s where the rubber is going to hit the road. It’s very reminiscent of what we say in diversity all the time. Diversity is being asked to the dance,inclusion is being asked to dance, right? And burst to dance is that collaboration, you’re talking about that stakeholders around a table of co-creating a future that includes all of us that is truly intersectional in everything we do. We have a huge opportunity to do that right now because there is such a vacuum in terms of what do we do next? There is so much possible right now that we could rewrite and introduce our true selves and our true experiences to each other. And then you said to realize our interconnectedness and to build something much better than what we’ve had in the past. I know that that’s what you and I deeply want is to address these things. And in a weird way, we have the wind at our back right now.
PAUL BUTLER: Yeah. You look at… and we talk a lot at Sparks & Honey about disruption. And then this is what’s happening right now. We as a culture, as a society are being disrupted and part of the… it’s not just disruption and then it ends there. And disruption also creates opportunities for realignment and re-prioritization and re-imagining. And I think that if we have to be hopeful, and we should, that is an opportunity for us in this crisis to take this disruption and then turn it into something. So in the case of realignment and again, going back to the work of diversity and inclusion, a lot of that work includes identifying the appropriate strategic partners that are going to help the business grow over time or identifying the right talent and where to find the right talent that is going to add value to an organization.
And that kind of alignment and realignment I think is an opportunity now as well and is to really think about who do we need to partner with? Who is going to help us fill those blind spots? Are there community organizations that are working at a different level and in a deep level like The Brotherhood-Sister Sol that can help us better understand the things that we don’t see about the consumers and our audience, the people who are using our products and services. And what they actually need and how we might not be serving them at all in a way that we thought we were and I think that is, in part an answer to your question about being optimistic instead, if we can take this opportunity in this moment of disruption and this real crisis that we’re in and really use it as an opportunity to redefine how we work and realign who we work with and why we’re doing what we’re doing.
I think that is where the hope comes in and again, hopefully we won’t be in this place again where we have to think about that in this context. And if it doesn’t, we will still be in a much better place because we will be more mindful of the way that we are interconnected.
JENNIFER BROWN: Mm. I love that. Things will shift. We will be different coming out of this and I think the we can be all of us, but I think all of the stakeholders are shifting and we have a real opportunity to tackle this differently. Paul, this has been such a beautiful framing of what we could do with this crisis. What we could create that would be more inclusive. And I will plan on giving your nonprofit a shout out in our call notes and encourage people to support such an amazing organization and thank you for sharing more about your work there. And I hope that everybody learns a lot from this episode and also follows the work of Sparks & Honey where literally all of their job is to talk about these kinds of things all day long and it sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? It’s incredible.
PAUL BUTLER: And to provide solutions, I mean, working hard to find solutions and work with our partners to find solutions but this has been great Jennifer. Thanks so much for inviting me on.
JENNIFER BROWN: You are so welcome, Paul. And thank you for being you and for so vulnerably sharing with us today about what you see for the future and your own story too. And yeah, I hope people will see you on camera in the future maybe at a briefing.
PAUL BUTLER: We will work on that.
JENNIFER BROWN: Need to do it. Thank you, Paul.
PAUL BUTLER: Thanks so much.
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