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Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It is Friday, May 30th.

My name is Olivia Patterson, and I am honored to introduce today's forum featuring Dan Moulthrop throughout CEO of the City Club and Jeffrey Kay Patterson, CEO and Safety director of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.

Today's conversation is part of the City Club's Local Hero series, as well as the annual forum on the leaders for the greater good.

Today, we are switching out the typical city Club format.

Usually when Dan is on stage, he takes more of a back seat while moderating a conversation.

But today, and by special request of the family who created the annual leadership for the Greater Good forum, our two guests will be in conversation with each other this afternoon.

We have the perfect political privilege of learning what inclusive and responsive leadership means from both Dan and Jeffrey.

Their motto of has led the City Club as its CEO since 2013.

His tenure has been recognized not only for a successful move to Playhouse Square, but perhaps more importantly, a steady commitment to democracy and increasing the accessibility of civil civic dialog in a time when our country needs it most.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Kay Patterson was appointed CEO of Oh my Gosh, of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, or CMJ in 2012.

CMJ is the first charter housing authority in the nation.

CAMH is also the seventh largest housing authority in the country, serving nearly 50,000 people across Cuyahoga County.

Jeffrey brings over 30 years of dedicated service to the residents of Cuyahoga County as the steadily replaces, rebuild, redeveloped and reimagined its affordable housing stock.

Jeffrey Patterson has led an ongoing process of neighborhood and resume engagement, which we will hear about shortly.

If you have a question during the second half of the forum, you can text it to 3305415794 and the City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Members and friends of the City of the City Club of Cleveland.

Please join me in welcoming Dear Martha and my father, Jeffrey Kay Patterson, eager to get on and you get to go.

I'm asking you.

All right.

I, I, I love how she waited till the very end for the big reveal.

That was great.

Olivia.

Congratulations.

Say you so much.

You feeling proud, too?

Proud, Nancy.

Yeah.

Okay.

If you can't see, Jeff's got a couple of tears in his eyes.

Or it's just dusty up here.

Dusty?

I mean, you guys need to dust.

Yeah, we do.

We do See new buildings.

Shouldn't be this way.

No, exactly.

Exactly.

I'll talk to my people.

So thank you for doing this with me, Jeffrey.

And I want to acknowledge the it's been mentioned a couple of times that I was asked by our you know, by some major donors to to do it to do this.

And I really appreciate you doing this, this with me.

I feel a little awkward about it.

And so I want to start with that vulnerability because that's not going to help.

You know, I I'll probably not.

I've been giving a lot of questions for you to to attack you.

Which defense?

I'm ready.

Okay, let's go.

Let's go.

But I wanted to start with this concept of leadership for the greater good.

What does that mean to you?

It means, you know, just bringing people together, trying to find the ways to do the things that we need to do to benefit the community as a whole.

And that's what we try to do.

We try to work together.

I mean, I look around this room and I'm just so proud that there are so many partners that are here.

Every person in this room in one way or another has had a part in what CAMH does and what it does for our residents.

So I'm just very happy about that.

Yeah, You know, as we get started, you're reminding me to like, there's a whole bunch of people in this room that that deserve thanks.

And many of them know who they are and how they've contributed one way or another to the success of your organization or mine.

Do want to mention our board chair, Mark Ross.

Thank you, Mark, for being here today and for your support of everything that we do.

And there's many in the room too, who have contributed time and and, and their and made financial contributions.

And when I think about this concept of leadership for the greater good, I mean, and you talk about bringing people together.

I mean, that's kind of what it is, right?

Like bringing we we're like these vessels for the goals that we and the aspirations that we all have for the community and, you know, sometimes it's really clear what that means and sometimes it's not so clear, but you just kind of find your way, right.

Regardless and hope that the people who are who are supporting you as well will, will, will do so in a way that says like, hey, this is this is the direction that I think you should go.

What do you think?

Or this is the direction we think you should go.

Sometimes those interests are competing, though, Jeff, like, you know, how do you manage that, those competing interests, You do the best you can with it.

I mean, sometimes I think when you develop a rapport with people, you work hard with them, you try to be direct with them and you try to be transparent with them.

A lot of times people can accept that.

I got nine things that I'm looking at, ten things that I'm looking for.

Nine of them we're aligned on one of them or not.

If those nine are going to benefit the overall good, most people can eventually get to the point where they can get there and be able to move on other times, you know, and it's not always pretty.

I mean, when I look at you and the organization that you're responsible for and the different types of people that you bring into this forum, I sit there in amazement and say, Wow, how do you manage all of those different dynamics?

Because sometimes you guys are bringing in people that some folks just don't particularly want to hear from.

You mean like earlier this week?

I'm not saying any names or anything like that.

I'm just saying that you bring people in sometimes to have different opinions from others.

How do you manage dealing with that and making sure that there is a fair and balanced representation?

Because it's not just about singing to the choir.

It's also making sure that people get a chance to hear different things and come up with their own understandings.

You know, for us.

Jeff it comes down.

There's some, you know, some basic values and principles that it comes down to.

And we in these kinds of leadership roles, right?

It's not it's not just what we want to do, right.

What us as individual leaders might want to do, but we have this debt that we owe to the institution that we're privileged to lead.

Right.

You have all of these legacy buildings and legacy and families who have who have been, you know, relied on CMHC for generations sometimes.

And we have this community for us, this 112 years of people relying on the city club to stand for freedom of speech, to be the place where they can hear from people who may who they may agree with, but also hear from people who are going to we're going to challenge those beliefs that they hold.

And because that whole tension between what we believe and what others believe is kind of at the heart of democracy and the heart of a strong democracy.

So if we put a, you know, someone on the stage who's going to attract 50 protesters outside, as we as we did this spring, a couple of times, that that, you know, I, I know that we're do that when we do that, that's part of what we're supposed to do, because that's what the institution requires of us.

And and what the community requires of us.

Even if individual members of the community get very upset with us for for doing that.

So it's I mean, I think it's relying on those on those core values of the institution, but then also the core personal values of kind of of empathy and and and understanding and being committed to the project of building bridges across difference.

So I like the textbook answer, but let's go a little bit deeper.

Okay?

Okay.

So when you go home at night after one of those rough days where you've had these protesters and things like that, do you feel rewarded that, hey, you know what, I did the right thing or are you kind of scratching, you know, the top of your head?

Maybe I kind of went left on that one.

Oh, there's definitely a lot of doubt for sure.

I mean, like, don't you find that, like in the middle of the hardest things, like you're, you know what?

It either keeps you up at night or wakes you up in the middle of the night.

That would mean that I go to sleep, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, there's there's definitely doubt.

And I often feel like there's just always, you know, you know, you know where your North Star is.

We try to keep sight of your North Star, but it's not a direct line, right?

It's not like, you know, it's not like Peter Pan.

You just, like, set off and, you know, you're tacking constantly left and right, left, like trying to find your way there because and and trying to avoid overcorrect.

I mean, you've got this is an interesting I'm going to go metaphor.

Second, this is interesting.

Like, I keep trying to ask you questions.

You're like, no, let me ask you a question.

But but how do you let me let me do this for a second, though.

When you are you've had some really difficult projects in your tenure since 2012, in the in your tenure in the leadership role.

Just tell us a story about particularly as you've been transforming CMHC facilities, tearing down structures that people have lived in and relied on for years.

And and as you're preparing to do that, convincing them like, no, the future is definitely going to be better.

Like, talk about that for a second.

I'll go back to a development that we did hum before we get to our Woodhill project and one of our commissioners, Miss Nating here was at that site and was at those meetings.

You know, we were doing a redevelopment for what is now Heritage View, but it's called Garden Valley.

It was called Garden Valley at the time and I remember we would go out to meetings and things like that and talk about, you know, redevelopment.

And we went from having meetings with one or two people to having meetings with 20 people to having meetings with 35, 40 people to have a meetings with a hundred people, to getting to the point where we had 400 something people in a room saying, okay, this looks like it's really going to happen.

And I think when you're able to do that and you're able to establish that credibility, it puts you in a position to, as you do the next project, like we came up to do, the Woodhill choice Neighborhood Project, and all of a sudden you get people say, Yeah, okay, we saw what went down over at Heritage.

You, we like this.

We don't like that.

We think this is good.

We don't want that.

But we we know you got to do this.

We know you got to do that.

And it worked well.

And I think one of the things that we started at the time when we did Garden Valley, we reached out and partnered with the community.

So at the time, time Travel, who's now with St Luke's, was a part of Bird and Pei was Lean Bird Bell Car, and Tim and I had many conversations about how we could make sure that while the work was being done on CMHC property, it benefited the community as a whole and we became partners in how we wanted to make sure that this development met not only the needs of the CMH residents, but also met the needs of the community in the work that he was doing over there at that time also benefited the residents of CMH.

So you take that model and then you move to another location and you begin to build on those types of things.

And I think that's something that we've been doing.

We haven't perfected it, but it's always something for us to be able to continue to strive for.

When you first took over in 2012, did you think you were ready?

No, no, no.

Not not by a long shot.

You know, sometimes you can be in a role of being the number two quarterback and just be really comfortable and say, Hey, I don't when everyone else says break a leg.

I'm not saying break a leg.

I'm say stay healthy.

But then you get that opportunity and you want to be able to continue to contribute.

And I think that for me, I wasn't going to shy away from the moment.

I wasn't going to let things deter me.

And I had good people around me at that time.

I had a core group of people who came and put their arm on my shoulders, say, Hey, look, Jeff, we can do this, we can do this and that, you can do this, we can do this.

And people who were at CAMH at that time, as well as people in the community, people who I've worked with in the past, people who had known, the residents who had established a rapport with Ms.. Davis, who was the president of our Progressive Action Council and the leader of our resident organization, said, you know, Hey, Mr. Parson, we got you.

And we've been going well ever since.

But it's weird when you first get into the role, right?

You like like there's so many things that you you thought you knew and you thought you understood and then you write Well, they always say it's lonely at the top, so to speak.

And I'm not necessarily saying that, you know, you're at this peak, but everyone has recommendations.

Oh, yeah, everyone has thoughts, everyone has strategies of what you should do, but then has that moment where everybody leaves the room and it's just you and everyone's looking at you saying, okay, what are we going to do?

That's when you realize the difference.

That's when you realize what leadership is all about.

And being around it and being in other roles.

You could get a picture of that.

You could get a feel for that.

But it's never the same as it being you as it being, he said.

She said, You're responsible and people looking to you.

And so I think, you know, it takes time for people to adjust to that.

You develop sometimes a kind of hardness that sometimes people may not like because sometimes you're like, Look, I know I'm not going to make you happy, but I got one of these questions with you, but I got 55,000 others with everybody else.

I'm done here.

I got to get over here.

Come back next time.

You may win that one.

This one is not because I'm not making decisions based on what you know.

I'm making decisions based on what I know.

And as a leader of an organization or having that level of responsibility, there are just simply some things that I may know that you may not know it.

Had you known those things, you say, Oh, I understand why you did that now, but sometimes you can't share all of those things, but you have to have people around you.

They have the coffin, it's in you, they have the support of you.

They say, You know what?

Look, I know nine times out of ten, if this person is going to be able it's trying to go down the right path.

I'm going to ride with them on this.

And if I see that as something is wrong, we'll deal with it then.

But I'm going to give that person the benefit of the doubt.

And if you are able to do that and your people are able to do that, it's amazing the things that I think you can accomplish.

Did you did you notice ice flipping it all on me or.

Oh, it'll come back.

But I'm just, you know, sometimes when I talk to young, young professionals and and or high school students, I have a couple of high school students at home and one left, I guess I should say.

But and we talk about leadership.

I think that sometimes people think that that leaders there's some sort of specific training.

Right.

People and people know they're going to be leaders.

Right.

And I never experienced it that way.

I never thought I was going to be in leadership roles until suddenly I was like, oh, I guess I'm the leader here.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, did you did you know you wanted to lead an organization?

Did you come to see them and be like, one day I'm going to lead this thing?

No, actually, I came to CMH to be a director, which is?

Which is what?

I was at the city of Cleveland before I started.

And I was thinking it, you know, I was only going to be there for a short period of time and I was going to go off and continue my career doing human resources and labor relations.

But that wasn't what was in God's plan for me.

And I'm not going to go against what his plan is.

But I think when you look at it, some times and you try to figure out, well, how do leaders grow, how do the best leaders are not necessarily the leaders that are standing up in front saying, me, me, me, me, me.

The best leaders are the ones that everyone else has seen of their him, her, him, her, him, her.

Because those are the ones that you want out in front because they're not thinking about themselves.

They're not thinking about promoting their sales and being recognized.

They're out there doing what needs to be done and all that other stuff will take care of itself.

All the the accolades and all the other stuff that comes with being humble and being responsible and put in the people and put in the work that you're doing first.

And I think, you know, we have a lot of people within this community have been doing a lot of work that I think, you know, practice that I but I do think it is very difficult sometimes, you know, when you have the different trainings and things like that, that everyone says, okay, I took these six trainings and now I'm ready to be a leader.

Well, you have to Leadership is something you have to experience and you get better at it as time goes or you if you don't get better at it, you just beginning to accept what you are and what you're capable of.

If you're lucky enough to be in it that long.

Yeah, I was.

I was talking to a young person who's doing a nonprofit leadership course at Case Western Reserve University, and she was telling me about the nonprofit law class she was taking.

I was like, Oh, I've never taken a class like that.

And about the budgeting, the finance, the nonprofit finance class that she's taken and and my board chairs over here being like, he could use that.

And yeah, I've never taken that class either.

But and so it's just it is like the experience of being a leader.

There's very there's very little there's some things that can prepare you for it along the way.

Strangely.

Like I think the thing that prepared me both best for leadership roles and it actually is isn't strange at all.

How many how many people in this room have ever been a classroom teacher?

You know?

Right.

Right.

It's probably the best leadership training there is, particularly if you are teaching high school freshman or inmates at a county jail, which is where I first started teaching, maintaining, being able to to maintain the people like maintain a room, hold space in a room of of 30 high school freshmen or 60 county jail inmates and keep people focused on like a single like a single set of issues and topics is is one of those things.

It's like it's not easy.

There's a bunch of people trying to distract you, trying to get you off your game.

And but the success can be pretty clearly defined in that in that space for teaching.

What is what is your leadership moment?

What is the moment that you felt, wow, I'm I'm really doing this in any position that you've had.

It was it I'm I mean, probably the the the most satisfying moment was when we opened the doors here at this new facility in September of 23, because this was like just this major project, major fundraising.

Some folks in the room were really critical to that success.

And and this was, you know, I said before about what we owe the institutions that we serve, and I felt like this was something, something as a leader we could create for this institution and give the community back a an almost a new and improved version of the City Club of Cleveland that that welcome is able to welcome more people, is more transparent, is more accessible, is more open and available and visible.

So that's probably that's probably the moment where, like, I'm really doing this and it's working.

There is a moment like mid COVID or early COVID, right?

That's when like when you feel the entire weight of an organization and all of its payroll and and everything and you're not sure.

And it felt like I mean, this this moment in time five years ago, way after George Floyd was murdered and we were still in the midst of COVID, I mean, it kind of felt like the world could like like just was never going to come back to what it had been.

And and those were those were heavy.

Those were really like heavy moments where it's like, yeah, I'm doing this and I'm more or less alone.

Like, I can call like some other folks who are going through the same thing again called Joe Semper Men.

And you know, at first and we can provide each other with a little moral support about how hard it is to lead small nonprofit organizations in the middle of this economic catastrophe.

But neither of us have really a solution to it.

Right.

I remember we had one of the organizations that I'm a part of the Council of Large Public Housing Authority.

So we started doing like weekly Zoom meetings and we would call have the leaders from across the country just on Zoom, and we'd all talk about what we were doing, how we were approaching it, what we were encountering.

And that's something that's carried through after COVID, because I think sometimes you can feel that you're the only one that's going through something.

And I think you talk about vulnerability a little bit earlier.

I think sometimes it's okay to be a little bit vulnerable, to be able to let people know, hey, you know, this person does really care or this person doesn't really know everything.

And I think through COVID leaders around here to kind of expose that to, okay, I don't really know what the answer is either.

I'm sitting you're sitting in the office and it's was at 1:00.

The governor would do that and Dr. Acton would do those.

The why do I I'm sorry, Governor, why I would do the the speech and you just sit there and you just be in amazement like, oh, my God, Wow.

What, what?

What's going on?

What do we do?

How do we go?

How do we take this information and do it?

And everyone's out in the hall waiting.

Okay.

What they say, I mean, that was something that no leadership training, no classes, no nothing could do.

But you find yourself saying, okay, we get these challenges, how can we go?

So need to reach out to Kristen over at the food bank to say, okay, how can we provide, you know, things to residents need looking at other partners that are out there to find ways to make that level of connection, That's a that's something that, again, is just not textbook and that's something that it's easy for everybody to get their arms around.

Who are your models?

Who are your leadership models?

I start with my dad.

Yeah, my dad worked for the post office as a mail handler for 30 years.

He worked he had a laboring job, but he wore a shirt and tie.

Ha.

So shoes every day to work because he felt that that's how he wanted to present himself.

And he taught me that you don't need a title to lead.

A real leader can lead wherever they are.

So, I mean, there are a lot of people who I've come encounter with that.

I've learned a lot of things from, you know, I started off working in Mayor Voinovich, his office as an intern.

You know, I work, you know, in a white administration for about 13 years and left as director of personnel.

You know, I had the opportunity to come to CMH.

I work with Terry Hamilton Brown.

I work with, you know, Mayor Jackson and the folks that he had over there.

There are so many different people that you don't I don't just look at one person and say, hey, that's the person.

What I do is look at the different styles and different approaches that people have and try to utilize some of those different situations.

And I mean some of those different approaches in the scenarios that I may have to deal with.

Every situation does not require or a Jeff approach to it.

So sometimes I have to masquerade myself as someone else and approach it in the way that they would do it, because maybe the way that I would normally do it may not be the best approach, especially given the different types of individuals that you're working with.

I, like I said, that that not every situation needs a Jeff approach.

I think about most of them do.

I. I don't know if I covered I yeah we'll be doing a masterclass later.

I think about it you know different moments require different things of leaders, right?

Sometimes you have to be the decision maker.

Sometimes you have to be the collaborator.

Sometimes you have to be the convener.

And you know, sometimes sometimes you have to be the listener and the quiet leader, right?

It's it's it's really you can't always just like, call people together and say, this is what we're doing, right?

There's just so many different ways that we are required to to lead.

And it really is sort of what does this group of people need for me?

What does this organization need for me?

What does this moment require of me?

And it's really it is it changes.

It's never the same as we did our Woodhill Choice neighborhood application.

And the first time we applied, we didn't get it and we had to go back to the drawing board and relook at, okay, how are we structured, what do we need, what would work?

And I remember Mark Joseph and I had a conversation about, okay, so what can we do different?

And I said, Well, Mark, this is bigger than I think CMH, and I think we need somebody who can help guide the process, but also, you know, understand the perspective that we're coming from.

And I think that process that we weren't allowed us to collaborate in a way that was much different than I think folks have.

People could go to Mark and they could say X, Y and Z.

Mark comes to us, we talk about this.

He had the right people in the room.

CMH was always in a room and we worked through a lot of stuff.

I will be the first to say that every meeting, every discussion did not end with group hugs, but I think once the buildings began to go up and the other buildings began to go down, I think everyone had an appreciation for their role in a project, whether it was the resident, whether it was the people who had concerns about safety, whether it was the people who looked at economic development, whether it's the people who said, I need a house, whether it's the people that lived in the neighborhood, they said, okay, well, what do we get out of this and how is this going to benefit us?

All those voices were heard now with everyone say that, okay, you did this for me, you did that for me.

You can't always do everything.

But it's important to have sometimes some of those processes.

There are some times where you need a process in order to be able to get things done.

There are other times where you just have to be able to say, Hey, look, this is this is what we got to do and we need to push that forward.

It's how you evaluate when those things are done is the thing that I think happens when you've been in leadership for a while and you have to be willing to deal with the consequences they come from, you know, the approaches and the things you try to do.

You mentioned group hugs, and I think I suspect maybe somebody will ask us about this.

We're going to move to the audience Q&A in a second.

But this is a moment when I think a lot in our community could probably use a group hug.

And I want us to at some point talk about what happens when like real conflict arises and how you how you manage that, especially when it goes public.

I'm not talking about anything in particular.

I swear.

But anyway, we're going to go to audience two questions from all of you.

Now, if you want to text a question, it's 3305415794 and we will work it into the program.

I'm Dan Waltrip with the City Club with Jeff Patterson, the CEO of the Cuyahoga Metro Housing Authority.

He's the Jeff all the jeff way is really the best way to lead, as you've heard.

And so yeah.

So we'll go to questions from any of you right now and we have our first text question.

Hello.

You're right.

Our first question is a text question.

It says Right now diversity in leadership at the federal level is being gutted and the importance of leadership diversity diminished nationwide.

Cleveland does have diverse leadership, but of course, a lot of room to grow.

How can we protect the progress made and continue to grow the diversity voices in positions of power here in Cleveland?

What a great question.

Yes, that one comes to me how you first?

Well, I think we continue doing what we're doing.

I think that we have a lot of good leaders within this community, a lot of diverse leaders and this community.

And within that diversity, you see a lot of people that are doing a lot of good work.

And I think as long as we continue to do that, good work, as long as we continue to serve the people that we need to serve, then I don't see it as an issue from our external forces necessarily guiding that it's about us doing the things that we need to do and working and collaborating with the partners that we have to continue the success.

You know, this from my point of view, the the American project of of this grand experiment that we're involved in, Eric Lou, who runs an organization called Citizen University, says that the work of our generation is to continue to build the Earth's first mass multiracial, multi-ethnic, truly inclusive democracy.

And that doesn't change just because there's a different president in the White House who doesn't necessarily share the same priorities that I have.

And the this this room is a very diverse room.

This room is a very inclusive room.

And it's our job to just continue to do that, to create that, to create that platform and steward that platform and welcome everybody all the time.

Great.

Yeah.

Good afternoon, Patterson.

Good afternoon.

I may look familiar from this.

So my question for you is what is the future, especially in the next four years for CMHC and HUD and all of the public housing that is funded by the federal government, the state and local governments?

What happens?

What happens is we keep going.

We continue to work and do what we can.

I mean, right now we're working on our Wood Hill development.

Through partnerships and collaborations, we were able to build a phase one on 93rd and and Buckeye.

We built a phase two of that site over off of 112th and Woodland.

Our phase three is going up on 93rd in Buckeye.

Hopefully sometime early next year.

We've been able to demolish pretty much the entire site.

So if you're driving now, well, and you'll just see a big vacant area.

But equally as important is the fact that we now have master plans, that we're in the final stages for our way estates, Cedar estates and Lakeview estates.

So I think for us is being prepared for when those opportunities come to be able to have things out and ready to go to move forward.

You know, it's hard to tell you.

We didn't know that Garden Valley was going to be redeveloped.

We just started on a plan and started putting things together.

And in 2008, they came out I think is 20 or 20 came out, say, hey, we got this, the stimulus program.

You know, we need shovel ready projects.

Well, this was about as shovel ready as it could get.

And we jumped into it.

Everybody came together and we move forward.

So we have to manage what we have to manage today.

But we have to be prepared to deal with and to be able to move forward in a future that's exciting.

Lakeview is like almost 90 years old, but all of our stuff is about 98.

But the key is the oil is leaking, is the oldest.

Well, you've got cedar, which is up here, all built around the site.

Yeah.

You know, I did see AMH is the oldest, 1933 founded by Ernie Ball.

So we got all of them.

Amazing, right?

Commissioner?

Our.

Yes, right.

Go ahead.

Well, good afternoon.

So, first of all, Dan, I love the format of the program to really talk about this leadership for the greater good.

So definitely continue to keep this going.

So this is a question really for the both of you.

But, you know, this day and age it seems to me that the pipeline of leadership just really isn't there.

For whatever reason, a lot of young people that I encounter aren't really interested in the type of leadership roles that both of you have taken on.

We talk about leadership development and what it really takes.

Yes, you can take some classes, but at the end of the day it's about doing the work and gaining that experience.

Can you both just talk about what you're seeing and perhaps what are you doing to help cultivate a new generation of leaders?

Thank you very much for the question.

You know, here at the City Club, there's a couple of ways that we try to do that.

I mean, one is internally in terms of just developing our colleagues and giving our colleagues opportunities to lead in their domains to moderate forums on the stage that that kind of thing.

Arianna, who is is Arianna here?

I don't think Arianna is in here right now.

She's out.

I don't know where she is.

Anyway, Arianna runs our youth forum council and our student our student program, which is probably one of the most effective leadership development programs that we have.

So we have students from MSI squared here today and M.C.

Squared is probably the most frequent flier.

So they get to they get to come here and and join in civic dialog alongside adults in our community and see what leadership looks like and feels like.

And often they get to lead the conversation with their questions.

And in the Youth Forum Council are students from across the region who are creating City club programs for other high school students, but also for our general audience.

And that's another really important way, because leadership is often about convening civic dialog and shaping the kinds of conversations we're having as a community.

So additionally, what we do and Cynthia and I work together on this, and Cynthia has been such a great addition to the team in this way, because who speaks at the platform on this stage.

They are the people.

Often if they're not in leadership roles, this is the thing that that can propel them towards leadership roles.

This is the kind of opportunity that where people then begin to see them like, Oh wait, that person's got like, got some some juice.

We can we can work with that and and people start to see them in different ways.

So I think we I think I think we try really hard to make use of the stage of the platform for that purpose to help identify or give opportunity to emerging leaders or people who don't yet see themselves as leaders to to speak.

There is a there's a moment years ago, years and years ago, we were supposed to have Al Sharpton here.

And for whatever reason it was, Al Sharpton did show up.

And so we hastily and when I say hastily, I mean in like 10 minutes we put together because it was like 1150 on a Friday.

Right.

We put together a program.

And I asked a woman who from our community who is doing work, I'm not going to I'm not going to name her right now intentionally because I don't want to put her name out there.

But the but it was her.

I said, I need you to I need you to to help be a part of this conversation that we're having about about some of these issues.

She's like, I can't do it.

I can't do it.

I was like, No, actually, I believe you can, and I need you to do it.

So get up there.

And she did.

She wound up using the tape from that event in a job application, and that put her into a leadership role outside of our community, but put her into this really significant leadership role in another community.

And it was fantastic.

It was really and it was a really good example, I think, of when that actually works well.

I would piggyback on it and say, you know, leadership is about the desire.

You have to want to do it and everybody doesn't doesn't always want or at least be willing to say yes and yeah, yeah.

And if you say yes and try and you realize that it's not for you, it's okay to step aside and find that role that you're comfortable in and thrive in that role.

I think for me, I try to talk to people.

I'll to people who I work with.

I'll talk to people who I don't necessarily work with.

I'll talk with students, people who will call and say, Hey, I heard that you are, you know, you see C, o, c and I would love to come in and just talk to you.

I'll work with Karl and say, Hey, Carla, if I get some time, I want to talk to this person just to give them an opportunity, just to hear what it's about.

Because I think sometimes you get in the roles and you're just not mentally prepared for what you're going to have to deal with, because it's not easy to understand that.

So when I hear like, you know, the things like were mentioned, well, there's just not as much the pipeline as it used to be.

I mean, the pipes that the pipeline is there.

There are people that are out there.

It's how do we cultivate those individuals and how do we find their level of interest to make sure that they want to be a part of it?

And how do we adjust how we see them?

When I was working at the city in many moons ago, if I was sitting in a in a meeting, a in a red room and I look around the t the table and I see the mayor, I see the chief of staff, I see the executive assistant, I see the director.

It is the director that and I see me as the labor relations, whatever.

Somebody is taking notes and that's probably going to be me.

Somebody is getting water and that's probably going to be me.

Someone's going to do every part of that responsibility and it was probably going to be me.

But at that stage in my career, I accepted that.

And at that stage in that career, I think people thought that that was your role to get to that next level.

The younger people today, they're not feeling that.

They're telling you that they want their coffee black.

They're telling you that, Yeah, I got this I technology that I'm just taking notes right here.

I'm good.

And sometimes we resent I think sometimes people may resent that as people taking a shortcut where I think you have to meet them where they are to to cultivate them because the world that they're going to be leaders in is not the world that we are leaders in right now.

And we have to make that adjustment.

That's true.

That's very generous of you.

You know, what you said reminded me of something else in response to your question that I think as leaders, we have an obligation to say yes as often as we can.

When a young particularly when a young person asks to meet with us to find out more about either our career path or how they might get into some similar, similar work, that if we have time in our calendar, if we can make the time that we should say yes to the meeting and say yes to like letting you know to to giving somebody an opportunity to just learn a little bit because they're asking you for that meeting, whether, you know, whether it's anybody in this room, really, they're asking you because you're amazing and they look up to you.

They're not trying to steal something from you.

They're just trying to to learn.

And we have an obligation, though they I, I don't think that people like using that word per se, but I think that if you have been successful and you have made it to a certain point, it is an obligation for you to share your path with others who are looking for that word.

Your words may be the words that either guides them to where they want to go or help them realize that they don't want to go.

And I can sit back and I can look at different people who I've spoken with over the years that have done different adults, things that I look at, especially within our community, that it's important for us to to create that space.

So I agree with you.

And I like the fact that in the role that you're in, you're able to do that in so many different ways, especially by providing people who are younger, who are in school the opportunity to be able to come in and sit in forums like this and be able to hear from people that they may not know everything about them now, but they'll sit back someday and say, Hey, wow, I was at the City Club and I heard such and such speak.

I mean, that's just tremendous that that you all provide that opportunity.

I hear this story over and over again of, you know, adults in our community who tell me they went on their career path because of a city club form they attended as a high school student.

You know, they got into politics because they heard somebody.

And I have to say, if any of you have have the opportunity to come to one of our youth Forum council events and see the young people up here leading the conversation, it is so gratifying.

It makes you feel so optimistic about the future.

So I would encourage you when they when they happen.

Can't believe Ariana's not even here to hear me talking about.

What great work she does.

All right, Stacy, I mean, that says Amber, I'm so sorry, spacing out.

We have another text question because you both please share some of the leadership principles that have best served you throughout your times in leadership roles.

Yeah.

You want me to go first?

Of course.

Oh, of course.

Well, so.

So there's a book that somebody gave me the first time that I took on a leadership role.

It's called Leadership is an Art by Max Dupree.

And I know, I know.

I get and I give copies to people sometimes.

John Litton has a copy when they're when they get into leadership roles and it opens.

Dupree ran a company, the Herman Miller Furniture Company.

He could have run any company, though, because he's just more of a more of a leader than a furniture guy, you know.

And but he says that leader's first job is to define reality.

The leader's first job is to define reality.

Thank you both for being here.

Jason Tout I teach at MC Squared STEM High school.

My question as leaders is it may look a little different for each of you, but we live in contentious times.

I guess they all have been.

But this one feels particularly contentious.

How do you, Mr. Jefferson, when you have to work with someone who maybe doesn't want to work with you or is acting in bad faith, like what are some ways or tactics you would use to try to get them on board?

And I guess for Mr. Mothra, like as to how would you get someone who maybe doesn't want to come here and talk or be held accountable to a group of people who want to ask them questions like, how do you get them to come to the table?

Thank you.

So let me.

There are many ways to make people talk.

I'm just kidding.

No, I think that honestly, you just have to articulate what you're doing, why you're doing it, and try to be clear about that and hopefully people can find you know what it is that they're interested in.

That is a line.

And what you're saying, I mean, in our negotiations and making deals and finding ways to work with people, a lot of people who don't have the same baseline line thoughts or approaches just can't collaborate.

Once you kind of find those things that make it worthy for those individuals and it may not be what is bringing you to the table, but just bringing them to the table.

And what's more important, what is the benefit going to be to the people you serve?

So we got to be best friends.

We got to have all that stuff.

We here to do business, we do our business, we go our separate ways.

And if the time comes again where we have that opportunity to do business together again, let's let's do it again.

And in other instances where you can't reach that point and things like that, you find somebody else who could.

Because there there's there's not always one person that's the only person that you could do something with.

Sometimes you could find someone else that the deal didn't sound right them, but it sounds right to somebody else, and they'll bring a spirit into it because they see what you see.

You know?

I think that's right.

That it's it's sometimes I found that it's really important to not take rejection personally, that it is not about it's not it more often than not you the rejection somebody saying, no, I don't want to come and speak has everything to do with them and very little to do with us.

Sometimes it does have something to do with us.

We can learn something about how welcoming we are, how open we are to diverse points of view.

The City Club has has, you know, some people view the City Club in one way or another, but if we can identify what is in somebody else's interest and and and see the owner and help them see the overlap between their interests and and our communities interest in hearing from them, then we can we can make it work.

But not everybody's going to say yes.

Right.

And rejection whether it's in like programing the stage or in fundraising or some other aspect.

It's not it's not it's not personal.

It's just not a fit.

Good afternoon, guys.

This is my first event here.

I really appreciate it.

I'm a summer associate here with with Taff Law.

So been here for about a year.

And this is wonderful.

You guys both talked about having the vision right?

As leaders, I want to get your vision for each of your organization and then the community at large about artificial intelligence where we're going, you know what you guys are doing with it today.

And now you guys will think it will shape the community over the the short and the medium term.

Thank you.

I really did not think I was going to come up in this conversation today.

I actually have an answer, but I didn't think it was going to come up.

You go first.

I have a massive but I is workin very fast, though.

Jeff It's very fast.

I actually like literally this morning, early this morning was working on like trying to figure out how I can help with a project that I'm that I'm doing that involves a bunch of focus groups and listening sessions, more data than I can, than I can deal with in the short amount of time that I have available to, like, synthesize all of this.

And I created an agent and I just wanted to call itself the City Club conversationalist.

And I was like, No, that's terrible.

So I said, I said, I'm just going to call you my guy.

So so my guy is now working on synthesizing, helping me understand what's most important to these different members of the community, and then priorities helping me prioritize that.

So that's that's my first exploration into into using AI.

I have a feeling that we have a lot of data about what's important to the community, just like ticket sales.

Like what do people show up to most?

Like that kind of thing that we can, that we can plug into it.

We can use A.I.

to help make more sense of it, but we're in the very early stages, and honestly, I was keeping it at arm's length until it stopped hallucinating.

It was really like it was disturbing, but it's gotten a lot better.

So thanks for that question.

I think it was our last one and it was very future focused.

Hey, Jeff Patterson, people.

Jeff Patterson, thank you for thank you to Jeffrey Patterson, his lovely daughter Olivia and Dan Moser for joining us at the City Club today.

I'm Mark Ross, President of the City Club Board of Directors.

And forums like this one are made possible through thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club dot org.

Today's forum was part of our Local Heroes series in partnership with Citizens Bank and Enbridge.

It was also the City Club's annual forum on leadership for the Greater Good, which was made possible by a generous gift to the City Club's endowment from an anonymous private family foundation.

This family champions free speech and is committed to lifting up and spotlighting those who tirelessly, selflessly, selflessly and resolutely work to improve our community, region and nation.

Like today's speakers do for our community.

Thank you.

The City Club would like to again welcome students joining us from M.C.

Squared STEM High School.

We'd like to also welcome guests at the tables hosted by Brennan Manna and Diamond City Architecture, Cleveland Public Theater, Tri-C CMJ.

Habitat for Humanity.

The guests of Jeffrey Patterson, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

Rosalind Andrus, the St Luke's Foundation and Taft Law.

Wow.

Excellent.

Coming up next Friday, June 6th at 7 p.m., we will be at the Mimi, Ohio Theater here in Playhouse Square.

The right Honorable Dame Jacinda Ardern, 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, will reflect on her experiences that shaped her leadership style in her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power.

She will be in conversation with author and psychologist Lisa Damour.

You can get your tickets and learn more about this forum and others at City Club, dawg.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to Jeffrey and Dan and to our members and friends of the city club.

I'm Mark Ross in this forum is now adjourned.

For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to City Club Dawg.

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