Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our program.

We hope you make plans each week to join us as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

He's a Hoosier native and CEO of one of Indiana's and its largest companies with over 12,000 employees.

The Cook Medical Group, a leader in the medical device industry.

We're hearing today from Pete Yonkman as he shares more about the responsibility companies have to improve the communities where they operate.

Coming up on economic outlook, He's passionate about finding unique opportunities to help Hoosiers reach their full potential.

And his leadership philosophy is that businesses are the missing engine needed to drive meaningful and lasting change.

He works not only to lead one of the largest medical device companies in the world, but also to drive change in communities where the companies involved.

We're hearing today from Pete Yonkman, the CEO of Bloomington based Cook Medical Group.

Pete was recently in town and we thought his message was powerful.

So we're sharing it today with you.

I hope you enjoy it.

But in there, they probably kept us from sliding backwards in some areas.

But what I think is that these policies are necessary.

They're just not sufficient.

And so what I want to do is introduce to you an idea that I think should be our next step as a as a collective group, especially the folks here in this room.

And I'm talking about not just talking about the problems, not waiting for for government to come and solve them, but rather it's taking action in our neighborhoods and our communities.

So here's the idea.

So what I'm advocating for, what I'm calling for is revolution.

So don't send the security out.

I'm not talking about that kind of revolution.

What I am talking about, though, the seeking to overthrow the mindset of the business community.

It's a mindset that I've had in my time.

It's been reinforced, I think, by the institutions that we've created for ourselves.

And so what I'm thinking is a revolution against the way that we as business leaders, both companies, large and small.

It's not just a big company issue or a small company issue that we've been sort of trained to believe that we aren't responsible for more than just our customers and our profits.

We often expect that our employees will show up on our doorstep perfectly trained for us, or that somebody else is going to ensure that our neighbors are healthy and well-fed, or that some policies is going to create jobs where they don't exist.

Or that somehow the housing problem will go away Somewhere along the line.

And I've done this.

We began to think that improving our communities meant joining a business association that issues reports about concerns or advocating for a specific piece of legislation that's going to solve the problem that fulfills our civic duty.

Or that meeting in a room like this where people who look like us to act like us is going to move the needle and change the map from from red to green.

But I think the reality is that there is no silver bullet coming from government.

It's not going to be alone.

It's necessary, but not sufficient.

What we really have to do is go out and work on these issues neighborhood by neighborhood and community by community.

Look, I realize that governments and institutions and organizations, they have tools and the government can deploy tools.

But those tools are designed to be what I think is an air war.

They set priorities to create room.

But the battles being fought in our neighborhoods and our communities.

And I think that the good news is when I look around the room and I know that South Bend and Mishawaka are blessed with lots of terrific not for profits and people are working hard in our communities.

But often when I go around the state, what I'm noticing is that it is noticeable that business is often missing from those on the ground in the trench issues.

And so what I think is that over time and I have experienced this, I have been part of this.

We have what we got more comfortable fighting the air war, talking about legislation, talking about policy from our from our offices and from our boardrooms.

And I think where we need to be actually is out in our neighborhoods with people who are struggling to figure out how do we help and bring our resources to them.

So you may be asking yourself at this point, I guess I think I've had these two questions as All right, great.

I agree with you that business needs to be involved.

How do we do that?

And then sometimes people ask the bigger question, which is why?

Why should business be involved?

Why shouldn't somebody else take care of it?

Why shouldn't government be the one to solve these challenges?

And so I want to start by talking about the how first.

So let me start by giving you a few examples of projects that we've worked on to cook that over time, sort of slowly, by slowly, step by step, they moved us out of our offices and out into the trenches and into our neighborhoods.

Our first project was around educational barriers.

So I think we probably all agree that if you want to get on to a job with upward mobility, you need an education as a foundation.

And we had a program that will be required at our jobs high school diplomas.

If you want to come work at our company and have a high school diploma.

We started to ask why there wasn't a reason that that's what we did.

And so what we did was we reached out to our partners in the community.

We created a program that allowed people to come to work for us in the morning, part time, go to school in the afternoon, but get paid full time.

And today, we have about 300 graduates from that program who went from having no high school diploma to having a high school diploma and a job with upward mobility.

So the other thing we did was, okay, so that was great, but that's 300 people.

But we realized we have 300,000.

There are 400,000 people in Indiana without a high school diploma.

And in our area there are 25,000 people.

So we partnered with Goodwill's Excel Center of Adult High School to advocate for them to bring an Excel center to our community.

And that helps scale what we started 300 people and now they have three people in every class.

And just across the street from the Excel Center, we partner with Goodwill again and we open up a manufacturing center that goodwill runs and operates.

And the reason we ask them to operate, it is because this facility was designed to employ people with barriers, significant barriers, mental health issues, disabilities, maybe experiencing homelessness or a substance use disorder.

They have the wraparound services that allow people to be successful in that environment.

And when they do and they come work for us.

A cook And recently housing is a big problem.

I'm sure you're talking about housing up here in this community as well.

We partnered with the Owen County Economic Development Association, USDA, local banks, local developers, and we're building 90 homes.

They have three bedroom, two bath backyards, garage.

We're building them in Spencer, Indiana, where there was not one new housing start in years.

And that will help address a critical need we have for workforce, housing and community.

And through all these examples, there are more.

We've learned that we can't solve the problems alone.

Right.

It's not.

We can't do it by ourselves.

But we do have a very crucial role to play.

And I want to talk about how we play that role.

First thing is we use our power to convene.

So when we see a problem or an issue in the community, we have the ability to get the right stakeholders around the table.

When we call, people tend to show up, the politicians show up, the community leaders, the neighborhood association presidents, they come and we have the ability to do that.

And the second thing we can do is we can amplify.

We have the ability to amplify issues.

What we see a lot of times that there is an issue in the community that's known as a problem and a solution, but it's tied up in red tape or is tied up in lack of access to knowledge or funding or where to go.

We can amplify those issues and bring them to the table.

And then the last thing we realized was that in our organization, we have incredible people.

We have a virtual army of people with skills that our community needs.

And so when we do this right, we're able to find an opportunity that's good for Cook.

We also enable our employees to use their skills to help build the community as well.

And over time, we found that the combination of business skills, government support and not for profit expertise working together is far more powerful than when we do it alone.

And, you know, I also say if business isn't at the table, one of the legs of the stool is missing.

It's incredibly important that business be involved and sounds like business is involved up here and being part of that solution.

And so when I talk about this revolution, I think that sort of thing.

I'm thinking it's evident in our latest project taking place in Indianapolis a couple of years ago, we recognized the need to expand our manufacturing and we were looking at a lot of options.

We could have put it anywhere and put it by our existing facilities.

We could have put it in some country somewhere.

That was right around the time that George Floyd was murdered, and our leadership was a little bit frustrated because they saw companies that were putting out nice statements.

They were putting messages on Instagram, Twitter, etc., but they want to do something more than that.

They wanted to be more than just hashtag activism.

They want to be part of the solution in a small way.

And so we started this process all over again.

And we met with a group of people, experts in Indiana, and said, where can we go?

That we can make an impact on a community that's seen disinvestment?

This is an opportunity to leave for a long time and we did that.

We met a person, a woman named Ashley Gervase Gervase, who led us to a neighborhood of three, six, three, even shared in Indianapolis.

And what she did for us, where she opened the doors to the community and she said, You need to come meet the community.

Initially, when we met with her, we met with probably ten or 15 different communities and all of them brought their economic development package to the table.

She didn't do that.

She came in and she said, You can go anywhere, but I want you to come meet our people.

I want you to meet the people in this organization, in this neighborhood.

I want you to meet the church leaders.

I want you to meet the people who are out there making this community, who are trying to make this country better.

That was very interesting that we did that.

And after we did that, that was on the way to building a brand new 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility in that neighborhood.

And what I think is really important about that is that in all of that discussion, all that work we understood had to be done in partnership with the community.

Ashley said time is something very important.

When we were doing this process, you said the one thing you need to understand is there are a lot of people in this community who've been working very hard to make it better.

You can't come in here and just save the day.

What we want, she said, is we want somebody who will build with us, not on us.

That was a very important message that I think we learned in that process.

I'll give you an example of how that works.

So I was out here me with a couple of the neighbors around the property, and one of them said, you know, I'm all for this.

I think it's a great idea.

I love the project.

Great opportunity.

We said, you know, what's going to happen is if you bring in your construction crew and it doesn't look like this community, you're going to send a pretty powerful message about what you stand for and what you believe in and who opportunity is going to be created for.

And so fortunately, through Ashley, we met a woman named Akilah Darden, and we went to her and she said we saw the tone of this issue.

She said, Well, I'm gonna set a goal for you.

I want you to build this project.

100% minority owned businesses, contractors and more importantly, using local people to build it.

That was a pretty big goal.

But she achieved it and she even got dozens of people in the community who had never worked in construction before to come in and get their certification to work on the project.

So the facility is now open or our places is operational.

We have 25 employees today, 40 by the end of this month and about 80 to 100 by the end of the year.

Thank you.

What I love about this is we chose a location that was not a tech park.

We chose in a neighborhood and a lot of our folks are walking to work and they're riding their bikes and they feel like it's part of the neighborhood and part of the community.

But, you know, in those conversations we were having, we also realized that this is not a one off issue.

It's not just about manufacturing jobs.

We were talking to people, the food desert.

We learned very early that all five of the grocery stores had left in the last five years.

100,000 people didn't have access to food.

And we met two local entrepreneurs who are really trying to build something.

They were trying to build a little mini grocery store, a little corner store to get food for people.

And Michael MacFarland and sorry, Michael MacFarland, Marcus Williams there.

And we said, well, wait a minute.

We know how to build things.

You know, how to deal, supply chains.

We can find financing for you.

And so we'll have the summer.

I'm hopeful by August this year, we'll have a grand opening for a brand new locally owned grocery store, a 15,000 square foot full service grocery store that will be owned by the community and serve as the community there.

And and we're very proud of the work.

I hope you can tell we're proud of the work.

But what's interesting, what you learn is that it really comes from this relationship and that relationship of the community, I suppose, could have stopped there.

We could have put together this presentation and said, we're happy about the manufacturing we're having to the grocery store, and we could have stopped there and sort of declared victory.

But what you learn very quickly is it didn't feel like victory.

There's still much still far too much violent crime.

There's drugs are still an issue in the community.

Housing not available.

Education, health outcomes aren't where they need to be and housing is not available.

So our neighbors said to us, well, wait a minute, our work is not done.

So we said, okay, then our work's not done either.

And so we're going to stay in the trenches with you.

And that's what I want to share with you today, is from the trenches in that work.

What the next step is for us in Indianapolis and with this group who we work with.

And I hope that you when you see this project, this next step, you'll see the same concept of convening the amplifying and mobilizing.

So over the last year, as a group of us have been meeting together.

They include government.

They include local, state, federal.

They include law enforcement.

They include neighborhood leaders.

They include church leaders, all the cross-section of the community and what we've done is come together and we said, first of all, we're going to make sure that we put political agendas aside.

Nobody gets to bring politics to the table.

We're going to simply deal with facts and what's good for the community itself and the people who live here.

And so we got what we did.

We put together a group and we actually formalized the area.

We're calling it the Sankofa Access Zone.

This is defined area of Indianapolis from 34th Street to 42nd and Sherman to Shetland.

And in that group, there are about 10,000 residents live in that zone.

And I think if you ask people to live there, they'd acknowledge that it has some challenges and I'll give you a few of those challenges.

So the median household income is 33,000.

Poverty rate is 28%.

Labor force participation is 58%.

The unemployment rate is 13%.

At a time when we are experiencing record low unemployment, the rest of the state life expectancy is 71 years.

That's about six years less than average.

Across the state, 23% of adults 25 and over don't have a high school diploma.

The violent crime rate is 24,000 people.

42% of houses are owner occupied and 45% of houses are spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

This is amazing to me.

75% of the population 55 and older live in a food desert.

No access to easy, easy access to food.

30% of the population does not have a computer or Internet access.

And what I would suggest to you is if you were a business leader and you asked your team to put together a report about this community, this is what you get.

You'd get these facts.

And I have talked to business leaders and it scared them off and they said, well, why would I want to go there?

I'm not going get the employees that I need.

I'm not going to get the people that we want.

But I'll tell you is when you go out the community and you meet people.

But the reality is so different than what those numbers are and what we really have known and come to know and the people we've come to mean.

It's a community with with the highest rates of homeownership because the people live there for a long time.

They remember when it was vibrant and growing.

There are leaders and organizations in this community that every community would be blessed to have.

I have never seen the connectedness and the the common will to move this community forward.

And it's community that's really passionate about bringing opportunity back to the people that live there.

And so as or as a group of people, our mission is pretty clear what we're doing is we're trying to foster relationships and lasting partnerships with like minded businesses, leaders and organizations who are committed to amplifying the resident voice, preserving our legacy, and using it as a foundation for the collective growth of the existing community.

That's very important.

What we don't want to do is create the next new hip area of Indianapolis that pushes everybody out.

And the word Sankofa is actually interesting too.

It came from the community and came from our community leaders, and it's a metaphor from the African language in Ghana, and it's often depicted as this image of a bird reaching back to retrieve an egg from its back.

And the metaphor really represents learning from the history of the past and learning from the history of our elders to help us drive and figure out solutions from the future.

And as our work as we work together, we're really starting to try to tackle big issues.

Like why is it that all five grocery stores left this community?

What caused that to happen?

Why are the education outcomes consistently worse in this community than it is just two miles down the road?

What can be done to address the issue of violent crime?

How do we act collectively to make that better?

How do we create jobs that have upward mobility and how do we create affordable housing options?

And this is the most important one.

Why is it that if you live in the Sankofa zone, you're likely to live 8 to 10 years less than people who lived just two miles down the road?

Why is it that lifespans are shorter?

And so we started that.

Remember, we said we want to go by facts, not politics, not just ideas.

So we began looking at violent crime in the area.

And despite what you see on the news, this entire community is not riddled with crime.

It's just there are a few pockets of areas that are challenges.

Early in the process, I went on several ride alongs with the police department to get to know that side of the community.

One of the officers on animal rights pointed out a particular location, which you can see on the map and he said, you know, we know this is a problem.

The police, not the problem, the community's problem.

Everybody knows the problem.

We can't think about it.

And what he did was he took me and said, hey, I'm going to drive by this location and turn my lights and watch what happened.

So he did.

He drove up, turn the lights.

Everybody scatters the cars leave.

They come back 20 minutes later.

So we took that problem back to the community group.

We had the Center of Excellence on leaders and said, can we take collective action to try to address this?

And we did.

So we we have leaders work for us.

We has a go out and find out who owns this place.

We don't find out who owned it.

We contact and we reached out and said, Hey, we as a community are concerned about this.

What can we do to help you?

And it was interesting.

He reached back out and he said, here's my problem.

I know it's a problem, but here's my reality.

I own this gas station.

The drug dealers pull up, they pull up to the gas pump, they flash their gun at my attendee and say, I'm staying here all day.

What you can do about it?

He's like, I know my property looks bad, but how do I invest money back into a property?

Is losing 50% of his business because we can't get people to come here anymore.

That to me is a microcosm of what we're talking about.

It's one property, one issue, one solution we have to figure out.

And so what we did was we emailed letter and we connected them to the owner.

The owner was willing to help and we connected them with the IMPD who installed exterior cameras on the location and connected to what they call their building program, which allows officers to have access to the to the cameras on the outside.

Now, look, I want to acknowledge, first of all, that policing is not always the solution to this right?

There's always concerns about increased policing, in particular in communities like the Sankofa access zone that is 95% black.

So we went back to community.

Do you support this?

Do you think this is a good idea?

And everyone said yes.

They said, yes, we support the police if it's done for the right reason, in the right way.

Look, this is a small action.

I acknowledge it's one gas station in Indianapolis and it doesn't get to the root cause.

The issue, the drug dealers can go somewhere else, but it is a signal to the community that progress is being made that people care.

Let me give you one more example of our work, how we do it.

There's also a motel in the area that's in Sankofa zone, and it has a lot of criminal activity, including sex trafficking.

And you can see it clearly on the map here.

It's on the right side there.

Our approach is going be the same for this property.

We're going reach out to the owners and say we're here to help.

What can we do?

How do we bring the collective resources of this group that we have to the benefit of the people who live here?

These hotels often serve as the last resort before somebody becomes homeless.

So we don't want to displace people.

We want to do is wrap our arms around them and say, how can we bring services to you that you need?

And we also want to make sure that the owners are held to a standard that say you have to meet basic human standards.

You can't take advantage of people who are in crisis.

And I'm sure you can imagine as we have this conversation is not easy conversations, it's not straightforward, and we're not even sure it's going to work.

But making change with real impact, even if it feels small, starts a momentum in a positive direction.

So if you can look just to look a mean I mean, I've seen it, you're not there.

But what I see is this is a zone that has made incredible progress in two years.

There are new banks coming to the area and new housing developments Eskanazi health is building a $70 million primary health care center in the neighborhood.

People are beginning to feel energy and positivity where they had not before.

And I think what will happen over time as a community will experience less disparity, more opportunity, and it will attract people because of the opportunity to provide.

And hopefully we can turn that area from red to green on the map.

So that's what I think a revolution in thinking like this can lead to.

But the reality of it can't be just one company, can't be just cook.

Doing it has to involve people like you at every level of the state.

Look, I acknowledge here's the thing.

I know we come to lunches like this, and I think the easiest thing to do is to maybe dismiss the power that we have.

But if we recognize the power and potential that we all have to make significant change, even if it's one property, one neighborhood, one person at a time, we can do it, but we have to choose to do it.

You know, I think that what could happen today is you'll say, this is a nice lunch.

I enjoyed the chicken, uh, dessert was eh, and you can go back home and say we had a nice discussion and forget about this discussion.

I guess that's fine if that's your choice.

But then I think to me, that choice signals that you're okay with this tale of two states.

And frankly, I hope you're not okay with it.

I hope you want to act.

But if we're going to act, we're going to have to get rid of our instinctual responses.

When we hear about issues, we have to roll up our sleeves and start to work on them ourselves.

Instead of turning the government for solutions, we're going to have to go out into our neighborhoods instead of meeting with each other and groups like this, we'll have to go out into the areas that deserve more and meet with the people who are already working there to bring opportunity back.

And then most important, we have to embrace our power is to convene, amplify and mobilize.

So I talked about revolution.

Every good revolution needs a manifesto.

So here's the mind manifesto suggestion for you.

First is be a convener, start meeting with people, get to know people out in the communities you haven't met before.

Meet your neighbor.

Not for profit leaders.

Meet the church leaders.

Meet the neighborhood presidents who are working day to day on these issues and then ask them for other people.

You should get to know do what we've been calling the CEO challenge.

Have you run a business?

Run an organization, you yourself not your VP of community.

Here's your your our leader.

You yourself go out in the community, spend three days in the community, three eight hour days.

First two days, meet with all the people working on the hardest problems.

Third day a right along with the police and get a different view of the community.

And then finally, or next, be an amplifier.

Get people's attention.

When you see an issue, raise it to the right person.

You all know in this room who can make impacts and who can move things along, whisper in their ear.

Then finally, be a mobilizer.

Enable those people on your teams to be involved and use their highest and best skills to make impacts on the people who are in our communities.

And earlier discussion before I wrap up here, I want to say I want to acknowledge the why.

Why should businesses be involved?

There's a lot of discussion right now.

It's been politicized about the role of a company in an organ in society.

There's a lot of discussion around ESG and CSR and all those things, and that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about people being actively engaged and being a good neighbor in our communities.

And I think the answer of why is pretty simple.

The answer is because you hold the power you have the collective power, you have the collective resource people and economic output.

If you look at all of that from business, it outstrips government by any way.

You cut it.

Government can do its thing and it should.

But if we allow business to sit on the sidelines, we are throttling the greatest potential engine of community improvement.

The state has ever seen.

You hold the key to resources, people and skills that can move our neighborhoods and communities from red to green.

And if we have a green state, that means all our companies are our communities are thriving.

You know what's going to be good for our long term economic health?

It's going to be good for all Hoosiers.

And my hope is that in ten years from now, we're having a very different discussion about the state of Indiana and how all communities are thriving and I think after ten years, I would ask you this question.

When we look back ten years from now, what will you have done as a leader, as a business owner, as a business person have done to make a difference?

Are you going to sit back and wait for the silver bullet of government to fix things, or are you going to be out there serving in the trenches with your neighbors to fight for the opportunity that all of us deserve?

I thank you very much for the opportunity to be here with you.

Thank you very much for your attention.

I hope you'll join our revolution.

Thank you.

That's it for our show today.

Thank you for watching on WNIT or listening to our podcast.

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I'm Jeff Rea.

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