- [Jim] It's hard to see here at the St. Louis Zoo and in the wild, but things, they're looking up for the salamander known as the Ozark hellbender.

- We're continuing to successfully reproduce the species and we're getting better at it each year.

- [Jim] The films are old and outdated in many ways, but learning what employers call soft skills, that hasn't gone out of style.

And outgoing Jazz St. Louis CEO, Gene Dobbs Bradford talks about, well, what else?

- Music was my thing and not just performing music, but you know, producing it.

- It's all next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr.

Let's face it, good news has been kind of hard to come by these days, but I've got some.

You see, things are looking up for the Ozark hellbender, and for the people who have been working for years to keep the big salamander from going extinct.

Yeah, I know, it's a salamander, but it's actually kind of a big deal.

The St. Louis Zoo has reason to brag.

Its hellbenders just laid a bunch more eggs.

They've hatched another new generation.

You can call it continued success, but it's taken years to get to this point.

And the real success is not to be found in tanks in a zoo, but here in rivers and streams in this one part of the Ozarks.

It's the only place this subspecies of hellbender can be found.

The Ozark hellbender, which can grow up to two feet long, may not be the most lovable of creatures.

After all, one of its nicknames is Snot Otter.

But when it was put on the endangered species list, it began to get, if not, a lot of love, at least a lot of tender loving care.

The Missouri Department of Conservation and the St. Louis Zoo have been working for years to bring them back by raising hellbenders in captivity, and then placing adults back in their native habitat.

A key part of the success story has been the artificial streams right here behind the St. Louis Zoo's home to reptiles and amphibians, the herpetarium.

- These are animals we are breeding to send back into the wild into six different river systems here in Missouri.

- These are the streams.

They're in there now right?

- Yeah.

- If I stood here long enough, would I ever see one?

- Actually on overcast days like this, sometimes you can see them.

They're usually under a rock or in a nest box with their heads kind of poking out.

Oh I see a crayfish.

- Yeah, that I see.

Do they eat crayfish?

- Yeah.

- That's what they eat, right?

The hellbenders that live here are not on display.

All of this was built to make them, not us, happy and healthy, happy and healthy enough to make babies, which sounds easy, but it was anything but.

The Missouri Conservation Department's state herpetologist has been working on this for more than 20 years.

- 10, 15 years ago, I would have thought the future was not very good for this species.

- [Jim] Here's how it started.

Hellbenders, whose population was getting dangerously low, were captured, males and females, in their Ozark streams and brought to the zoo.

They were first put up in a stream-like pool in the research center, males and females, but they just didn't make any babies.

So they thought maybe the hellbenders will be happier outside.

And so two artificial streams were built with nesting boxes, flowing water, the current, the temperature, the minerals, all mimicking an Ozark stream.

It took some tweaking of the water, but they finally got it right.

And in 2011, fertilized eggs were found in the nests and brought in doors.

They hatched, they survived.

It was the first time anywhere that hellbenders had successfully been bred in captivity.

And they've been building on that success ever since.

- [Lauren] This year, we had six clutches of Ozark hellbender eggs.

So we're continuing to successfully reproduce this species and we're getting better at it each year.

- [Jim] So these are the clutches from these streams?

- Yes, from these two outdoor streams.

- [Jim] From your hellbenders?

- Yes, that's correct.

- [Jim] This year's babies will join thousands of others of different ages and generations that have been raised at the zoo.

But this is important, the first successful hatchings came from hellbenders that had been caught in the wild, but it's now the zoo-raised hellbenders that are making babies.

- This is really great news for the animals here in terms of having sustainable captive populations, knowing that we're rearing animals that can reproduce.

But it's also great news for the animals we're putting back into the wild.

- [Jim] It's easy to keep track of the hellbender population in the zoo, much harder once they're back in the Ozark rivers.

- Yeah, so every hellbender we put back into the wild has some sort of tag, a coated wire or a pit tag so that we can identify that animal in the wild once we re-encounter it.

- Is it difficult to keep track of where they are?

- It's very difficult to keep track.

I mean, we're releasing animals from two to about six years old.

They're not the easiest to find.

- [Jim] But the ones they do keep tabs on seem to be thriving up to a point because they still don't know if any of the zoo-born hellbenders have successfully reproduced in the wild.

- That's one of our next big milestones.

We have not seen it yet in the wild, but that's not to say it's not occurring.

- [Jim] But even if they do reproduce, what will be the survival rate and health of the offspring?

Because there's the nagging question, what factors led to the population decline in the first place?

One suspect is land use that has led to increased silting filling in their rocky nests, but there are other likely environmental and water quality issues.

Continued testing might help zero in on that because hellbenders transplanted from pristine zoo conditions are very likely to be able to tell you a lot about their new environment, which also helps answer this question.

Why should we care about all of this?

- Amphibians are incredibly important.

We call them indicator species.

So they're one of the first species that will notice declines in populations, if there is problems in the habitat.

And that's because of their sensitive skin, that we can often use them to indicate larger problems and disturbances for other species, and so they're really important.

But they also play a critical role in the food chain, both as predator and prey.

- [Jim] Can we say at this point that we've saved the hellbender?

- [Lauren] I don't think we can confidently say that yet, but I think we are definitely bolstering wild populations and we are on the way for certain.

- Is this animal gonna go extinct in my lifetime, in this state now?

Very unlikely.

However, we still got to get at the main causes of decline and make sure that they can sustain their selves, their populations into the future.

- [Lauren] It's just, they're phenomenally different from us.

And so it keeps me interested and you can always learn more.

And so that's what I think is really exciting.

And that's what's been awesome about the hellbender program.

Each year we learn more about these amazing animals and we tweak our program to improve our success.

- St. Louis has a rich musical history and a rich and varied musical scene that survives and thrives today.

And when it comes to jazz, well, Gene Dobbs Bradford has played a major role in preserving and promoting that art form.

Well, now he's leaving town for a new job, but not before sitting down with Ruth Ezell.

- Yeah, I've had a really great career.

You know, I'm leading a great life.

And, it's because I found my thing, right?

Music was my thing and not just performing music, but, you know, producing it.

- Gene Dobbs Bradford is starting new chapters of his life and career.

The departing president and CEO of Jazz St. Louis is heading to Savannah, Georgia for his new role as executive director of the Savannah Music Festival.

Gene Dobbs Bradford has been at the helm of Jazz St. Louis more than two decades.

Prior to that, he spent five years up the street at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra where he was director of operations.

A native of Maryland, Bradford graduated from the Eastman School, where his focus was classical music and performing the double bass.

During that time, he also became adept at booking, promoting and staging concerts.

- And I had my first blues band called the Crawling King Snakes.

And I was out doing all the publicity for it and putting up posters and getting out and talking, and negotiating the deal with the club owners, which we got paid in beer and chicken wings, which I thought was great because, you know, that's all we were gonna spend our money on anyway, so we might as well cut out the middleman.

And I realized that I was having just as much fun putting on the concerts, and making those arrangements as I was, you know, performing, even though I love performing.

And then as I was walking through school one day, I saw a sign up on the wall that said, making beautiful music your business.

And I'm like, oh that sounds like it's for me.

And it was a poster for the American Symphony Orchestra League's Orchestral Management Fellowship program.

I applied for it and I got in.

I was kind of one of the younger people to get in to that program, but it was fantastic.

I got to intern with the Cleveland Orchestra, which was really, really nice, the New Mexico Symphony and the Baltimore Symphony over the course of a year.

And from there, I went on to work for the Honolulu Symphony.

I was production manager there for three years.

And then I came back to the mainland to work for the St. Louis Symphony.

- [Ruth] Bradford came to know Barbara Rose, who founded a performance series called Jazz at the Bistro at what was then the Hotel Majestic downtown.

After her death in 1998, Bradford succeeded her.

He recalled the early days here at the bistro's Grand Center location, where he was very hands-on.

- I was running the sound when I was here and selling the tickets and seating people and bussing tables, and, you know, all that.

When I first came in, I spent the first summer repainting the whole building.

- Really?

- Yeah, because the old colors, sort of it's a little dated, you know, and I thought it needed a fresher look.

I thought it needed something that looked a little bit more like a jazz club.

And so I did that and it was great, but I think that some of that paint was still there, you know, 14 years later when we did the renovation.

- [Ruth] Which brings us to the year 2014 when the bistro space was gutted, along with the building next door for a $10 million performance and music education complex inside what is now known as the Herald and Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz.

Our crew was there in June of that year and the following October on the heels of the reopening.

- The speakers have been tested and the system's been flushed out, so we are ready to go.

I get a lot of the credit for it, but, you know, there was so many people that went into making this happen.

So I think that, you know, it's a fantastic legacy.

I'm definitely leaving it better than the way I found it.

And even better than when I slapped that coat of paint on it.

- [Ruth] On Bradford's watch, many of the world's most influential jazz artists have performed in Grand Center.

Saxophonist, Benny Golson, pianist and composer, Herbie Hancock, violinist, Regina Carter, and the artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center, trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis are just a few.

Gene Dobbs Bradford has been recognized for his efforts educating younger generations of musicians and supporting the area's considerable local talent.

But it's his collaborations with other arts institutions that may have the biggest impact.

Jazz St. Louis and Opera Theater of St. Louis co-commissioned two operas in jazz.

The first was "Champion" based on the life of welterweight boxer, Emile Griffith.

It's world premiere was at the Loretto Hilton Theater in 2013.

Six years later came the world premier of "Fire Shut Up In My Bones."

It's based on the memoir by New York Times columnist, Charles M Blow.

And the libretto was written by filmmaker and St. Louis native, Casey lemons.

Both operas were composed by Grammy award-winning trumpeter, Terence Blanchard.

When Fire was staged by the metropolitan opera in September of 2021, it made history as the Mets first performance of an opera by a black composer.

- When I was walking through the hall and I saw, you know, that sign about, you know, making beautiful music your business, what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring more black people to classical music.

And here years later, not even working in the orchestra world, you know, I'm looking out at the audience of the Metropolitan Opera, and I'm seeing a lot of black faces there to see a story that was written by an African-American, the music composed and the libretto written by an African-American, and it tells an African-American story, you know?

And I thought, wow, you know, we did it.

We made a big change 'cause it was a 138 year history.

And that was the first time that that had happened.

- Jazz St. Louis supporters will gather here for a farewell reception.

Proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the newly established Gene Dodds Bradford endowment fund.

Bradford hopes to ensure the continuation of everything that's been built so far.

The only question possibly remaining for his fans is what will become of his popular blues band, the Gene Dobbs Bradford Experience?

After all, his journey started as a musician.

- [Gene] It's been a fun ride.

We've had a good run here and now we'll see what's next.

(upbeat jazz music) (audience cheering) - We've been hearing a lot lately about companies having a tough time filling positions.

And as part of our Pathways To Work initiative, we've been profiling some of those in-demand jobs, but the economy and technology, that has changed the workplace a lot over the years.

But as Brooke Butler shows us there's one set of skills that hasn't gone out of style.

- [Narrator] When you work in an office, meeting the public, whether it's in person or by telephone is an important part of your job.

It can be pleasant like this.

Or, it can be like this.

- [Brooke] Okay, we get the idea.

As an employee, you have to be friendly, show up on time and dress properly.

And as this informational film is from 1952, these are not new concepts, but as the data shows in the 2021 State of the St Louis Workforce report, six of the 14 employee shortcomings are those qualities of good work ethic referred to as soft skills.

- Soft skills that employers are really looking for is really self-management.

So their self-management includes time management, being present, being on time and staying on task.

Our work ethic is extremely important.

- [Brooke] But while a lack of soft skills among job applicants is the greatest challenge for area employers, there are organizations working to address it.

- I'll keep going then.

We're gonna do a refresher training that includes a lot of soft skills that you all have learned, but we want to make sure you're ready to go.

- [Brooke] Shanise Johnson is the director of Career and Workforce Readiness for the Boys and Girls Club of greater St. Louis and their St. Louis internship program, which provides high school students with year round career development training, along with a paid summer internship.

- The St. Louis internship program is needed because we have a lot of motivated students who really just need the opportunity to get beyond their neighborhoods and experience the positive and productive work that's going on and seeing how they can contribute to the society of being a tax-paying citizen, but more importantly, so that their career trajectory can change.

- [Brooke] By providing students with this real world experience, it not only gives them a better sense of empowerment, but it turns out that offering paid internships versus non-paid internships has a direct correlation with job offers and starting salaries.

- Paid internships, according to the studies is a game changer in terms of eradicating generational poverty.

So our internships are not job shadowing.

They actually are doing value-added projects for their companies, and therefore they are paid above minimum wage for their work and all the training that they've completed.

- [Brooke] And it all starts with, you guessed it, developing those soft skills.

- [Shanise] 6.4 Seconds, do you think you can beat that time?

I want you all to figure out if you could beat that time.

Let's go.

- Can you speak?

- [Shanise] Can you speak?

We're doing interpersonal communication.

I gave you the task.

(students discussing indistinctly) - I was kind of a little bit nervous on what the future may look like post high school, but I feel more than prepared to go out into the real world and join the workforce with all the things that I've learned here at SLIP.

- [Brooke] Elijah Anderson is a junior at McKinley Classical Leadership Academy.

And as an aspiring architect, already has an impressive start to his resume.

He spent his past summer interning at L Keeley Companies, the architecture firm behind the new MLS Stadium downtown.

- One of those things that I definitely needed to work on, I would say is being an active listener.

You know, with a simple nod that they aren't losing you along the way in their instructions and making sure that you're not overstaying welcomes in some cases, making sure that you're taking notes, making sure that you're giving yourself enough time to finish projects in the time allotted by your supervisors.

Not only did SLIP teach us those soft skills, but they taught us how to sit down and eat lunch with a supervisor, the proper way to go into an interview, some of the questions asked to go into the interview.

- [Brooke] Time management, active listening, professional pleasantries, those are all soft skills that have been relevant since the creation of the office.

But today the workplace looks a lot different from these films.

- So, speaking of inclusion and diversity and equity in the workplace is one of our major topics.

It's an extensive discussion where we want them to understand that we don't intend for them to be robotic.

However, professionalism looks like them, meaning they can have their natural hair or their particular style of dress, as long as it's in line with the company policies.

And that's what we follow.

- Think about it, I grew up in Mississippi on a farm.

You know, what kind of soft skills do you pick up growing up learning on a farm, you know?

- [Brooke] Sam Bush is the program manager at Emerson.

And while the internship program's biggest challenge is finding employers willing to onboard high school aged students, Sam has had positive experiences mentoring and teaching soft skills.

- I started with an intern like maybe five or six years ago, and we still stay in communication from this day.

And he graduated the SLIP program.

He joined the Marine Corps.

Now he works as a manager somewhere in a warehouse in North Carolina, but we still talk from his day.

- [Brooke] So what are some of those key skills you're looking for in an applicant?

- Yeah, first, you know, you had the technical skill to see if anybody's interested in technology, you know?

The next piece we look for soft skills, like a person can communicate.

You want a person that got good communication skills.

They're sociable.

You know, even if you're on Zoom and nowadays in a Zoom meeting we require people to share their face, so you have to still have those etiquettes, you know, facial expressions, you know, communication, social skills.

You still have to communicate whether I'm talking to you face to face or whether I'm talking to you virtually.

But sometimes you have to develop those people.

You get them in and they might not have those skills, but by the time they leave working with us, they have developed those skills.

- [Brooke] The St. Louis internship program not only benefits the students in their personal career development, but it has a bigger impact on the St. Louis workforce.

As the students share their learnings with peers and family, not to mention the professional contributions some graduates have made to our community.

- St. Louis internship program in our almost 30 year history has a plethora of success stories.

We have interns who started out in 1992 working in the legal field because that's how the program started to now owning their own law firm.

We have engineers.

We have almost judges, not there yet.

We have nurse practitioners.

And I myself, I want to say that I'm happy that I'm the director of this program because I too was an intern.

- A year ago in January of 2021, a young woman by the name of Amanda Gorman read a poem to the crowd at Joe Biden's inauguration.

Some say she stole the show.

Well, we're going to end our show with something that was inspired by that.

Arts and Faith St. Louis commissioned a young local poet, Rachel Aaliyah Jackson and choreographer, Arica Brown, to come up with a special performance.

The poem is entitled "Division," but it's really about unity.

And we thought what they came up with was worth sharing.

- Division makes me think about separate but equal.

Look it up.

Even its sign resembles some type of hierarchy.

Draw it up.

It's repeatedly subtracting black bodies from my city 'cause ever since Michael Brown, STL ain't been too pretty.

It's why you won't listen to this young black woman's voice.

These words fall from my lips.

I call it music.

You call it noise.

But don't pity me because I am the epitome of a life doing a 360.

That's just division.

But life taught me about hope.

Life taught me that St. Louis city ain't got to struggle no more.

Once I gave my heart to Yahweh, he gave me new opportunities.

I'm no longer following y'all's way.

It's God's way.

It's what separated a center from a point guard.

You see the ball is in God's hands.

I'm posted up so he can dish it to me.

Listen to me.

Helping my city is a mission to me in addition to the transition to be the better me expeditiously, focusing on expanding unity in my community, you see?

Division, to be honest, we're more divided than ever, different religions and race.

Hating is truly bringing us together, but I got faith in us.

The first step to building a new foundation is trust.

Hand in hand, one step at a time, we must learn how to love ourselves and forgive the past.

Let's recycle positive energy and throw negativity into the trash.

At last, I must ask, where do you see yourself in five years?

Will you still be the same person or have you overcame your fears?

Let's talk division, but it's all about unity.

I know you hear the repetition in my poem, but sometimes it's hard not to get violent like Malcolm X, man here comes the storming, the Capitol.

After that, I had to take a sabbatical, trying to register all this collateral damage to my country, while I was focusing on school.

Some of my peers thought it was funny, but I'm not here to talk about politics.

I'm here to talk about harmony.

At the time I fell in love with music.

At the Powell Symphony, I watched as the conductor lifted his hands before the music began.

I felt at peace.

His right hand dance, leading the beats of the orchestra.

But it was something about that left hand that made me feel free.

Like Leonard Bernstein, the music moves me.

It was magical, like Carlos Kleiber.

I listened to the harmonies.

I listened to the unison.

I listened to the love.

Even though each instrument was different, it sounded beautiful.

Let's talk about unity.

With my poetry, I want to be the conductor.

I understand that each of y'all is different, but all you have to do is take a second and listen.

Listen to the words that fall from my lips.

Listen to my words that I call music.

Listen to the voices that were once quiet.

Listen to the people and listen to the riots, listen.

(dancers yelling indistinctly) Listen and try to understand each other.

Unity is about accepting our differences.

That's what makes orchestras and symphonies so beautiful.

Despite the division they manage to still come together.

When we come together, we can create harmony.

- And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kirchherr and we'll see you next time.

- [Advertiser] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A Jordan Charitable Trust, and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat jazz music)