(bright upbeat music) - Lynne Jarman-Johnson connects people through communication.

She's the chief marketing officer for Consumers Credit Union.

She's listed at Forbes Top 50 List of Social Influencers, among other influential awards.

Lynne is known for presentations on the national stage focusing upon serving up digital delights plus serving on multiple boards, and she says she wins a lot.

We'll ask her why.

So, welcome, Lynne, to this addition of "Powerful Women: Let's Talk."

Hi, Lynne.

- Hi, thanks, Shelley, Thanks for having me.

- Gotta look at my note.

You've won a boat, two cars, two furs, jewelry, and a DJ package.

Is this a testament to if you don't enter, you don't win?

- It is, and you know, I like to think karma, think good thoughts all the time when you buy that raffle ticket.

All of these were through charitable donations, you know, where you buy the raffle, it goes to great charity, and for some reason, my ticket gets pulled a lot.

- Wow, next time you come in, wear that fur.

How 'bout that?

(Lynne laughs) Congratulations on, obviously, your success.

That's what this is all about, but I want to know how you got there.

And were you that little third-grader that made connections with your friends?

- You know, I still have all those connections.

Our elementary group is very strong, from South Elementary in Grandville, Michigan, and all the way through junior high, high school, and we still get together.

I think that part of life is enjoying the people that you enjoy, meeting them, connecting with them, and then staying in touch, and it takes a lot of organization and planning, but when you get to be with those that you love on a day-to-day basis, whether that be through work, because family is work, too, the better off every day becomes.

- Hmm, so, describe your personality.

I'm getting a hint of it.

- I think I'm really loud, that I know.

Very joyful.

I'm a joyous person.

It's funny, you know, with the pandemic, it's the first time in my life there's been been anxious moments where you feel a little out of sorts.

My personality has never been that way, so it's been very interesting to self reflect, to dig deep, stay with those friends, you know, like you, Shelley.

Know the people that support you and just continue to hopefully bring joy to others.

- But is loud, does that mean you're a trumpet that just wants to get the word out, that joyful is a good thing, or... - Well, I think it can be.

I mean, I think as a leader, what is the most important thing is is learning what your strengths are, playing to those strengths, but then thinking to yourself, it's time to listen, and sometimes an orchestra leader, you know, needs the loudness of being able to conduct, but an orchestra leader also needs that quiet moment of thinking what comes next.

And when everybody works together, I love to get everybody on a train and I love to have my team reflect not only the values that are so important, but the joy of doing great work.

I'm not who I could be as a chief marketing officer without the best people around me, and that means in work and in life, and I am very blessed to have a team that is just built up to want to win in a great way, but with the most important focus being service, servant leadership to others.

- Hmm.

How did you get to where you are right now?

- Well, I started where you are.

- Ooh, behind the mic.

- Isn't that fun?

I actually was in Michigan State University and I was in line to go to start my telecommunication career.

That's what I wanted to do.

I always saw myself in television.

I thought it way back when.

I've got notes on it, you know, when I was in high school and in junior high, and then I had a tap on my shoulder from a professor who happened to be the dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, and his name was Dr. Ralph, and he said, "I want you out of that line and into the line for communication," and I looked at him.

He goes, "You'll always be able to learn the technology, but what you really need to learn is the heart, how to public speak, how to write, how to perform."

And so that really started my journey that got me to have boldness in what I do, ask for things.

So, I started as an intern at WOOD-TV, stayed there for many years, and not only in executive producing for the news, but then also became Public Affairs Director, which led me to meeting so many amazing board of directors and executive leaders in our community that do just unbelievable work here.

And so I started my own business, kaboom, and then had a tap on my shoulder about 10 years ago from Consumers Credit Union saying, you know, we'd love to talk about working together, and it's just been the most wonderful ride for me.

- So, beware the tap of the shoulder in a good way.

I want to get balance into our conversation, because the fine print, you have a loving relationship with a husband, I think he was from high school, and six kids.

- Yeah.

Kindergarten, Shelley.

- [Shelley] Kindergarten?

- Isn't that funny?

- [Shelley] It's working.

- And it, you know what?

We have raised six extremely independent, beautiful children that are now living in four different states.

We have two grandkids with a third on the way right now, and I can tell you that the most important thing on balance was that we did it together, and that clients of mine who knew that we were raising these six children, some of them who are now my best friends, knew I had six kids and, you know, something, if the phone rang, you know, Rob or I would be there for them.

We wouldn't miss hockey.

We wouldn't miss plays, choir, all the things that help build them into rounded people that are just delightful to be with, and I think what I'm most proud of is every one of them has such a unique, individual personality with different beliefs, and yet we love and we love big.

- Hmm, isn't one a police officer?

- Yeah.

- Yes, yes.

- Kelsey's a police officer here in Wyoming.

She's a canine police officer.

Just a tremendous talent.

- Do you need to recharge?

Where do you go to continue your energy and or your zest for life, that's obvious?

- I think for me, it has to be seeing outdoors.

I'm not even gonna say being outdoors as much right now, just because everything that's happening, and for a while, we were stuck inside, you know, but then everybody said, oh, go outside.

It's being able to see the sky and water, to feel, you know, if you go to a park like Millennium Park and you walk through a pathway, just listening and stopping to hear that recharges me in a heartbeat, and the same can be true for just looking out a window and stopping for a moment.

You know, it was funny.

We were on vacation, and- - So, you take vacations.

- Oh, I take vacations.

- Okay.

All right.

- Vacations are like, yeah, you gotta go.

We were on vacation, and all of a sudden the room had been dark, and then it turned gold.

And what can you do in that moment?

You know, you can stay doing what it is that you're focused on, but for me, it was an immediate I needed to see what had turned this world gold, and it was the most beautiful sunset I'd ever seen.

And if you've got your head down or your head in your phone, you miss those things, and that's recharging (snaps) just like that, for me.

- You mentioned customer service.

Let me bring this down to the wedding cake philosophy that you have.

- This is so much fun.

So, you know what a wedding cake is, birthday cake, cupcake, Ho Ho.

So, in marketing, everybody, and this is true, everyone is a marketer.

Everyone is great in PR.

People have wonderful creative ideas.

What happens a lot of times is all of a sudden, if you're working on a campaign, let's say, so, I'm blessed enough to help people with financial education every day at Consumers Credit Union, and so let's say we're working on a campaign to help somebody get into their new house.

Well, if, all of a sudden you, you know how you see like a T-shirt and there's a thousand little logos on the back of a T-shirt?

But then you have the big one?

Okay, that's a wedding cake.

A wedding cake is everybody's gonna know about it internally, externally.

This marketing piece that we're going to do is a wedding cake.

Now, then you might have birthday cakes, so birthday cakes might not get every single tool that you have in your arsenal, but they're really important.

Cupcakes are just great tasty bites.

It might be a lot of social media.

And then there's the Ho Ho, which, to me is the sweetest.

(laughs) And that might just be one little Facebook post that blows up or a TikTok video that you do.

It might not be part of a big campaign, so when you say to somebody, they say, hey, you know, man, I really want this as a wedding cake.

What you've done is you've taught everybody to be on the same page with what something will become when it becomes a campaign for your organization.

It just is communication at its best because it helps people really understand, oh, I'm gonna get it all.

Or, oh, I really like this part of what I'm going to get, or they can then say to you, but can't I get a wedding cake?

And you might serve that up.

- Didn't know they still had Ho Hos, but that's okay.

I'll put them on the list.

Speaking of weddings, kindergarten with that man of yours?

- Yeah, kindergarten, yeah, we did.

We went through, you know, all the way through Grandville High School.

He went to Central for a year and I went to Michigan State right off the bat.

Then he came to State, and I think that's what really helped us was all of our friends connected and still have, you know, and we meet new friends in work, it's just a really neat way to know that, you know, you're comfortable with each other and you're comfortable sharing, you know, the friendships and the colleagues that you have, but I can tell you that family really is it.

You know?

I mean, he comes from a very big family that is very important to us, and on my side, the same.

So, for us, it was always a joy.

You know, I can see my sister-in-law when I was a safety in fifth grade and she was in second grade and she skipped across the road yelling, ♪ You like Robbie Johnson ♪ (laughing) And there's my sister-in-law who I'm best friends with today.

- Do your kids know about this pattern?

- Oh yeah.

I've told my, well, Kelsey's married to her high school sweetheart, so that worked out great, and they all have wonderful.

We absolutely love every person that is in their lives and we've got engagements and we've got a, you know, a new baby coming, and life just gets bigger and bolder.

- Yes, but yet look at the power you have in our community.

How about that children's book that you've written?

- Okay, this is the first time I'm really talking about it.

Shelley, because I signed the- - Breaking news.

- I know.

It's breaking news.

I did sign the agreement with the publisher, and when my granddaughter was born six years ago, I was in the parking lot and wrote the first line, the title, and the first two stanzas of the book, and it's called "Our Dearest Sweet Pea, What Will You Be?"

And then when our second was born, our second grandchild, I dusted it off and said, you know, this is something.

I really like it, and so kept writing it.

COVID hit, and I went, yeah, we're gonna finish this and we're going to dedicate it to all the grandkids-to-be.

My daughter is a graphic illustrator.

She's an unbelievable talent.

She graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design, so she'll be the illustrator on it, and it'll come out the end of the year.

- [Shelley] Again, using family to- - Family, yeah.

- To further.

Name your children's book one more time.

- "Our Dearest Sweet Pea, What Will You Be?"

And it will come out at the end of the year.

- Got a whole ahead of us.

Lynne Jarman-Johnson, thank you for this conversation on this edition of Powerful Women: Let's Talk."

- Thank you, Shelley.

Powerful, you are.

- Thanks to you for watching and listening.

(bright upbeat music) - Hello, everyone.

It is time for "Powerful Women: Let's Talk."

Thanks so much for joining us today.

I'm Jennifer Moss.

It is a pleasure to bring you today's powerful woman.

As chief executive officer of Feeding America, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot oversees the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization and second-largest U.S. charity.

A Louisiana native, Claire has been entrusted with the leadership of teams for nearly three decades, and prior to joining Feeding America, Claire spent 13 years as part of Walmart's leadership team, with her recent role being executive vice president and global treasurer, and so we're so glad to welcome you, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, to "Powerful Women: Let's Talk."

Thanks so much for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- You know, we're glad to welcome you.

We wanted to talk to you initially during Black History Month as we look at all your achievements, but the work that you do stands out any time of the year.

So, again, we thank you for joining us.

You've had quite an accomplished career, so first tell us about the work that you do with Feeding America.

We all know that hunger remains a huge issue in America.

In fact, during the pandemic, your office reports that about 60 million people turned to Feeding America in 2020, putting a spotlight, of course, on the need there.

Hunger, still critical in America?

I'm surely guessing it is.

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, that's absolutely true.

So, as CEO of Feeding America, it's my privilege to serve as part of a vast network.

I often say that we are wherever hunger is, and unfortunately, every county, every parish, that's that Babineaux-Fontenot coming out in me, across this nation and Puerto Rico, no matter how rich or how poor, every single one has people struggling with the weight of food insecurity inside of it, so we serve this whole country, and one of the things that we're really proud to be a part of is ensuring that people get access to the food that they need.

And so many people can't do it alone, so we're there in partnership with communities.

During the pandemic, since the beginning of the pandemic, our estimates are that we provided 10.7 billion meals.

10.7 billion meals.

- Wow.

- So, I get to be a part of that along with over 200 food banks, over 60,000 agency partners, millions of volunteers across the country.

It has been a huge privilege to get to serve, especially right now.

It feels, even, I don't know, even more powerful for me to play on the word powerful, that I get to be a part of this network right now, so.

- Absolutely.

You know, I've done a number of stories over the years on those who may have ended up needing help from a food bank.

Is there still perhaps sort of a misperception of sorts of just who might need help from a food bank?

You know, who they actually serve, especially in lieu of and during the pandemic.

A lot of people misplaced and, you know, needing services they didn't require before.

- Yeah, one of the big issues I think we've had in this country has been around misperceptions around hunger.

As I mentioned before, even the richest counties in this country have people who are food insecure inside of them, and for a very long time.

So, people fail to identify that, oh, you have to look to distant shores to find people struggling with hunger or food insecurity.

It's simply not true, and it's been true here for very long time.

Tens of millions of people, around 10% of our population has struggled with food insecurity consistently for many decades.

It peaked during the 2008 economic downturn to almost 15% of our population.

So, a lot of hunger all around.

Hunger looks like you.

Hunger looks like me.

Hunger could be you.

Hunger could be me.

That's one of the things we learned in the pandemic, by the way, is what if all of a sudden out of the blue, you didn't have a job and you're in a two-income family and your partner didn't have a job, either?

Would you need to get in that line?

How long would it take for you to get in that line?

So, hunger is us, and we together, though, can do something about it.

So, I'm glad I get to be a part of an organization that's focused on making sure that that line gets shorter and shorter every day and every year.

- Absolutely.

You've had a lot of work to do.

You led a transformational team and a change building a diverse group of female leaders.

What did you do?

And what does that look like?

- Yeah.

So, every place I've ever worked, so, you gave that intro, and I was thinking about all the places that I worked before.

They were less diverse when I joined than they were once I was here, and I think that's part of my responsibility.

And, of course, they were more successful after they were more diverse, so I'm very focused on ensuring that our goals are achieved.

I know that goals are more likely to be achieved if you bring diverse voices to the table, people with unique experiences.

They get to weigh in on these thorny issues together.

You'll be more successful, and it's proved true every place that I've been, and it certainly has proved true here at Feeding America.

We have extraordinary leadership here and extraordinarily diverse leadership, and many of the leaders on this team are powerful women who are using their power in service to communities, so it's a lot of fun to watch, honestly.

It's gratifying to watch.

We prove out every day the power of diversity.

- And that is, of course, huge.

And so through Feeding America and perhaps beyond, do you believe that you can maybe put an end or at least a huge dent in the hunger crisis in America?

- Oh, absolutely.

I know that we can, because some of it just doesn't make sense.

I give you, you know, you talked earlier in the intro about my background, and I say I used to do numbers for a living, right?

So, I was a treasurer at Fortune 1.

So, let me give you a math problem.

About 72 billion pounds of perfectly edible food go to landfills every year, not counting household waste, which some estimate at 40%, but don't even count that.

72 billion pounds of perfectly edible food go to landfills while tens of millions of people are food insecure.

The math just doesn't make sense.

Food insecurity in this country doesn't make sense, so of course we could do something about it.

We have to first know it's real.

I think the pandemic helped us to know it's real.

And then we have to decide it's unacceptable.

And then together, this country can do anything it decides.

We went to the moon.

Remember that?

- Absolutely.

- We went to the moon.

If we can go to the moon, we can solve hunger.

- Absolutely, because it doesn't have to be.

I mean, the bottom line is it doesn't have to exist, really, right?

- It does not.

That is exactly right.

It does not.

We choose for it to exist.

We could choose for it not to.

Absolutely.

- So, let's talk about Claire.

You have had held many positions in a number of companies, and we often ask our powerful women interviewees, have there been any barriers, and this is more on the personal side of Claire when I say that, that you've encountered along the way?

You know, any obstacles, perhaps, that you have faced on your career's journey?

- Oh, absolutely.

One of the things that when I meet other women who have achieved some success in the conventional senses of it, if you've matriculated up in organizations, there's some things that we must have in common, right?

If you're a woman of color, then there's some other stuff we must have in common.

So, absolutely, there've been barriers.

I chose, or it chose me, maybe.

I've always had a head for numbers.

I say, I have a head for numbers and a heart for people, so I chose areas that were so unconventional for people like me, and there were obstacles to people taking me seriously in those spaces.

In the law, I chose tax, and tax, really?

Tax?

And I found people struggled with the idea that I would be competent in such a highly technical space, and I believe that the fact that I was Black had something to do with it.

When I had opportunities to lead teams, I was young when I had my first opportunities to lead teams, my youth was considered a barrier.

Surely, surely she won't be able to have command and she won't be able to lead people.

My being a woman, I believe, was a barrier in that, as well, or perceived as barrier by other people.

Well, she won't have what it takes to do the hard stuff.

Young people deal with hard stuff and do hard stuff.

Women deal with hard stuff and do hard stuff.

Black people deal with hard stuff and do hard stuff.

- Absolutely.

- I happened to be all of those at the same time for a while.

I'm no longer young.

I'm no longer young.

- Oh, you can claim it.

Yes, you are.

Yes, you are.

- Well, all right, there we go.

Young at heart.

- You claim that.

- Okay, yeah, I will hold on to it, then.

But those are things that definitely were obstacles and there were times when they were overt obstacles where people actually told me things about, like, I've never reported to a woman before, so you're gonna have to be patient with me when I don't quite understand your language.

- Oh, you're going to have to be patient.

- I'm gonna have to be patient.

- The onus is on you, of course.

- Well, you don't understand my language.

Okay, so I'm speaking a foreign tongue when I speak woman in the workplace.

So, of course, I had those things happen, but more often than not, I also had extraordinary people who saw things in me that sometimes I didn't even see in myself.

- And you know, that is the whole point behind, part of that is the point behind "Powerful Women," to share those stories, to share the fact that you had obstacles and those types of things.

So many women face those things and other women then are encouraged, you know?

Just like you were encouraged by some of those that you came across, as well.

So, tell me, this is one of my favorite questions.

It's so easy breezy, but what is it that makes you laugh?

You know, we all need a good laugh.

They say it's good for the soul.

What makes you laugh?

- There's a who makes me laugh.

- Okay, that works, too.

- My husband makes me laugh out loud and double over.

We've been married for 33-1/2 years now.

- Oh, wonderful.

- And he knows me, too.

He knows me so well.

And so there, you know when you're with somebody for all that time, we started dating when we were teenagers, and we've been together for so long that we have all of this shared history.

So, inside of a moment that wouldn't be funny at all to anybody else, he can make it hilarious for me, right?

And sometimes it's just a look that he gives me, you know, the side-eye, or he'll say one word, or he'll just go, hmm, and then I'll burst out laughing, and he gets me, I double over.

And in my work, I've done hard work, as has he, but in my hard work, when I have a hard day, he knows when I've had a hard day, like, my husband even knows I get migraines from time to time, and he tells me in advance, Claire, are you gonna, do you want me to get the medicine?

I'm like, what?

what are you talking about?

He's like, Claire, you know you're about to have a migraine.

I'm like, he is so in tune with me that he even notices in advance of the migraine that I've got that little thing that happens before the migraine happens.

- Boy, I tell you, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, I really enjoyed this conversation today.

It is so nice meeting you, via Zoom, of course, but it is just so, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule, I know, to talk with us.

- Oh, I am honored that you would talk with me.

Thank you so much.

- Well, you are enlightening as a powerful woman, so I'm glad we had a chance to talk.

And I wanna thank all of our audience for joining us for another addition of "Powerful Women: Let's Talk."

Till next time.

(bright upbeat music)