- This month on The Spark our theme is "Strong Financial Futures".

We'll learn more about a nonprofit helping families build assets and make better financial choices.

An institute providing treatment to help individuals overcome their gambling problem and a local company that's become the largest marine drayage provider in the nation with a heart for supporting area youth and nonprofits.

We'll also share a special moment from our Spark Awards 2022.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement, and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

- (male announcer) Additional funding for The Spark is provided by ECOP, the Memphis Zoo.

My Town Movers, My Town Roofing, My Town Miracles and by Meritan.

- Have you ever been excited by a new idea?

Inspired by watching someone lead by example?

When we talk about creating change we start by sharing the stories of everyday heroes who are making a difference in their own way so we can learn and do the same.

I'm Jeremy Park and this is The Spark.

They're a nonprofit helping families build assets and make better financial choices.

We're here with the CEO and Co-founder of RISE Memphis, Shelia Terrell.

And Sheila, let's start out, give us some history for RISE Memphis.

- Absolutely, and thank you for having us.

RISE Memphis, formerly the RISE Foundation, has been serving the community of Memphis and Shelby County now for 22 years.

We are an organization who helps people make better decisions of regarding their finances, learning how to save and build assets.

- Why is that so important for our community?

When you talk about financial literacy and making those sort of decisions, why is that so important for us?

- It's important because your finances affects every aspect of your life.

Whether you are trying to get a new apartment, buy a home, buy a car, get a job, get insurance.

Every aspect of your life is impacted by the way that you handle your finances.

And then most importantly, generational wealth.

You must have a plan in order to make sure that you have everything you need but that you have an opportunity to also give back to your family and generations to come.

- Let's dive into the programs because you have programs really specifically designed for different age groups.

You have families and children and seniors.

So go ahead and dive into the programs.

- As you said, we do take a holistic approach to financial education and asset development.

Our first program is the Goal Card Program, G-O-A-L Card Program.

And it's a financial incentive and education program for youth in school grades 5 through 12.

We reward them for their conduct, we reward them for their attendance, and then we also reward them for the improvement in their grades.

And the young people who participate in our Goal Card Program typically do much better than those who are not in the program.

As a matter of fact, for the last few years those who are participating have had a 100% graduation rate from high school.

So we're excited about that.

And then we have the working adults.

We have our Save Up program which is an individual development account program where we combine financial education and also match savings, $2 for every $1 that the program participants save to purchase a home, to purchase post-secondary education, to start a small business and in some cases to purchase a vehicle outright.

And we are really, really excited about that.

And then I have a program for our senior population.

We call that our Silver Neighbors Program.

It's a program where those who are 55-plus are able to participate in learning circles.

So we train seniors to train seniors about finances, asset development, estate planning, anything that's relative to that particular time in life.

We have learning circles once a month for about an hour and all over the city.

And we talk about those issues.

We have a new program that is going to be added to Silver Neighbors where we will be partnering with different organizations to teach seniors digital literacy.

So they'll learn how to use the tablets, how to use computers, how to navigate the internet, those things.

And last but certainly not least, we partner with the Shelby County of Trustees Office to offer our Greater Memphis Financial Empowerment Center.

All of the other programs are income based with the exception of the GMFEC.

And that is an initiative where anybody in the city of Memphis and Shelby County, regardless of your income, may come and meet with a financial counselor for as long as you need to improve your finances.

We've been doing it now, this is year three and we're happy to report that of the about 1200 people that we have served, we have been able to help them to reduce non-mortgage debt to the tune of over $2 million.

- How do things, all these buzzwords that we hear right now things like recession, inflation, how do those impact your efforts?

- We have had a lot of individuals who never inquired about "How do I better manage my money?"

To call RISE and find out, "Hey, I heard about you all from a friend," or "I saw you on TV, or I heard you on the radio.

I need some assistance."

And they realize that there is no shame in needing assistance.

And these are individuals that we serve who are working, most of them fu ll-time and just need a push.

They have never had the benefit of any type of formal financial education.

And to be able to come to an organization that they can trust who has been in the community for over 22 years now, and have caring individuals to say "Let's meet you where you are "and let's find out what your financial goals are.

Let's develop a written plan to get you to those goals."

The inflation, all of those, as you say, buzzwords, they are really real.

People are having to do so much more with the same or sometimes less amount of money.

And we teach them that, "Yes, you do have to make changes, but yes you can accomplish your financial goals."

- How can the community help your efforts?

- The community can help our efforts two ways.

The first is that we are a nonprofit organization and we can always, always, always use additional funding to help us to do the work that we do with our young people, with our working adults, with our senior citizens and support us by calling to see if there are any volunteer opportunities.

We have our largest fundraiser which happens September of every year.

And we have started that process now for September of next year.

You can purchase tickets to our gala which will be September the 21st at the Botanic Gardens.

But mainly giving, we need your assistance to keep helping the citizens in our community.

And what's interesting and what's good about RISE is that the monies that you designate to RISE they stay in our backyard.

- We'll wrap up with where we can go to get involved, learn more about RISE Memphis.

- Absolutely.

You can go to www.risememphis That's risememphis.org and learn about all of our programs.

Or you can also go there to learn about the Greater Memphis Financial Empowerment Center.

You can make an appointment to see us.

You can give us a call and anything that you need to know we will make sure that you have that information to move your family forward.

- Well, Sheila, thank you for all you and your amazing team do.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you for having us.

[upbeat music] - They're providing treatment to help people overcome their gambling problem.

We're here with the director of The Institute for Gambling Education and Research, fondly known as TIGER.

He's also a psychology professor, Dr. Jim Whelan.

And let's start out give us a little background on TIGER, The Institute.

- Yeah, sure, Jeremy.

We started a little over 20 years ago and it was with an individual who presented ourselves in our mental health clinic presenting initially with depression, but it was really about his gambling.

And it was at that time we sort of realized that one, there were probably other people.

This was in the late '90s, and we assumed there had to be other people who were also struggling because of the reach and expansion in gambling.

And then secondly, we realized that there wasn't great guidance from the research on what to do.

So we started TIGER to both deliver services to people who are in need in our community but also to begin to ask research questions that can help researchers and clinicians anywhere.

- So when we're saying TIGER, what does TIGER mean?

- Well, TIGER's an acronym for The Institute of Gambling Education and Research.

It is actually a team of people who we work in the research lab to ask questions that then inform the work we do in the clinic.

It also includes the clinic in which we learn more and more from people about gambling and then helps us ask good questions.

- Talk about how gambling is different than an addiction to like drug and alcohol.

Because there's a strike it rich mentality where it's like there's a little bit of hope in the sense that, "On this next roll I could make money."

So talk about how it's different.

- Nobody takes drugs, goes on a drinking binge thinking they're gonna wake up the next day and all their problems are gonna be solved.

But it is very true.

I mean, we've treated over a thousand gamblers and most of these people believe that "Maybe today is the day that I solve everything."

There are also other elements in addition to the fact there's no substance.

So there's no biological element being in the body that makes substance abuse addictions different.

But they're also characteristics of the behavior that makes a difference.

For example, when we gamble, we tend to chase our losses.

We tend to lose money and then take desperate steps to try to get that money back.

- In terms of the services, the resources, go ahead and talk about how you're able to help, statewide especially.

- So our intervention is really about, it's taking a walk with somebody who's struggling with their gambling.

That's the way I think about it.

It's not making them march to a beat, it's about taking a walk with them and getting them understand one, what exactly their gambling is, how often they go, how much they wager, et cetera, et cetera.

And then help them bring that information back in their lives in order for them to make their own choices, their own decisions about how they wanna move forward.

And then once those decisions are made we help them either nurture new skills or to take existing skills that work in other aspects of their lives and bring it to bear on their gambling behavior.

And as we extend it across the state, we're doing two things.

One is we've opened up a second clinic in East Tennessee.

In the next year or so we might find a good home for one in Middle Tennessee, but we also offer treatment telehealth.

We found over the last couple of years that telehealth seems to be working very well with many of our folks, which is wonderful 'cause now we can extend services into more rural communities.

The other thing we're doing is we're developing this website and that website is going to be about giving again people choices where they're gonna have some online options to start chiseling away about making changes and doing things differently.

- You were recently recognized by the International Center for Responsible Gaming awarding you the 2022 Scientific Achievement Award.

So congratulations there.

- Oh, thanks.

- What does that mean for you but most importantly for TIGER and your efforts in terms of what you're doing in the community?

- What it means for us is it helps us really broadly as a research team, as a clinical team, to understand that across the field, not just in the US, but across the field worldwide, that what we're doing matters.

It's having an impact on people, it's helping folks, it's helping clinicians and researchers improve our knowledge, improve our science, and reduce the number of people harmed by gambling.

- So for those who do need help or want to refer someone to you, what's the process?

- Well, they just need to reach out and call us, send us an email.

We generally, we try to respond same day if it's a workday that we can or Monday morning if it's on a weekend.

But we want anybody, any questions.

If you have a question about a loved one, about yourself, whatever, we're here to be helpful.

We want people to be aware of what the problems are.

- How can the community help?

How can we help you in your efforts?

But also too, I know that you're out and about always sharing this sort of information.

So talk about the ways you plug into the community as well.

- We try to do as many health fairs as we can and if anybody's having a health fair and wants us to be part of it give us a shout and we'll come out to it.

If you would like a speaker, if you're part of a group that would like to have someone come in and talk about gambling and gambling problems, we'll make it happen.

- Wrap up with where we can go to learn more about The Institute for Gambling Education and Research.

- Yeah, well we have a website.

The web address is thegamblingclinic.com and it will be our new web address.

People are also welcome to email us at gambling@memphis.edu or they can call us at 901-678-HELP, H-E-L-P. - Well, Dr. Jim Whelan, thank you for all you and your amazing team do.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks, Jeremy.

Always good to see you.

[upbeat music] - The Spark Awards annually recognize and celebrate individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the community.

The 2022 Education School Award honored the University of Memphis Finish Line Program.

[gentle music] - I am Tracy Robinson, director of Innovative Academic Initiatives at the University of Memphis, and I oversee our Finish Line Program.

The purpose of our Finish Line Program is to help students who got to senior status while they were on their journey to earning a bachelor's degree and stopped attending for whatever reason whether it's money or a job or health of a family member that something just life gets in the way of them earning that degree.

And so we work to help bring those students back and help them finish their degree.

The Finish Line Program was started in 2013, and we have helped almost a thousand students graduate.

The University of Memphis decided to start this program because in 2013 there were some changes to the federal financial rules and we realized how many students were at that graduation point that were affected by this change.

We felt like there was something that we had to do we had to step in and figure out how to help those students get over that literal finish line, that last step.

And so we were very lucky to have a lot of community support and corporate support.

For example, Sedgwick donated $300,000 to us within our first couple of years to establish a scholarship fund so that those students, whether they have three classes to take or seven classes to take, they would be able to tap into that scholarship fund and that would pay for the remainder of their fees until graduation.

The impact is just, it's amazing because it not only changes that student's life, but also their family.

One of our first graduates, Anisha, was a single mom of a two year old daughter and she finished her degree.

And seeing her at graduation and her daughter there with her, her family there celebrating.

But that daughter now knows, even though she was two at the time, knows that college gr aduation is important.

And so it's going to change her perspective about going to college one day as well.

Obviously it helps with graduation numbers for the university, but what I know is that this is a purpose-driven work for the university.

It's when students get that close we've got to do something to help them finish and that's really the impact is, is doing the right thing.

[gentle music] - They're the largest marine drayage provider in the nation with a heart for serving local youth and nonprofits.

We're here with the Chief Marketing Officer with IMC Companies, Katie George Hooser.

And let's start out, over 40 years.

Give us a little history for IMC Companies.

- Thanks Jeremy.

I'm happy to be here.

Thanks for having me.

So IMC Companies was founded in 1982, right here in Memphis with one truck and one driver.

And what we do is move marine containers, that's containers coming off of ships that then go onto the railroad.

We move those to distribution centers across the country.

- Talk about why that's so important for the economy overall here in our nation and obviously locally as well?

- Every import or export that comes into the United States, any materials, they have to be moved by a truck.

And so if an import comes, let's say from China, it's going to go in an ocean ship across the ocean and then we will have a truck meet that ship and transfer that container onto a rail.

And it can go anywhere in the United States.

Memphis is a huge hub, and so in Memphis, our trucks will pick that container up again and we'll deliver it inland.

- Talk about a new headquarters relatively new in Collierville, but also, too, being national managing a team this nationwide.

- Yeah, so we've been in Collierville about a year now a little bit over that and we love being in our new building but IMC is a national company, and so we have more than 40 locations across the United States.

We're in every major port and rail facility in the United States just having trucks and drivers ready to pick up those containers wherever they could go in.

- When you look at economic opportunities, job creation, you on your end handle a large amount of job opportunities.

And so talk about job opportunities, truck drivers, what does that mean for IMC Companies?

- Yeah, so there are just a lot of career opportunities here at IMC.

And so one of the things my group does is we're responsible for recruiting and hiring truck drivers, which is just core to our business.

And so we hire about 140 truck drivers every month here and that's across the country.

And so my team will talk to those drivers on the front end and we'll introduce them with our individual terminals and make sure that there's a good fit before we onboard them on our team.

But there is a truck driver shortage in our country and so it's a big job that we have to do to hire all of those people.

And then I would say also we have a lot of office jobs here too.

So I said 400 people in this Collierville building, we probably have about another 100 here in Memphis.

And so those are all kinds of jobs and maybe people that didn't imagine themselves in logistics, but I think that when you start in this business that for a lot of people it gets very exciting.

It's fast paced, there's always a lot to do.

We've got problems that we're trying to solve to get freight delivered.

And so it's really, it's an exciting career.

Even if you're in IT and you're trying to support us that way, or you're working with our customers, or maybe you're a dispatcher for drivers, there's always a lot of critical thinking and innovation that really has to happen in this space in logistics.

- I think another neat element is when you talk about being a driver, it's a lot of short distances so you could be home with your family at the end of the day.

Talk about why that's important.

- Yeah, I think that being home every day it's not an option for a lot of truck drivers.

Most drivers don't start off their careers that way, but we have drivers that may just stay within a 50-mile radius of Memphis, and they work all day here in the city.

And so you have much more predictable schedules and you can get home to your family every night which for a lot of drivers, especially women can be very important.

- Talk about why community engagement is so important for you and your family, but for IMC Companies overall.

- Yeah, so we've always been engaged in the community here in Memphis, and just have been so blessed to be able to do that more and more over the years.

And so we've got a lot of key partners here in the Memphis community and that's Neighborhood Christian Center.

So last December we had all of our employees buy Christmas gifts for more than a hundred children in Memphis.

And so we donate as a corporation, as IMC, but also it's very fun to watch our employees get out and support too.

We've donated sanitation wipes and we've had a driver from California bring those in and the driver got to be part of that.

And then also people in this building in Collierville, who were going out and distributing those to daycares and that was a lot of fun.

We are a supporter of Palmer Home and that's in the Mississippi community and they provide support to children.

And then Hope Works is another organization that we partner with.

And then the Collierville Education Foundation.

And so those are just a few.

We also try to be supportive of employees, like they all go out and support various initiatives and so we wanna partner with them and just whatever they do and come alongside them to make the Memphis community and then also our more national community a better place to be.

- Give me one more thing that you wish everyone knew about IMC Companies.

- Well, I want everybody to know what drayage is and so that's a big objective of ours and there are even people in our own space that don't know the word drayage.

And so again, it's the movement of import/export containers and we do that all over the US.

It's such a critical job.

Without it, our economy couldn't move and we're just so appreciative of all the men and women especially drivers who pull this freight every day.

- We'll wrap up with where we can go to learn more especially about the job opportunities, all the community engagement with IMC companies.

- Sure, well the easiest way is on our website and it's imcc.com, but we also are on LinkedIn.

Any of our jobs will be posted there.

We've got an Instagram page and Facebook page.

- Well, Katie, thank you for all you and your amazing team do.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks, Jeremy.

[upbeat music] - As we saw in this month's episode building strong financial futures for ourselves, our citizens, and our communities takes a holistic approach that includes everything from education and financial literacy programs to the tools and resources that allow individuals and families to not only sustain but thrive with their money.

It includes workforce readiness training, exposure to new careers and access to job and advancement opportunities.

It includes being proactive and properly reactive when things like emergencies occur and knowing where to turn for help when challenges and problems arise.

That's why we're fortunate to have organizations like RISE Memphis, the University of Memphis Institute for Gambling Education and Research and IMC Companies which are each serving as catalysts to help lift our community, to help our citizens build assets, make better financial choices, get the help they need and to have opportunities for growth and advancement.

As we're building stronger financial futures for our citizens, we're building a stronger and brighter future for our city.

So thank you for watching The Spark.

To learn more about each of the guests, to watch past episodes and to share your stories of others leading by example visit wkno.org and click on the link for The Spark.

We look forward to seeing you next month and we hope you'll continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]