(twinkly music) (funky music) - Hello everyone, I'm Rameca Vincent Leary and welcome to this edition of "Connecting the Community".

It's a think outside the box organization that's both inspirational and infectious.

I'm talking about Studer Community Institute.

Folks, there are so many facets attributed to this top notch, nonprofit organization which strives to improve the quality of life for all people in the diverse communities it serves.

This also encompasses creating a vibrant place to live, work and play.

Throughout the program, you'll learn about the various facets of Studer Community Institute while also hearing from several people and organizations who work collaboratively with it.

To start the conversation I'm happy to welcome Rachael Gillette.

President of Studer Community Institute.

She's joined by two colleagues, Frency Moore, Early Brain Development program manager and advocate and Donte Sheppard Early Brain Development program manager.

Welcome to all of you.

How are you feeling?

Good.

- We're feeling well.

Thank you, thank you for having us.

- Glad to be here Rameca.

- Happy to be on the show.

- So glad to have all of you.

Now Rachael, we must talk about the brainchild behind Studer Community Institute, Quint Studer.

- [Rachael] The boss.

- Yes, tell us about the boss.

- The one that I'm.

Yes, gosh.

Quint is amazing, Rishy too, his wife of course.

I came here 20 years ago and started watching what they were doing in the community.

They had this vision of wanting to improve the quality of life for people and Quint, with a background in healthcare was all about measurings.

Was all about understanding what the real metrics were behind making a community great.

And so he studied that to get to the bottom of it and found out in our community what we needed to do to practically make it better and that was sort of the brainchild of the Institute doing the research and then having found out really, we created a dashboard that lives on our website.

- Okay.

- Of 16 different metrics that we measure.

Continually, each year and to see how we're doing.

To see if we're improving or whether we're sliding backwards and with the Institute, we focused on three things and that's really things that Quint and Rishy have been passionate about.

Children, and making sure that we give them the best outcome in life.

We're focusing on jobs and helping businesses grow and to create jobs for people and the community overall.

Quint wanted to look around the country and see what other communities were doing and being able to bring those experts here to study them.

- So when was it formed?

- So the brainchild started around 2014 and that's when I was getting involved with Quint and seeing what he was doing and I just, I was like, "I want to work with Quint.

"I don't care what it is but I want to be part of that."

So we really got started in 2015.

Got incorporated in 2016 as a nonprofit.

- Wonderful and we'll be back with you in just a moment.

Frency, first of all I love your name.

- Thank you.

- We're talking about brains aren't we?

- Yes.

- Educate our viewing audience, what is a Brain Bag?

I'm curious.

- So that was our very first program that we put together for the Early Brain Development section of Studer Community Institute.

It was actually funded by Impact100 the first year that it became a thing and we are in every local hospital, Sacred Heart, Baptist, HCA, formerly known as West Florida Hospital and now Santa Rosa Medical.

So that's over 5000 births in our area and the Brain Bag is basically a resource bag that has content inside that educates and encourages parents about early brain development and the effects that it has on the child's academic life.

- And I know we have some great images that our viewers will see and that, of course I'm heading over to your corner Donte Sheppard.

You and I have a little bit of a history.

- Yes, we do.

- Don't we?

So Donte was an employee at Pensacola State College but both you and I served on Doctor Meadows' who's the President of Pensacola State College, the President's Leadership Institute and throughout those times, we were always assigned specific books to read.

Now when you and I were in our class together, we had a, going to say, potpourri of options but one of my favorite books is this one.

Yes.

"Busy Leader's" and let me tell you what a busy leader can do with this handbook if they're in a crisis situation.

They can go to this book, they can flip through it and find a solution to that problem but one thing I want to stress to everyone out there, Quint Studer's books and this is just one of them.

My favorite is one of his, I'm going to say older publications, "Hardwiring Excellence" where he talked about rounding in hospitals and caring about people.

He has really influenced my life tremendously but even far reaching, here at Pensacola State College, we're taking the foundation that he has set through his publications and other initiatives and implementing them year after year and he's also spoken to our President's Leadership Institute class.

So thank you so much Mr. Quint Studer.

We appreciate it.

But let me segue into something else.

I happen to be gleaning through social media and I see this guy holding a suitcase.

He's got these shades on and like my father would say, cleaner than the Board of Health.

You're holding this suitcase, tell us what that was all about.

- Well that was the Kia AutoSport donation to our Light Up Learning program.

We had a Light Up Learning event and at that event we gave away $10,000 provided by Kia AutoSport.

It was an incredible, and I really enjoy being the poster boy, I guess you could say.

- Poster guy, yes.

He's a great representative.

- Of that event.

A lot of people were saying I was looking like the Blues Brothers but I enjoyed it.

I was able to clean up and really just show people that our program was worth investing into and donating to so we could have more success and more impact in our community.

- Now I must add, because you have a lot to do with Basic Insight's text messaging service.

I know that you've probably informed the audience using various forms of media, per se, but tell us about this.

Because this is so impacting and when we discussed earlier in the green room about it I was just so emotionally overtaken.

So tell us about that.

- Rameca, you know a lot of people spend a lot of time on their cellphones.

So it's a direct opportunity for us to get information to parents and caregivers, to give them an opportunity to interact with their children on a day to day basis that's gonna help them develop their brain and so we encourage them through five different principles.

One is maximizing love and managing stress.

This is encouraging our parents to be emotionally present with their children, to make sure that they have a good emotional health.

The next is to talk, sing and point.

Now I'm not gonna sing Rameca.

- But you can sing.

- I can.

But I'm not going to sing.

But it is really important.

According to Doctor Dana Suskind, she wrote a book "30 Million Words" and she really emphasized the importance of us talking more to our children.

The more you talk, the better and so we want to encourage those parents to do that as well.

The third principle is count, group and compare.

When I was in teaching, a teacher in high school, many of my students didn't like math.

- Yeah.

- Well you know, maybe because no one introduced math to them in a fun, fulfilled way.

- Exciting.

- In an exciting way, yes.

So we want to make sure that students know that, that our children know that and so those parents are encouraged to do counting activities with their children as well.

On a day to day basis.

Number four is explore through movement and play.

Going outside is fun but it also should be educational and so parents can teach their children things while they're outside playing as well.

- Yes.

- And it's good for their health too and then our last principle is reading and discussing stories.

One of the greatest moments that parents can have with their children is at night when they're reading that book with them.

It's a great opportunity for them to bond and get close to each other.

So we want to encourage parents to do that on a more regular basis.

It does develop their child's knowledge, their ability to reason and then most of all, their literacy skills.

- And I would love for you to be a teacher of mine.

All those little kids running around.

I want Donte Sheppard as my teacher.

- Right, yeah.

- Right, Rachael?

- My sister probably wouldn't agree.

- So Rachael, we are going to have you discuss Building Brains, Building Jobs and building community but before we do all of that, for our viewers, we have a Building Brains video that we would like to share with you right now.

- I was learning that, he got a little more of the energy and the love and all that because I was learning, it's not just school that teaches them.

They learn at home as well.

- Just seeing how the group has connected through hospitals, employers, Wahoo Stadium and really tried to bring it in to the fabric of this community, I think is really what gives it so much legs and I'm excited to see what happens in the next three to five years.

- Rachael, I'm excited to see what happens in the next three to five Years.

So why don't you give us an overview of these three facets?

- Yeah for sure.

I mean we did the research to find out this early brain development was so important to the outcomes of children and nobody else was in that area.

So educating the parents in the hospital, when they've had the baby.

We get to them right away with the Brain Bag that Frency's talked about and the video.

And then we follow up with the Basics Insights and the text messaging service so they can keep knowing and we hope that's really gonna help the children in our community do well at school, hopefully graduate from high school and then because we have our other section, Building Jobs, we hope that our community has good, local businesses where we want the brightest and the best to stay.

We were losing talent to other communities and so it was important to us to make a community where children would stay, would not go and leave to go to other jobs.

So that's what Building Jobs is all about and you have the Busy Leader handbook right there.

- Oh yes, we love it.

We love it.

- And so we put on all kinds of symposiums.

I know we'll be talking about that later in more detail.

But conferences, workshops to train our leaders, supervisors how to be better.

And the goal with that is just to help the businesses grow revenue so they can add jobs.

And then that ties into the third piece which is all about the community and when we did that research in the early days, there was these 16 things that I've talked about.

Things like crime and homelessness and health and all these different things.

So we brought in experts from all around the country and in fact the world.

We brought somebody in from Denmark to talk about bikeability and we talk about connectivity and walkability and we talk about safety and crime and all those things.

So Quint brings in the experts and we have what we call CivicCon.

I'm excited to.

- We'll get to that in a little bit.

- In detail.

But that's free to the public and we share insights and then the goal with that is that we're raising the civic IQ of members of the community so they can advocate on their behalf.

Whether it's at their Neighborhood Association or city or county meetings to make position change happen like we say in our mission.

- Well I know I'm excited Frency.

Let's talk about Sibling Brain Builders.

- Yeah, that's actually my favorite program out of the whole entire early brain development section of SCI.

Personally, because I was a teacher for 10 years before joining SCI.

But Sibling Brain Builder, we identify Title 1 schools, elementary schools in our area and we go out there and we get to meet the media specialists in the schools.

We get to meet the fourth and fifth grade teachers and we identify children in the community that have younger siblings at home.

So from then, we send picture books home.

We send educational materials and we encourage them to read to their younger child.

The first idea was to expose the younger child to more words right?

Like Donte mentioned earlier, we want to make sure our children, they are exposed to 45 million words by the age of five.

So that was the initial thought on that program.

What we found though is that the children that were going home and reading to their younger siblings, became more proficient readers.

So now we kill two birds with one stone.

- Yes.

- So we're, during COVID we had to back up a little bit because the public schools weren't taking volunteers but now we're back in full force and we're currently in five schools.

So I'm excited to see, they've taken their reading proficiency tests in the beginning of the year and we're providing them with the picture books, so I'm excited to see the results at the end of the year.

- Oh, that is so profound.

All right, Donte.

Parent outreach, you're the perfect person for that.

- Well when I heard about the parent outreach program before I joined SCI, I was really thrilled to have an opportunity to be a part of it.

Just because I grew up in the area housing here.

So to have an opportunity to go back and assist our parents with information, support and reminders.

Meaning that text messaging system that's going to help them.

We provide a 16-week program where we go over some tips that is going to assist our parents in being more effective and brain development for their children.

We've had great success.

One of our programs that's been really great is the program in Marino Court.

That program has seen over 200 parents within that program and it's done really well.

But we're looking to expand that program moving forward.

Really looking at Gonzalez Court, Alex Court and also Morris Court and Miss Shirley Henderson, the director over the area housing is really supportive and instrumental in making sure that we have the support that we need to help our parents in the area housing.

- So we're in the video.

That was Denisha.

He was one of the ladies in the program and she was so dedicated to it.

She came every week and in fact, her child that we saw in that video too graduated almost at the top of his kindergarten class.

- [Rameca] Wow, yeah.

- And he was delighted and she was delighted and that was just for us seeing that in action and seeing the outcome with that child and the success.

So we're just so determined.

Donte's gonna do an amazing job and get back in there and keep up the good work.

- Of course, he's a champion.

All right, Rachael.

The Early Learning City.

If I had a golden ticket, I'd be the first one in line.

So why don't you tell us about that.

- Yeah, because it takes a whole community.

Studer Community Institute is doing this work.

We're going out there, we're making a difference but to make a real impact like we want to, it takes everybody.

So the key is that we want to do as much education as possible so that whether you're a business owner, whether you have children or not, to understand that it's important that we're all in this together and there's things that we can all do to help the outcomes.

So we're hoping to be able to get funding to do an education campaign for the entire community so that, not everybody knows that the most important time in a child's life is that zero to five and that's when 95% of a child's brain is formed and all of those synapses and connections and the ability for the child to learn.

So we have to educate the community.

So we're really focused on fundraising to do that.

Wanting to bring in, this is something that Donte is going to be focused on a lot.

Other institutions.

- Yes.

- Businesses, churches, barber shops, supermarkets.

Whoever.

- Schools.

- Schools.

- Right?

- And they can be part of it by having materials on early brain and the importance of it.

By having, we have these beautiful decals that we can put outside and they have hopscotch and numbers and colors and we have them at the Wahoo Stadium and I have a little five-year-old granddaughter and she hops up those steps and she has been doing it since she was like two and now she's five and she's, one, two, three, four, five and she's doing her letters and her numbers and her colors and that's learning in the environment.

So we want this whole community to be an Early Learning City and that was something Dana Suskind you saw on that little piece of video.

She was kind of the researcher that has provide all these longitudinal studies about how important this work is that we're doing and she was the one who was like, "You guys could be the first Early Learning City."

And so that's what we're really spearheading and hoping the community, and everybody watching us will join.

So basically a city, where everywhere you looked, there was a reminder.

- And what about a sensory learning garden Frency?

- Yes so those.

That's one of the elements of an Early Learning City which would be children learn by counting and singing and playing, but they also learn by being outside.

And what we found in our data is that children are not going outside and they're not touching natural materials, they're not climbing trees, they're not touching sand.

So these early learning gardens are an incentive for families to go outside and touch natural materials and develop the fine motor skills that they're missing.

We currently have three early learning gardens in our community.

Two in area housing and one downtown.

But we're hoping to implement them other places in the community.

- And Donte, as we end this segment, you're such a dynamic person.

Why don't you look into the camera and provide some words of wisdom for anyone out there who is striving to attain a goal?

Help them, if you will.

A few words.

Yeah just go ahead.

- Right here?

- Yeah.

- Just go ahead and look.

Just go ahead and look.

- Well, every goal comes with actions and so as you have a thought about what you want to do, make sure that you write them down and then make sure that you write down the steps or the actions that it's going to take for you to accomplish that goal.

Surround yourself around people who are gonna support you because there are gonna come times where you feel like you cannot achieve your goal but if they're in your corner, you can do it.

Make sure that you just pursue that goal, fearlessly and it'll happen.

- Sound advice.

Many thanks to all of you.

And Rachael, I believe you're going to be sticking around.

Thank you all oh so very much.

Folks, as we head to break to delve deeper into the many facets of Studer Community Institute, including Building Brains.

Log onto the website, www.studeri.org.

We'll be right back.

(funky music) Hello everyone.

We're shifting our focus to Building Jobs.

Such a hot topic of discussion.

It's a pleasure to welcome back Rachael Gillette, President of Studer Community Institute.

We also have Andrew Rothfeder, founder of Rothfeder Real Estate and he's joined by Nikki Cummings, an entrepreneur and growth advisor who serves as a Studer Community Institute mentor.

And last but not least, rounding out the segment, it's a pleasure to welcome a friend and trailblazer, Lloyd Reshard.

Kukua Institute Board Chair and he also serves as a Studer Community Institute mentor.

Welcome to all of you.

Rachael, so good to see your smiling face.

Once again, let's delve right into it regarding why should we build jobs?

- Well I mentioned it in the last segment.

It's about keeping our talent home.

Prior to being with the Institute, I was with Pensacola Young Professionals and one of the big things that we realized then was that we were losing talent to other communities.

So we needed to make sure that there was jobs available in this community for them and we've seen Pensacola transform over the last 20 years.

When I came here 20 years ago, it didn't look like it does now and it's due to a lot of investment by Quint and Rishy and others now in downtown and then it's growing out.

But investing in those businesses and helping them, giving them the skills that they need to be successful and then being able to attract more businesses and keeping those important talent, young people, here in the community and that makes the community even more vibrant.

- Oh yes it does and you're vibrant as well.

All right, Andrew.

Leadership training, I know you could talk for weeks on that but why don't you give us a snippet?

- Well it's pretty amazing.

The amount and the type of training that's available through Studer Community Institute.

I mean, it's the type of thing you typically only find in big cities or available online but the programming, I mean it's funny to me how, somehow we've termed the technical abilities in our jobs as the hard skills and then leadership and management as the soft skills.

In my experiences, it's just the opposite.

The technical stuff I do, you know, at some point you can do in your sleep.

This is the hard stuff.

How to lead people, how to manage people.

And you know, the symposiums that SEI has.

They range from how to run an effective meeting or how to round on employees, what people's communication styles are, goalsetting.

It just goes on and on about the programming that's available.

It's incredible.

- All right, I'll be back with you shortly.

Nikki, beautiful lady over here.

Entrepreneur programs, tell us about those please.

- So I've been involved with the VMS program for about a year and a half.

I was new to the area.

My husband and I are both retired entrepreneurs.

I mean, who's ever really a retired entrepreneur right?

But we wanted to get involved in the local community and we got tapped into the VMS program and we have been so impressed with the results and the quality of mentors and the quality of mentees that are involved in the program.

So right now, we have about 27 businesses who are actively involved in receiving mentorship through the program.

It's a very structured, organized program that really delivers results.

They've had over 74 jobs that were created between all of our collective mentee businesses last year alone and over 100% monthly revenue increases as a result of these entrepreneurs chasing their dreams, living that spirit and digging in to do the work and the people guiding them along the way.

- So you mentioned VMS, Venture Mentoring Service.

- Yes.

- Tell us more about that.

- So basically they, it's such a popular program that we can only take applicants certain times throughout the year and it's growing every year.

They're getting more and more mentors.

So that we can serve more and more mentees but you go through an application process.

You come and you present to local entrepreneurs, folks who have been given much and now they're ready to give back and so the mentors are just incredible.

Spanning finance, real estate, legal, business.

Just tons of skills.

Human resources.

Just whatever a young startup or new organization could need and we're super diverse as far as the ownership of the businesses.

We have minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, LGBTQ businesses.

It's just incredible being a part of the organization getting to serve so many people.

- And I'll tell you, we got started with that because we were providing this training for existing businesses and we realized it was hard for entrepreneurs to get started in our community.

Like Nikki and buddy.

- Yes.

- They were just kind of getting lost and so we mapped the entrepreneurial ecosystem which Lloyd was involved in and realized that this type of program which is actually out of MIT.

- Yes.

- Again, we want to make sure we do everything with excellence and so we brought that MIT program, the Venture Mentoring Service to Pensacola and like Nikki said, we've had tremendous results.

- Yes, and Nikki honestly, everyone loves a great success story and we have a surprise for you folks.

We're going to share one from Dr. Justine Roper, take a look.

- I prided myself on not crying in every single meeting after awhile because I was like, ah.

At first it was just so overwhelming to me in a good way to have such support.

So I feel like I'm 10 times better as a business owner.

10 times better as a semi accountant.

Of keeping my books.

10 times better administrator.

So better, better, better overall.

- All right, Lloyd.

Better overall, you've heard that quite a bit haven't you?

Let's talk about how you have partnered with Studer Community Institute.

- Yes, I've been involved with the Studer Community Institute, with the corporate programs and I was fortunate.

I actually won a year worth of free training.

I got to attend a lot of different workshops and so learned how to pitch from a startup through the program and I also participated in the, what used to be called a CEO roundtable which is now, I think it's the Accelerate program?

- Accelerate roundtable, yeah.

- Yeah, so that was very impactful and the main thing about that, I think a lot of people may not realize is through Quint's businesses, he developed a set of best practices and then he shares them with entrepreneurs so they don't have to reinvent the wheel on that.

So I've benefited from that a lot and now working with the VMS program, it's a different kind of mentoring program where you have four to five mentors as opposed to one mentor.

- That's good.

- Yeah.

So you get a variety of businesses and they definitely need help.

- And you're there to impart that knowledge aren't you?

- Yes, yes.

- Honestly, wonderful things that Studer Community Institute is doing.

Rachael, back to you.

Let's focus on leadership training.

- Yeah I mean it's like Andrew said.

Oftentimes these entrepreneurs get started.

They have the technical skills and the passion for what they do but nobody's ever given them the business skills or the leadership skills or even how to hire somebody and like Lloyd said, Quint had developed all of these best practices over many, many years on how to do it effectively.

So we bring that training to the community.

We bring in expert speakers.

Andrew has been one of them and is gonna be one of them in our conference coming up on negotiation skills.

Again, another skill that you need if you're in any kind of business or a leader of an organization.

So it was all about providing that type of training that you need.

Whether you're an emerging leader or a leader who's been in business for a long time to be successful.

At a low cost, but really you know, world class because Quint was the one behind it and who developed it.

So five symposiums, live a year.

We have online content and then we have a conference each November where we have two days of world class speakers and just a bunch of fun and networking as well.

- Speaking of leadership training, the good news keeps coming, coming, coming.

We're going to play a clip now from Digital Boardwalk.

- Everybody's constantly learning around here and it's just, you can feel the energy in the air.

We're a better company because of SCI and the training we've implemented here.

You guys are seeing what I see?

- All right, Andrew.

Implementation, Accelerate Roundtable program.

Makes me want to jump on board.

Tell us about it.

- Yeah it's such a cool program and Lloyd talked about it.

I mean it's really a peer to peer program but they call some of us mentors but we learn as much from the people in these programs as they're learning from many of us but it's just, it's such a great place to come in and be vulnerable.

To not have to pretend, the imposter theory.

You know, you're feeling like you, they're gonna find me out any day.

- Okay.

- That I really don't know what I'm doing.

And this is a place where you can talk about those things.

We, we get that, that it's an inside job and we can't give away what we don't have.

So you'd think these conversations are about work issues and sometimes they are.

But they're also about personal stuff going on.

How do I show up?

How do I prepare myself best to be, to show up and be the kind of leader that my employees need.

And it's a powerful program and it's, you know I think everyone's getting a lot out of it.

- But let's take this one step further, EntreCon.

- Yeah.

- I love how that rolls off my tongue.

The business and leadership conference, you have a heavy hand in that.

- Well I, a small part.

A small part thankfully.

I mean yeah, this is such a huge deal.

I've been to business leadership conferences in New York and in Vegas and this is every bit as powerful as those.

The speakers that Rachael and her team bring in are world class.

They are, some of them are famous people that you would know that do the keynote speeches and they separate it into four tracks.

So there's, I think there's entrepreneurship, leadership, community and then like a, what, almost like, I don't know what the fourth one is.

It's candid conversations or something.

- Candid conversations, this year.

We're doing something new and that goes back to what Andrew was talking about.

Work and life is just all completely blended these days and so we're having things like how to be a working parent.

We're gonna talk about that and have a candid conversation and hopefully share some best ideas and build a community.

So we're going to be, that's going to be be really fun this year.

It's new on the agenda and part of the two days.

So we're excited and we're, we livestream some of the conference as well.

- That's good.

- So if you can't attend live, in person, you can watch it online and a lot of it's recorded and it goes all on that website that you mentioned earlier.

- So is it normally held a particular month of each year?

And how long has this been in existence?

- Yeah, it goes back to, always Quint of course.

- Of course.

- He has these bright ideas and then says, "Go do it."

And I say, "Okay, right.

"Let me figure this out."

So yeah, back in 2015.

- Okay.

- This'll be the eighth year of doing it.

It's always in November and our home base in the Pensacola Little Theater in downtown.

- Wonderful.

- And we just kind of turn downtown red, 'cause that's the theme of EntreCon.

- Okay.

- For two days.

With our lanyards and everybody out.

Just enjoying downtown as well as coming to the conference too.

Enjoy that world class training and speakers that Andrew was talking about.

- So we're going to expand this discussion with you Nikki because you're new to the area.

I'm fairly new to Florida in general but you have done a lot in this short time that you've been in Florida.

So tell us how you have contributed to this awesome event.

- So last year we actually attended the event as guests.

As just attendees.

We bought passes.

Again, we were new to the area.

I, like Andrew, am really big on professional and leadership development and so we Googled what was going on in the area.

We saw this workshop that was happening, this conference and we thought, "Well this is cool, this is in our backyard.

"Let's go."

And at the end of the two days, I looked at my husband and I said, "I want to speak at this event next year.

"I want to speak "at this event."

- Oh.

- It was just so incredible.

The people I sat next to, people from all over the country.

- Oh that's great.

- Heavily from the southeast but not just from Pensacola.

There is content that's relevant to leaders of all level.

Not just business owners and I was just so impressed and I don't know if you believe in manifestation but lo and behold a few months ago I got an email and have the opportunity.

So my husband and I are teaching a workshop on accountability, holding yourself accountable as a leader and then when is it time to hold your team accountable and how to do that effectively by building an amazing culture and a spirit of accountability.

- Well, I am so proud of you.

- We're honored.

- You're so amazing.

All right, Lloyd.

Let's talk about some of the specific minority businesses that have been impacted positively through your SEI connections.

- Yes, yeah.

There's definitely been several and I'm not sure if everyone knows.

Through the, which, G Beta program?

- Yeah, we have some, again, looked around the country and where were these programs that were really having impact?

So we brought one down called G Beta.

- Yes.

- And then G Alpha.

They all have funny names.

- Okay.

- Yes.

- But Lloyd's been very involved in that.

- Yes I have mentored with those programs and one of the founders that came through the, I think the second program, Brendan Storms, he's up at an another Accelerator program now and then last week he was over at TechCrunch, Disrupt.

So but his company has been funded and another minority company that participated in this second one was eduocity.

They actually are going through a major fundraising round right now.

Where they've raised several hundred thousand dollars as a result of being in that program as well.

- Well I'm curious Lloyd.

Your personal impact, with your affiliation with SCI.

Tell me why you're so attracted to it.

More people should be, I'm drawn to it like a magnet.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yes, so in entrepreneurship, that is what causes a community to grow.

That's what drives the economy and a lot of people don't realize that.

So I participate because I want to definitely help other minorities succeed and so we work, through the Kukua Institute, we work with minority businesses, startups actually.

We actually train them the best practices for building a startup before they even start their business and I think that's something that's needed.

With a lot, all businesses actually on getting started.

Like tonight we have an event going on and we have a venture capitalist actually teaching the minority how to prepare to raise capital for their startup.

But and I'm so excited that SCI, we lost Rodney and I was working with Rodney.

- Yes, our condolences.

- Really closely to kind of you know, beef up these minority programs and I'm still working on that stuff.

But there's just so many opportunities.

But the bottom line is entrepreneurship is what drives the economy.

So if we want to have a striving economy here in Escambia County, we have to train people and get, so they can know the best practices before they get in the business and like a lot of the operations with SCI, they help the folks actually, like with EntreCon and Accelerate.

The people that are already operating, getting them the best practice.

So that's just the next phase.

So it's just pretty, pretty tremendous to have SCI spearheading a lot of these efforts and we actually have a really nice set of organizations that are supporting entrepreneurship here in Pensacola and northwest Florida.

- Love teambuilding.

Awesome words of wisdom all of you.

Thank you so much for joining us during this segment.

Folks, you're in for a treat because we'll continue our Studer Community Institute discussion after the break.

To learn more about Building Jobs and the specific programs associated with it, log onto the website, www.studeri.org.

We'll be back.

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(funky music) - Hello everyone.

We've learned a wealth of information about Studer Community Institute.

During this segment, our focus is on building the community through various endeavors.

I am pleased Rachael Gillette will be joining us for this segment.

We also have Lisa Nellessen Savage.

Executive Director of the Pensacola News Journal.

Next I'm happy to introduce Kevin Robinson.

Content Coach for the Pensacola News Journal and our final guest is a great guy who's no stranger to WSRE, Steve Nissim.

He serves as Chief Storyteller for Studer Community Institute.

Welcome to all of you.

Exciting times Lisa, aren't they?

- [Lisa] Yes, definitely.

- So we're going to start off talking about CivicCon.

Will you explain what it is and who was the brainchild behind it?

- Absolutely.

I don't know that there was any one brainchild.

- Okay.

- You know, it was such an organic way that it came about.

Quint and I both are so involved in the community and he and I were having a lot of conversations about how our community was just growing so fast.

Pensacola, Escambia County, Santa Rosa County and with that, there's a lot of obstacles.

You want to make sure you're doing it right and we weren't sure that here in our community we knew what right really looked like and so we started having conversations with others and got in a room with a few other people and we just started brainstorming, what could this look like?

And we decided we were going to bring in four speakers.

That was all CivicCon was going to be was four speakers to really talk about important topics in our community.

Best practices from people who've either done it themselves or they've studied how it can be done in other communities that are so successful.

So that very first year, we talked a lot about smart growth and urban planning and public partnership.

Public private partnerships.

- Right.

- So that we're all doing this together and at the end of that year, we always do a survey at the end of it.

- Okay.

- And it was very clear, we were not going to stop.

We all thought you know, there's a small board.

It's Will Dunway, Kevin Robinson, Quint Studer and myself and we thought, "Okay we're gonna be done."

No, here we are five years later.

- Yeah.

- A speaker at least once a month as well as action items and events that we have and it's just, it's, we've had so much fun doing it but we think it's had such a great impact on our community that we just don't want to stop.

- Indeed, it's so important to engage in civic conversations.

Kevin, coming over to your world.

So let's talk about the topics and some of the speakers.

I know you have some great memories.

- Yeah, as Lisa talked about, we wanted to bring in people who could really kind of educate us on what right looks like.

There's so many things that happen in the community that feel like they're beyond your control or just happen without your input or your knowledge.

So we wanted to get people in who could talk about okay, you want a walkable downtown.

How do you build?

Sidewalks where people need them.

How do you build streets that are safe to walk across for people who are on bikes and with children?

How do you make sure that this project we're working to build in is the right project?

So much, we invest so much without really taking the time to ask the question and one of our early speakers asked the question.

Do the math was his suggestion.

- Okay.

- Because a lot of times, you spend money and say, "Hey this will be great for the communities.

"It'll bring in so many jobs."

But it's something that we kind of think we know but we don't actually do the hard work of figuring how it works.

So that first, one of those early speakers was Joe Minicozzi a group called Urban3 and he goes to communities and looks at okay what actually makes you money?

Is it a mall?

Well you might think it's your malls and your Walmarts but he said that really, it's your downtown businesses.

It's your homegrown entrepreneurs who are really kind of the lifeblood of your community because they're the ones who invest back in it.

One of our other early speakers was, he's Chuck Marohn.

Quint says he kind of was Chuck Marohn before he was Chuck Marohn but he was.

He has an organization called Strong Towns and really does what he talks about is how you make your community strong and what it is it's investing into your strengths as opposed to chasing trends.

So he says if you want to build up your community you start where you already have activity.

Where you already have businesses.

Where you already have streets and plumbing and utilities.

The groundwork is already there.

All you have to do is invest into it and help it keep growing.

Those were two of our very first.

And like you said, we've been doing this for five years now.

We've had over 60 speakers.

We've had the guy who was called the Pope of Cycling who talked about how you build bike lanes and we've had Donald Shoup who was kind of the grandfather of parking who talked about how you monetize parking.

Honestly, if you haven't follow CivicCon, if you go to pnj.com, we've got all of our speakers for the past five years.

You can pull up videos in really anything.

Whether it's education or health.

There's probably a speaker who will interest you who can talk about things that you can really learn a lot from.

- Vast array of possibilities.

Rachael, back to you.

Now I'm curious.

How are the speakers in topics vetted?

Do people just email ideas to you?

How does that come about?

- Well, it's really goes back to what this community wants to learn about and Lisa mentioned every time that we do a session we put a survey out.

How did they rank that speaker and what else do they want to hear about?

So all of that is taken into consideration and as things happen in the community, then we're looking at who do we need to bring in?

Homelessness has been an issue in Pensacola and a lot of people were talking about it and saying well we should do this and we should do this.

And so, you know, the CivicCon Board and Quint said, "Well, let's find out what's working in other communities, "who's doing it?

"And then let's bring them here to tell us "instead of just having this random shotgun approach."

So it kind of happens like that.

- Yeah, so let's delve into this partnership with the Pensacola News Journal.

It sounds fascinating.

- Yeah, and what's so important is having a local newspaper in the community and unfortunately, so many of those are dying off and so for us, having the Pensacola News Journal here to help tell the story and as Kevin said, so much of the content lives on the pnj.com and we livestream it and Lisa we get I mean, thousands and thousands of people.

- 6000 people - Watching on the PNJ livestream.

- Yeah, anywhere up to I think 12,000 was our highest but 6000 is pretty much what we get.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Every month.

Just from Facebook alone.

- Yeah.

- That is awesome.

We're going to switch gears a little bit back to the corner where my friend Steve Nissim sits.

Let's talk about leadership exchange.

- Well that was a great example.

We've talked this whole program about all the awesome stuff that SCI does and all the people that are helped from it.

And as Chief Storyteller, I get to meet with these people.

I get to work with the mentors, the different people that put it on.

I get to see behind the scenes and I get to see all the people that are being helped.

Like Dr. Roper we saw earlier.

- Yes.

- Followed her for a year with the VMS program, saw the impact there.

So we're seeing it here.

But that a great statement is when from somebody from the outside looks in and says, "Hey what's going on here in Pensacola?"

And that's what happened recently.

There's this group from LaFayette, Louisiana.

Really impressive, organized group.

They've been paying attention to what's going on at Pensacola, what SCI is doing.

They've been tremendously impressed.

So they recently came here to learn.

We want to do this in our community as well.

So it was a fabulous event.

They came for it, a couple of days and basically they learned everything that's going on.

All the things that we're talking about today, they came to learn.

And so I put together a story, about a three minute story kind of telling the tale of their visit to Pensacola, what they learned, the impact it had and how they walked away saying, "We wanna copy what you're doing."

So let's check out this story that kind of is a great statement on what SCI is doing.

- [Rameca] All right.

- We heard a lot of great things happening here in Pensacola.

- [Steve] A delegation of over 60 people from the LaFayette, Louisiana area known as Acadiana visited Pensacola for a two-day leadership exchange.

They see the community's progress as a model to emulate.

- We wanted to bring a number of our leaders here to Pensacola to see what is possible when you have an engaged community, an engaged leadership.

People that are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

How do you get that wealth off the sidelines?

And Pensacola has done an outstanding job of that.

- [Steve] The sold out trip, organized by One Acadiana, a Chamber of Commerce meets economic development organization, fittingly started with a talk by Quint Studer.

His nonprofit, the Studer Community Institute is dedicated to improving the quality of life in the Pensacola area.

- Our goal is to keep young talent home.

- [Steve] Studer originally inspired the Acadiana group last year with a presentation in LaFayette.

And they have already begun adopting some of Pensacola's SCI-led initiatives.

- We're doing a CivicCon series, like you do here in Pensacola.

To raise the civic IQ of our community.

We do a quality of life survey.

Exactly like you do here.

So we're basically stealing all your great ideas.

- [Steve] As well as a panel discussion on the CivicCon speaker series Acadiana had already adopted.

SCI organized several other knowledge sharing sessions, including one on the extensive efforts to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Highlighted by the impactful Venture Mentoring Service.

- We've seen a lot of success stories through it and it's been really, really rewarding.

- I think that's a great idea to kind of get going in our community.

There is a little bit of a mentorship but it's not that business incubator type mentorship and I think that was a good key takeaway for me is to really work on trying to get that mentor program going.

- [Steve] Another panel session focused on SCI's early brain development initiatives that aim to raise the level of kindergarten readiness.

The research-based programs include a partnership with area hospitals to inform and empower parents on building their baby's brain from day one.

- We have some of our hospital leaders here with us on this trip which is fantastic.

They're on board, they're engaged with these kind of ideas.

Another great idea that we're stealing from Pensacola and very proud to do so.

- [Steve] The visiting delegation included a diverse cross section of Acadiana leaders.

Representing everything from government to foundations, banking to education.

They left, fully inspired to act.

- Hearing from all of the players here, it makes us think not so much about, we have to do it exactly how they did.

But it really opens up your eyes and your minds to what's possible.

How can we take some of what you all have done here so well and get the right leaders in our community moving in the same direction.

- We were already exchanging texts and emails and ideas.

Putting together working groups to really implement some of the ideas that we've learned here.

- It's like a light goes on and once that light goes on, you can't turn it off.

- [Steve] To get involved and support the Studer Community Institute programs that have become a model for other areas, visit studeri.org.

- And we find out we got a pent-up entrepreneur thing in our community.

- Steve, I am so inspired by that story that you've just presented.

Why don't you elaborate a little bit more on some of the people who attended, aside from what we just heard?

- Well it was, I mean this group of leaders.

- [Rameca] Yes.

- I mean they had people from the newspaper there.

They had media, they had their hospital leaders.

The CEO of the hospital, they were paying attention and they were amazed by the program that we do.

The Early Brain Development, the Brain Bag and they're gonna try to copy it and do it there and CivicCon, they're already doing that 'cause they already had heard about that.

- Yes.

- So it's just a great cross section of leaders.

Very impressive people.

And the fact that they were so impressed with what's going on here.

That kind of blew is away and it helps sometimes.

Things aren't perfect.

- They've heard of us.

- But when you realize somebody from the outside is going wow, that makes you realize, "Hey, we're part of something special here."

- And I would be remiss if I did not include this extra clip that we have of others who've been inspired by CivicCon.

So we're going to show that right now.

- It's a Thursday night in a beautiful month of the year and people are here to talk about roads and streets.

Like that's crazy.

People show up and they care, they're passionate.

- How you've coordinated and really trying to bring the whole community together to hear and to share and to open up and be inclusive.

I think CivicCon is great.

- They're bringing in really, really high caliber talent and we need to do more to educate people to show up, come here because there's some really good information that is being handed out for free.

- Okay Lisa.

I heard the words for free.

I am extremely excited when I hear free.

So let's talk about cost.

Apparently not.

- Yep, that was our commitment from the very beginning.

We are, I mean the community is blessed with Quint Studer.

We all know that but he has invested an incredible amount of his resources in bringing in those speakers, the best of the best.

And why we committed to it being free was because when we started CivicCon, one of the reasons because we've all been to conferences.

We've traveled all over the country.

We know what it's like to go to them and you ask your employer or your city to pay thousands of dollars sometimes to hear these speakers.

Well, we're bringing them here for free.

Had you gone somewhere else to hear them, you weren't going to leave that.

- No.

- Any less than a few thousand dollars but it'll be free forever.

That is our commitment.

- Now with the Pensacola News Journal covering this event.

Kevin back to you and your world.

I know you see the smiling faces.

People have a sense of satisfaction after having attended an event like this one.

Why don't you share a personal reflection?

- Well it's, you know, one of the reasons you get into journalism is because you want to change your community.

You want to make a difference and one of the great things about CivicCon is we're teaching citizens to make a difference in their own neighborhoods, in their own city.

So you know, we've had a lot of people who've been inspired by CivicCon speakers, CivicCon events.

One who comes to mind is Theresa Blackwell who lives on the northern end of Escambia County in a community called Beulah.

And there is a huge change coming to Beulah.

There is a huge property called OLF-8 where they are looking at building, intentionally, Escambia County acquired this property to create jobs.

But Beulah is kind of a small, rural community and people there move out there because they like their peace and their quiet.

So they, Theresa took the lessons she learned from CivicCon and she learned how to say, "Hey this isn't."

She learned to communicate effectively to fight for what she wanted to advocate to make the OLF-8 property better for everyone.

Not what she just wanted or what the county wanted but where everyone could have what they wanted together.

- Results that last, that's one of the names of Quint's books right?

So let me come back to you Rachel.

CivicCon Awards, sounds like the Academy Awards.

Why don't you tell us about that?

- Well as Kevin was just saying, there's been so many people who've got involved in the community and actually started taking action.

We have smaller groups.

We have the sessions on a Monday night and then smaller groups come on a Tuesday morning and get even more in depth and they get to ask questions of the speaker and so so many of them ranging from sort of, I think it was a 13-year-old girl, Lisa.

- Yeah.

- Who got involved and started advocating right the way through.

On all these different things.

So we like to give awards to people.

- Yeah.

- Who get involved.

That's what we do at Studer Community Institute.

- I like that.

- Because you know, we don't want it to be about us.

We're grateful to be able to spearhead the initiatives and bring them.

But we want to celebrate the people who really get involved and do the work.

We do it at EntreCon, the conference that we were talking about.

- Yes.

- And we give out awards to entrepreneurs and business leaders and young entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs.

So it just seemed natural to do it with CivicCon and see who was out there and doing the work.

And Lisa, I mean, what are some of the awards that we've given away?

All kinds of different things.

- Recognizing people for placemaking.

For downtown projects, for the environment.

Just for being good representatives of CivicCon out in the community.

- Yeah.

- There's something like 13 different awards and we're very excited, we're gonna add one next year.

It's a secret.

So everyone has to come back and.

- See.

- I know, a new award.

- It's growing.

- We're really excited about it but December 5th.

- Yeah.

- [Lisa] That's when we're doing those this year and we just can't wait.

- Yeah.

- I can't either.

One last thing, Steve.

You are such a friend to WSRE, a great person overall.

As Chief Storyteller covering all these things, I know sometimes your heart might get full.

Is that right?

- It gets full every day.

All these things, I'm involved with all aspects of it every day 'cause I'm trying to put some stories together to kind of raise awareness about it and I see the people that are helped.

I see the people that are amazed by what they're getting.

I mean the VMS program, that's a free program.

You're getting unbelievable advice.

So I get to see them, I get to talk to the attendees that go to CivicCon and they're blown away also.

This is free advice that's coming their way and they use these things.

They take notes and it impacts them and then the other thing that blows me away is the people that we bring in, they're amazed with SCI and what we're doing as well 'cause I get to interview these amazing people they bring in for CivicCon and they're always talking about wow, we're blown away by the engagement level here and the way it's structured and how this is really giving to the community.

So it all comes together to feed, making the community better, that's what it's all about.

And I get to see it firsthand.

- Studer Community Institute.

Can't say enough good things about it.

Many thanks to all of you for joining us and of course, I'd like to thank all of our guests for joining us.

I am Rameca Vincent Leary.

Folks, remember to keep it locked in right here on WSRE.

PBS for the Gulf Coast.

(funky music)