Big Red Talk with Reid DeSpiegelaere

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04/20/2018 Added

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Reid DeSpiegelaere (UNL '11) connects his experiences and skills gained from extracurricular involvements to his work in the non-profit world.

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[00:00:03.840]Hi.
[00:00:05.280]So my name is Lauren Gayer,
[00:00:06.710]and I'm with the Office of Student Affairs,
[00:00:08.370]and I'd like to thank you all for being here this evening.
[00:00:11.870]We are privileged to present
[00:00:13.500]our third Big Red Talk this evening.
[00:00:16.210]So the Big Red Talk series
[00:00:18.130]is a series designed to connect students
[00:00:20.800]to success stories generated by skills
[00:00:24.370]and involvement outside of the classroom.
[00:00:26.600]And so as many of you are involved
[00:00:28.430]in activities outside the classroom,
[00:00:30.440]we hope that you'll find this encouraging and helpful.
[00:00:33.760]So first off, I wanna thank tonight's co-sponsors,
[00:00:37.160]ASUN Student Government, New Student Enrollment,
[00:00:40.660]and University Housing.
[00:00:43.390]And a big thank you also to our series sponsor,
[00:00:47.160]ALLO Communications.
[00:00:48.800]We're very fortunate that they are
[00:00:52.460]great partners in the community,
[00:00:55.250]and are willing to help us out with bringing this series,
[00:00:59.900]and making it available to students.
[00:01:01.850]So with that in mind,
[00:01:03.110]I'd like to go ahead and introduce Dave Miller,
[00:01:05.420]who is the director of ethical engagement at ALLO.
[00:01:09.959](audience applauds)
[00:01:14.700]Thank you.
[00:01:15.533]Good evening, everybody.
[00:01:16.366]How many of you are familiar with ALLO?
[00:01:19.390]Okay, yeah you probably have seen
[00:01:21.010]our trucks all over the place.
[00:01:23.980]Not you guys, but probably your parents,
[00:01:25.785]if they live here in Lincoln, are probably also familiar
[00:01:28.570]that we're the ones that are tearing up your yard
[00:01:31.410]as we're trying to get the fiber to the home,
[00:01:33.730]but we will rectify that.
[00:01:36.390]That's one of our passions is to make sure
[00:01:38.750]that if we go in and do that and service the area,
[00:01:42.170]that we're gonna make it
[00:01:43.660]so that you don't even know that we were there, so.
[00:01:46.470]It's an honor to be able to be here tonight
[00:01:48.610]and to sponsor this event.
[00:01:51.490]We feel it's important because we have four core values
[00:01:55.490]that we really strive to make part of our DNA at ALLO.
[00:01:59.750]And those for four core values are honest,
[00:02:03.040]exceptional, local, and hassle-free.
[00:02:07.230]And the fact that we are local
[00:02:09.590]means that we're living, we're working,
[00:02:12.469]and we're playing in the same neighborhood
[00:02:15.800]as where we have our services
[00:02:18.100]through our fiber-optic networks.
[00:02:20.200]And one of the ways we can do that
[00:02:21.670]is to sponsor events like this.
[00:02:23.360]So again, thank you guys for coming,
[00:02:25.560]and we're very pleased to be able
[00:02:27.290]to sponsor the Big Red Talks.
[00:02:29.900]I also have the privilege
[00:02:30.860]of introducing our speaker tonight,
[00:02:32.690]so let me share that with you.
[00:02:35.160]Reid DeSpiegelaere.
[00:02:36.710]I should have everybody, everybody say that.
[00:02:38.610]Reid DeSpiegelaere, say it.
[00:02:40.868]Reid DeSpiegelaere.
[00:02:42.510]There we go.
[00:02:43.343]How's that?
[00:02:44.190]Just like it looks.
[00:02:45.660]Yeah, okay, all right.
[00:02:47.850]Well, Reid is a proud Nebraska graduate
[00:02:50.770]with majors in English, history,
[00:02:52.490]and a minor in political science.
[00:02:54.400]And throughout his time here at Nebraska,
[00:02:56.250]he played tenor saxophone in the Cornhusker Marching Band.
[00:03:00.100]There you go.
[00:03:01.180]He also led, you guys will like this,
[00:03:02.970]he led New Student Enrollment as an orientation leader.
[00:03:06.389](audience cheers)
[00:03:07.222]Right?
[00:03:08.055]So listen up tonight.
[00:03:10.490]He coordinated the Big Red Welcome.
[00:03:12.930]And upon his graduation,
[00:03:14.170]he went on to serve as corps member in Teach For America,
[00:03:18.020]where he rooted himself in work
[00:03:19.710]to end generational poverty in Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:03:23.690]He taught first, fifth, and sixth grades,
[00:03:26.360]and he coached several sports teams.
[00:03:28.580]During his time in the classroom,
[00:03:30.310]Reid served as an advocate to end child hunger.
[00:03:33.870]He created a literacy club to support Burmese refugees,
[00:03:37.810]and he led efforts to form
[00:03:39.670]an English Language Learners Family Night at his school.
[00:03:43.250]So he's been a very busy person.
[00:03:46.260]After leaving the classroom, he led local efforts
[00:03:48.710]for the College Football Playoff Foundation's
[00:03:51.460]Extra Yard for Teachers initiative,
[00:03:53.710]which is also in Arizona.
[00:03:55.140]He connected Arizona schools to special resources
[00:03:57.890]and teacher celebrations leading up
[00:04:00.130]to the CFP National Championship.
[00:04:03.180]Now, however, he is the national director of Vello,
[00:04:08.610]which sounds like ALLO,
[00:04:10.170]but both imply the word, hello, right?
[00:04:13.510]So he's national director of Vello,
[00:04:14.930]which is an innovative startup venture
[00:04:16.900]from Valley of the Sun United Way.
[00:04:19.380]Vello is online tutoring for the 21st century,
[00:04:23.090]leveraging technology and web applications
[00:04:25.530]to mobilIze virtual volunteers
[00:04:27.770]for local literacy impact across the country, so.
[00:04:31.050]He attributes much, now listen to this,
[00:04:33.220]he attributes much of his initial experience
[00:04:35.950]and transferable skills
[00:04:37.500]to his involvement in extracurricular activities.
[00:04:40.640]So there's a little plug for all of you guys.
[00:04:43.110]So in tonight's Big Red Talk,
[00:04:44.810]he's gonna share how that involvement
[00:04:47.010]can help you guys get where you want to go.
[00:04:49.300]So give it up for Reid DeSpiegelaere tonight, our speaker.
[00:04:52.169](audience applauds and cheers)
[00:04:54.430]Thank you for the introduction.
[00:04:55.346]You're very welcome.
[00:04:57.017]Thanks a lot for being here, everyone.
[00:04:58.760]There is so much going on at the university right now.
[00:05:00.950]I haven't been back in years,
[00:05:02.240]and seeing the innovation going on,
[00:05:05.790]the building, the infrastructure,
[00:05:07.210]and you took time out of your day to be here,
[00:05:09.230]it means a lot.
[00:05:10.080]I'm thrilled to be with you.
[00:05:13.220]It's a pretty hefty intro bio,
[00:05:15.140]and you're probably thinking, wow,
[00:05:16.650]this guy did a lot in a long amount of years,
[00:05:20.410]and that's just not true.
[00:05:22.250]A lot of what I've done was right after college.
[00:05:24.560]And I hope tonight you learn a little bit
[00:05:26.270]about how your experience at the university
[00:05:30.150]can catapult you to success right away.
[00:05:34.610]About six, seven years ago,
[00:05:36.810]I was talking to Dr. Ann Koopmann.
[00:05:38.780]Many of you might know her.
[00:05:40.730]She was asking me to help paint the AO Pi computer lab.
[00:05:45.810]And I didn't really know Ann at the time,
[00:05:48.780]and I said, "Ann, what's your story?"
[00:05:51.280]And she said, "That is such a good question.
[00:05:53.777]"What is my story?"
[00:05:55.610]So I wanna pose that right now.
[00:05:57.490]What's your story?
[00:05:59.780]If somebody walked up and asked you that question,
[00:06:02.020]what would you say?
[00:06:03.680]Would you pause?
[00:06:05.090]Would you tell them about your past?
[00:06:07.530]What are you gonna write about your next steps
[00:06:10.400]after that interaction?
[00:06:12.640]And we're gonna come back to this at the end.
[00:06:14.550]What is your story?
[00:06:16.490]Well, here's what we're gonna learn tonight.
[00:06:18.890]I'm gonna tell you a little bit
[00:06:19.740]about my story, my background,
[00:06:22.840]a little bit about the UNL experience
[00:06:24.437]and what I was involved with here at Nebraska
[00:06:27.630]that set me up for success in life beyond the classroom,
[00:06:32.690]translating my experiences, my activities,
[00:06:35.300]my social life to practice,
[00:06:37.560]and starting a career, getting a field under my belt,
[00:06:41.920]and then innovating my field,
[00:06:43.680]taking what exists in education, or whatever I'm working on,
[00:06:48.110]making it better,
[00:06:49.350]and meet needs of a growing 21st century culture.
[00:06:54.880]So this is me actually in high school.
[00:06:58.370]Kind of a nerd.
[00:07:01.170]You know, in high school,
[00:07:02.670]I didn't feel like I was challenged.
[00:07:05.150]I was not an empowered learner.
[00:07:07.800]Teachers were giving me information,
[00:07:10.600]I was completing the assignments,
[00:07:12.560]but I didn't feel like I had the opportunity
[00:07:15.000]to go above and beyond.
[00:07:16.190]Yeah, I was in the marching band,
[00:07:18.070]I was a dedicated policy debate nerd,
[00:07:21.370]barely ever won a tournament,
[00:07:23.130]but
[00:07:27.046]I didn't feel pushed to go to the next level.
[00:07:29.550]It wasn't a thriving culture for me.
[00:07:32.310]And I think a lot of people
[00:07:33.400]that come to university feel that same way,
[00:07:36.260]that they haven't been pushed yet
[00:07:38.060]to go beyond their expectations,
[00:07:40.390]to exceed what people expect of them.
[00:07:44.080]So that's me a long time ago.
[00:07:47.390]And step one in my transition to a thriving culture
[00:07:50.610]was the University of Nebraska.
[00:07:53.600]This is where I felt empowered
[00:07:55.890]every time I walked into a classroom.
[00:07:58.260]Not by the information being spit out by the professors,
[00:08:01.800]but by the opportunity to take my learning into my own hands
[00:08:07.900]and explore topics that really excited me,
[00:08:10.920]my passions, what I cared about in the world.
[00:08:15.050]I got to the university, and my philosophy was
[00:08:18.610]I wanted to meet as many people as I could,
[00:08:21.680]and I wanted to be involved with things like band,
[00:08:25.320]politics, or student government,
[00:08:27.840]and by virtue of being involved with those things,
[00:08:30.600]meet as many people as I could.
[00:08:32.310]So I was that guy that showed up to Schramm Hall
[00:08:36.340]and was like, "Hey, I'm Reid, how are ya?"
[00:08:38.520]Kinda get in people's face.
[00:08:40.240]And I just, I met football players, track stars,
[00:08:43.800]tennis athletes, forensics team members,
[00:08:48.040]a lot of marching band kids.
[00:08:50.030]I just threw myself out there, and it was a great feeling.
[00:08:52.730]It was a new opportunity.
[00:08:54.670]It was empowering.
[00:08:56.070]And I took it and I excelled.
[00:08:58.770]And I really exceeded my own expectations
[00:09:02.520]of what I thought I could do as a student,
[00:09:05.920]as a member of society.
[00:09:09.620]Here are some of the things I was involved in.
[00:09:12.903](chuckles) Yes, that might be Tom Osborne giving me a glare
[00:09:16.750]in the marching band around 2007.
[00:09:20.040]No, we were chatting with him.
[00:09:21.340]But they put that in the World-Herald up in Omaha.
[00:09:24.060]And my friends were like,
[00:09:24.907]"What did you do to tick off Osborne?"
[00:09:27.480]I said, "Nothing."
[00:09:30.320]That's my New Student Enrollment group at the bottom.
[00:09:33.430]And we activated a ASUN political campaign back in the day.
[00:09:39.900]And it aligned to what I wanted to do at the university.
[00:09:43.590]I wanted to be involved in creative music.
[00:09:47.100]I wanted to be politically active,
[00:09:50.270]even if that meant at the student level.
[00:09:52.970]I wanted to use my excitement about Nebraska
[00:09:55.860]and about the university, and translate that to others,
[00:09:58.810]and empower other incoming people,
[00:10:00.610]so I joined New Student Enrollment.
[00:10:02.440]And I did a mishmash of other clubs,
[00:10:04.820]getting involved with my student advisory board
[00:10:07.840]at my college, getting to know the deans,
[00:10:10.310]opening up new pathways.
[00:10:13.800]My point with all of this
[00:10:16.080]is that anybody can do it
[00:10:18.820]if they go beyond their own expectations.
[00:10:23.000]If they choose to thrive, they can.
[00:10:25.910]And that's something that I really worked at,
[00:10:28.970]and it's something that I encourage
[00:10:30.770]current students to work at, incoming students.
[00:10:34.050]And once you leave the university,
[00:10:36.600]to continue to work on how you will thrive in our world.
[00:10:42.850]The university also helped me root myself
[00:10:46.400]in a few key beliefs,
[00:10:50.030]social issues, behaviors that I wanted to live by,
[00:10:55.020]and I really had been living by my whole life.
[00:10:59.048]My grandmother grew up in poverty,
[00:11:03.480]and that was always an important issue,
[00:11:05.270]because I had a lens to that my whole life.
[00:11:07.350]She lived with me my entire life,
[00:11:08.920]and still does with my parents to this day.
[00:11:12.350]So I was able to reaffirm
[00:11:15.330]that I was committed to ending poverty.
[00:11:18.230]I didn't know what that meant at the time,
[00:11:20.110]but my time here in classrooms,
[00:11:23.120]exploring topics of poverty around the world,
[00:11:26.510]exploring topics of poverty in Lincoln,
[00:11:30.260]at home, in our own student body allowed me to reaffirm
[00:11:34.410]and rededicate myself to that belief.
[00:11:37.490]I wanted to get in the trenches.
[00:11:39.350]I didn't wanna do something in life
[00:11:41.810]that I didn't have credibility doing.
[00:11:44.770]Too often, people can jump into a field
[00:11:48.150]only after studying it for a long time.
[00:11:52.200]But I wanted to root myself in the grassroots level
[00:11:55.910]of what that work would be.
[00:11:57.400]And you'll find out later in the presentation
[00:11:59.510]that step one was teaching elementary school.
[00:12:03.420]So grassroots experience, and getting my feet wet and dirty.
[00:12:08.370]System-level transformation.
[00:12:10.810]System-level transformation is the macro level.
[00:12:14.040]Once I get my feet wet, I know I wanna get higher.
[00:12:16.900]I wanna get involved with systems.
[00:12:19.320]And whether that's politics, or leadership on boards,
[00:12:23.710]or changing school culture at an elementary school,
[00:12:28.380]I wanted the macro-level next step.
[00:12:31.440]And these are the three things I thought
[00:12:34.360]when I was at the university and leaving the university.
[00:12:37.990]What are you gonna root yourself in?
[00:12:40.880]Think about that.
[00:12:43.870]I was also equipped.
[00:12:46.250]Because of my involvement in the activities
[00:12:48.610]and the leadership that I was seeing
[00:12:51.330]from some of my mentors at the university,
[00:12:53.770]my professors, Pat McBride,
[00:12:56.850]and others throughout the university,
[00:13:00.100]I was able to take on big challenges.
[00:13:02.680]And I knew this because I had the leadership capacity,
[00:13:06.270]I had the knowledge, and I had the beliefs.
[00:13:09.040]I was rooted in those three things.
[00:13:10.870]And I knew there were big challenges I wanted to be part of.
[00:13:14.490]The first was educational inequity.
[00:13:18.550]What does this mean?
[00:13:20.330]Some of us don't understand that in this country,
[00:13:24.860]in certain ZIP Codes, your academic trajectory
[00:13:28.980]is determined just by where you live.
[00:13:32.040]The food that you have access to
[00:13:37.130]is determined by where your apartment complex exists.
[00:13:40.560]In Arizona, we have food deserts,
[00:13:42.830]which is something where there's no grocery stores
[00:13:45.650]within a feasible range of somebody's house to get food.
[00:13:51.210]We have homeless shelters
[00:13:53.760]that have such a transient population,
[00:13:56.520]students often fail to have stability in their education.
[00:14:00.900]Not everybody grows up going to the same school,
[00:14:04.430]through the same system, with active parents,
[00:14:07.720]and set up for success upon graduation in high school.
[00:14:11.410]And I knew that if I wanted to end poverty,
[00:14:13.950]I wanted to take this issue by the horns, and I did.
[00:14:18.440]One of the most stressful times in my life
[00:14:20.130]was applying to this program.
[00:14:23.520]Teach For America had 38,000, roughly, candidates
[00:14:27.470]when I applied in 2010, 2011.
[00:14:31.483]8% of those students, or applicants, got in,
[00:14:34.590]and I was one of 'em.
[00:14:36.080]But what did it take to get there?
[00:14:38.250]It took me working with my mentors.
[00:14:40.850]It took all the experience that I did
[00:14:43.270]for four years at the university.
[00:14:45.980]Everything from waking up every day at marching band
[00:14:48.380]to drag myself to practice, studying African history,
[00:14:53.900]which is a class with a book list of thirty books.
[00:14:57.220]I don't know if the book list is still that long,
[00:14:59.880]but it was a robust reading schedule in that class,
[00:15:03.170]and I did it.
[00:15:04.330]It took the time and effort just to do an application
[00:15:08.850]where you don't know if you're actually qualified
[00:15:11.560]or gonna be a good corps member in what you're applying for.
[00:15:16.610]So self-doubt was also there.
[00:15:19.500]But through those mentors, leaders,
[00:15:22.360]looking at my own experience at the university,
[00:15:25.110]I applied, I got in, and I was sent to Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:15:29.920]You wanna talk about real-time
[00:15:32.580]post-collegiate career activation?
[00:15:35.930]This was it.
[00:15:37.280]Graduated, moved to Arizona,
[00:15:39.600]I'm in the issue that I wanted to be in right away.
[00:15:43.670]And you have that immediate opportunity to make a change,
[00:15:46.950]make a difference in that issue of education and poverty.
[00:15:52.010]So here's what it was like the first year.
[00:15:55.940]On the left is my first grade class.
[00:15:58.410]They're climbing under my desk.
[00:16:00.760]On the right is my girls' basketball team.
[00:16:03.530]I loved coaching the girls, because at that age,
[00:16:05.760]they were so much more mature than the boys.
[00:16:08.380](audience chuckles)
[00:16:09.213]May be still true to this day.
[00:16:11.730]On the left, you see happy faces.
[00:16:14.730]You see kids that you don't think
[00:16:20.620]have any hardship in life.
[00:16:22.210]You don't want them to have any hardship in life.
[00:16:24.440]But what you're not seeing is
[00:16:27.290]the poverty behind the students.
[00:16:30.430]One of those students lived in the largest
[00:16:32.380]homeless shelter in the state of Arizona.
[00:16:34.100]He was in and out of my classroom
[00:16:36.610]four different times throughout the year.
[00:16:40.140]Another student lived on a Native American reservation
[00:16:43.628]a couple miles away from my school.
[00:16:46.560]Sometimes he'd be at my classroom for a week,
[00:16:50.090]take off for a month,
[00:16:51.940]come back for a couple weeks.
[00:16:55.350]Lack of consistency.
[00:16:58.770]One of those students mothers wrote me
[00:17:01.650]a note when her student arrived late.
[00:17:05.580]And I keep it in my briefcase,
[00:17:07.670]and I'm gonna paraphrase it today.
[00:17:09.520]She said, Mr. DeSpiegelaere, I'm sorry.
[00:17:12.650]I'm sorry that was late today.
[00:17:16.130]We've been moving in and out of the shelter
[00:17:18.610]for the past few months.
[00:17:20.330]I've been facing some inconsistencies at home.
[00:17:23.580]And by inconsistencies, I read into it as domestic abuse.
[00:17:29.370]And throughout this letter,
[00:17:31.240]she was apologizing why her student,
[00:17:33.730]this first grader, was late.
[00:17:35.440]And I read this, and I said, no, I'm sorry,
[00:17:39.090]because this is not a you problem.
[00:17:42.200]This is a social problem.
[00:17:44.010]We need to fix this.
[00:17:45.830]And that really dug into my soul,
[00:17:48.570]and made me go we need macro-level change.
[00:17:53.590]We need grassroots, yes,
[00:17:55.170]but we need some macro-level systems change.
[00:17:57.950]And it was because of that experience in first grade.
[00:18:02.370]On the brighter side,
[00:18:03.700]my girls' basketball team practiced every day after school.
[00:18:07.130]It was the highlight of my day.
[00:18:08.630]They called me Coach D.
[00:18:10.590]They didn't wanna say the whole last name.
[00:18:13.470]They were so amazing.
[00:18:16.390]We had kids that grew up in refugee camps in Somalia,
[00:18:20.690]and landed on our doorstep in Phoenix
[00:18:24.150]and I got to coach them in basketball.
[00:18:26.750]And I learned so much from them about their story,
[00:18:30.660]their history,
[00:18:32.050]and it taught me a lot about the world around me.
[00:18:36.300]Here I am, the teacher, the coach,
[00:18:38.270]but I'm being taught and I'm learning from my students.
[00:18:44.740]There is a large contingent of Burmese refugees in Phoenix.
[00:18:49.520]And they usually got placed in a single apartment complex,
[00:18:53.890]and it was right across the street from my school.
[00:18:56.350]So we were their safe haven.
[00:18:58.880]We were their community hub.
[00:19:01.920]And I had three girls from the same family,
[00:19:05.320]all Burmese refugees, in my class at one point.
[00:19:08.510]And the local church in Scottsdale
[00:19:11.210]was sponsoring these children.
[00:19:12.780]And they approached me and an intern
[00:19:15.470]about starting a weekly reading club for all the kids.
[00:19:20.170]Obviously, we jumped at it.
[00:19:21.560]It's exactly what I wanna do.
[00:19:23.370]Go beyond the classroom, dig in,
[00:19:25.920]solve things outside of the classroom.
[00:19:29.160]What you're not seeing here is these kids grew up
[00:19:33.490]without air conditioning right across the street.
[00:19:36.350]Some of their apartment complexes had no running water.
[00:19:41.040]And we would go to this apartment complex in May,
[00:19:44.870]June, July in Arizona, pushing 120 every day,
[00:19:49.610]and they would be excited and ready to learn English.
[00:19:54.690]Imagine that, and maybe some of you can imagine that.
[00:19:59.600]It was one of the highlights of my career
[00:20:01.330]is teaching this English course.
[00:20:03.240]They did a theater play at the end of their little,
[00:20:08.430]we did like a three-month reading club,
[00:20:10.940]and they did a theater play in my classroom.
[00:20:13.690]It was one of the coolest things ever.
[00:20:18.230]Then there's my fifth graders.
[00:20:19.750]And this was a combination of fifth
[00:20:21.400]and sixth grade year by year.
[00:20:23.680]You'll notice the trendy Nebraska hat.
[00:20:27.350]One of the first things I always taught my kids
[00:20:29.550]was the Go Big Red cheer, and it got the kids excited,
[00:20:33.010]but it also taught a little bit about myself.
[00:20:35.510]And it was kind of a class slogan for us
[00:20:39.370]that we do to get excited for tests,
[00:20:42.350]for going to recess, or whenever somebody did something
[00:20:45.970]that was outstanding in the classroom.
[00:20:48.490]So my fifth graders.
[00:20:50.540]I got to know them really well.
[00:20:54.200]And I got to know that a lot of them
[00:20:55.770]were struggling with hunger,
[00:20:58.920]hunger that prevented them
[00:21:00.960]from coming to my classroom ready to learn.
[00:21:05.760]Sometimes they would go home on a Friday,
[00:21:08.940]they might not eat a full meal until Monday morning
[00:21:13.230]when they had breakfast in my classroom.
[00:21:16.670]Think about that.
[00:21:18.690]You go home on Friday,
[00:21:20.680]and you don't eat a full meal until Monday.
[00:21:24.170]Are you ready to learn?
[00:21:25.830]Can you do your homework?
[00:21:27.520]Can you learn to read?
[00:21:28.570]Can you do English
[00:21:30.120]so that you can pass the math test next week?
[00:21:33.490]What are your priorities?
[00:21:35.760]Well, at that point, it's eating.
[00:21:38.450]And we can't teach if kids aren't eating.
[00:21:42.650]So this group, I felt a dire need.
[00:21:48.390]And there was an organization at my school
[00:21:51.260]that brought food bags for the weekend.
[00:21:53.640]They were called the WeekEnd Hunger Backpacks,
[00:21:56.000]week, end hunger.
[00:21:58.290]It was a bag full of non-perishable items
[00:22:00.820]that could keep the child
[00:22:02.430]and their family nourished over the weekend.
[00:22:06.440]And it was provided by a local nonprofit.
[00:22:08.400]And I said, "Hey, I know your email said
[00:22:12.157]"I have to choose two kids to receive this food bag,
[00:22:16.737]"my two neediest kids,
[00:22:19.137]"but I really think that there's a higher need in my class."
[00:22:22.710]And I wrote a little narrative.
[00:22:24.400]I was kind of begging for more food bags
[00:22:27.340]for my class if you can imagine.
[00:22:29.810]And it turned out that they had extras,
[00:22:31.630]and I was the only teacher to go above and beyond
[00:22:34.200]and ask for all my students.
[00:22:37.420]And they said, "Yes, all of your kids
[00:22:41.487]"can get food bags for the weekend."
[00:22:44.090]So on Fridays around three o'clock
[00:22:47.260]when school is getting out,
[00:22:49.210]the office would call my classroom,
[00:22:53.230]and my kids would line up, go to the office,
[00:22:55.910]grab a bag of food, put it in their backpack,
[00:22:57.690]ready to go for the weekend.
[00:22:59.990]Well, by the second or third time of doing that process,
[00:23:04.810]the minute my phone rang on Friday at three o'clock,
[00:23:07.950]every kid, no matter what they were doing,
[00:23:09.530]perked up and go, (gasps) "Food bag."
[00:23:12.690]And they would think that that was
[00:23:14.570]the happiest moment of their week.
[00:23:17.440]They could be talking to their friends,
[00:23:19.490]they'd hear the phone, "Food bag."
[00:23:21.530]Because they knew that they had something to look forward to
[00:23:24.890]that they could take home that could nourish them.
[00:23:28.180]And more than anything,
[00:23:29.940]they knew that they had a community behind them,
[00:23:34.280]that somebody was providing these food bags for them.
[00:23:39.110]Is that you?
[00:23:41.280]Is that me?
[00:23:42.270]Is that us?
[00:23:43.600]I'm hoping it's all of us.
[00:23:45.990]And that goes back to the way I rooted myself
[00:23:49.120]in those three core beliefs while at the university.
[00:23:54.590]The next step to that was the nonprofit
[00:23:58.160]that provided food bags for our class took note
[00:24:02.290]and asked us to advocate in the community.
[00:24:05.640]Because it wasn't just my kids.
[00:24:08.430]40% of kids their age in Maricopa County,
[00:24:12.440]which is primarily all of Arizona,
[00:24:14.900]are without food or food-insecure.
[00:24:19.080]That's a macro-level statistic that you can't ignore.
[00:24:22.380]So I took that challenge on.
[00:24:23.930]I said that's a big challenge.
[00:24:25.500]I wanna help you advocate
[00:24:27.690]by bringing this lens to the community.
[00:24:31.920]And I wouldn't have been able to do that
[00:24:33.750]had I not been in the classroom,
[00:24:35.780]grounded myself at that grassroots level,
[00:24:39.690]taking my leadership from the university
[00:24:41.990]and pushing it right away.
[00:24:43.760]When I did all that, I think I was 23 years old,
[00:24:47.170]probably not much older than some of you in this room.
[00:24:50.120]So it can happen right away.
[00:24:57.680]As my experience grew in the classroom
[00:25:00.230]and I was advocating publicly
[00:25:01.980]for issues around poverty and child hunger,
[00:25:06.330]the College Football National Championship,
[00:25:08.530]the Playoff, moved to Arizona for their 20,
[00:25:13.470]what was it, 2015 National Championship,
[00:25:16.090]Alabama and Clemson.
[00:25:18.470]And,
[00:25:20.150]soon we'll be there, I promise.
[00:25:23.540]They had this foundation, this philanthropy arm,
[00:25:27.270]that wherever the College Football
[00:25:29.030]National Championship went,
[00:25:32.150]they took their philanthropy efforts
[00:25:34.320]to mobilize for teachers.
[00:25:36.630]So they wanted someone that was at the grassroots level,
[00:25:40.820]a teacher that was well-organized,
[00:25:42.880]had some leadership ability, a good communicator
[00:25:46.230]to help them spread the resources, the dollars,
[00:25:50.780]and awareness of what they were doin'.
[00:25:54.325]So they plucked me from the classroom and said,
[00:25:56.417]"We'd love for you to help us organize locally.
[00:25:59.230]So I was kind of the boots on the ground resource
[00:26:02.360]for the College Football Playoff National Championship.
[00:26:06.010]And their initiative was aptly titled,
[00:26:08.550]Extra Yard for Teachers.
[00:26:10.900]So I got to spend a lot of time
[00:26:12.220]over the course of a year empowering teachers.
[00:26:15.530]We hosted a celebration.
[00:26:17.440]I got to meet the head of the Playoff committee.
[00:26:20.630]I went to the National Championship,
[00:26:23.950]got field access.
[00:26:25.800]It was kind of a magical moment.
[00:26:27.800]I walked right up to Nick Saban, who's about 1/2 my height,
[00:26:32.400]after he won the National Championship.
[00:26:34.130]It was really cool.
[00:26:36.420]And we hosted an event for teachers,
[00:26:38.770]and had encouragement cards for them.
[00:26:41.060]And it was a magical moment.
[00:26:43.060]One, for me personally,
[00:26:44.890]getting to attend a National Championship,
[00:26:47.840]and two,
[00:26:50.180]to celebrate teachers and empower them.
[00:26:56.200]And the next step in my career came
[00:26:58.720]with Valley of the Sun United Way.
[00:27:02.420]Valley of the Sun United Way is a large nonprofit.
[00:27:06.100]In fact, United Way is the world's largest nonprofit,
[00:27:09.740]a reputable name, everybody knows that they exist.
[00:27:14.990]And one thing we need to do as non-profit faculty,
[00:27:19.880]or non-profit staff,
[00:27:21.680]is innovate the way we help the community,
[00:27:25.230]the way we engage our volunteers,
[00:27:27.630]and the way
[00:27:29.760]we build business models
[00:27:34.090]that allow us to scale impact and engagement.
[00:27:38.240]So when I was working at the National Championship,
[00:27:41.990]the CEO of Valley of the Sun United Way
[00:27:44.900]approached me and said, "I've got this innovative idea.
[00:27:48.667]"I think there's a way we can help kids
[00:27:51.957]"become better readers
[00:27:53.247]"and meet those grade-level statistics.
[00:27:55.727]"I think we can have volunteers from local businesses
[00:27:59.977]"be our volunteers and tutor the kids.
[00:28:02.747]"And I think we can do it in a way
[00:28:04.817]"that's virtual and can scale.
[00:28:07.497]"So volunteers don't have to leave their office,
[00:28:10.387]"but they can connect to a child and tutor them."
[00:28:13.290]And I said, "That sounds like my cup of tea, let's do it."
[00:28:16.500]So
[00:28:18.940]we had the idea, and we were kinda thrown in a room.
[00:28:21.960]It was me, it was a bunch of different staff
[00:28:24.820]from the organization, some volunteer experts,
[00:28:27.540]some financial experts, some leadership experts,
[00:28:31.500]and then some education experts.
[00:28:34.680]And we all worked to build and maturate this idea
[00:28:38.140]of helping kids virtually learn to read.
[00:28:41.730]And
[00:28:43.500]it really exemplifies how innovation works.
[00:28:47.350]People in a room looking at ideas,
[00:28:49.230]everybody's coming from a different perspective.
[00:28:51.690]Some have the grassroots-level education acumen.
[00:28:55.010]Some have a business acumen.
[00:28:56.850]Some have a volunteer acumen.
[00:28:58.900]But we all worked on it together, and we built Vello.
[00:29:01.700]Vello is like a virtual hello.
[00:29:05.210]This is our goal.
[00:29:07.050]It's to combine these components of a nonprofit.
[00:29:12.830]Engaging volunteers, helping people in the community,
[00:29:17.210]and having a business model that can scale
[00:29:20.460]and reinvest in itself so it can build momentum.
[00:29:23.610]And we're a nonprofit,
[00:29:24.670]so we don't take a profit or anything,
[00:29:26.400]but we need money to drive momentum back into the program.
[00:29:31.560]So that's what we're trying to accomplish.
[00:29:33.800]Now, if you would've thrown this to me
[00:29:36.270]when I was in your seat where you are today,
[00:29:38.180]I probably would've said, oh, my goodness,
[00:29:40.010]I don't know what this means.
[00:29:42.190]But I got it through my leadership,
[00:29:45.870]through the way I was involved
[00:29:47.440]with the College Football Foundation,
[00:29:49.790]the way I was working with mentors in Phoenix,
[00:29:54.110]the way I worked with mentors here at Nebraska.
[00:29:56.570]So this wasn't foreign to me.
[00:29:58.890]This is something of a challenge that I can do.
[00:30:02.170]I don't have a business background from CBA, but I do now.
[00:30:07.330]I have a business acumen now.
[00:30:09.690]I'm not a volunteer expert.
[00:30:11.160]I volunteered, but I know enough now
[00:30:13.810]where I would say I'm a volunteer expert.
[00:30:17.570]I definitely was an education expert.
[00:30:19.700]I had my master's in education.
[00:30:22.300]I taught for years.
[00:30:24.300]But how do we combine those goals?
[00:30:26.950]And that's what this program allowed me to do.
[00:30:29.650]We are currently scaling from five to roughly,
[00:30:33.300]and hopefully, 15 cities across the country.
[00:30:36.690]There's interest from Australia to use this program,
[00:30:41.060]Hawaii, and then several areas around the country.
[00:30:45.310]So picture this, a student walks to a computer station
[00:30:48.960]inside their classroom,
[00:30:50.310]and they have a digital library of books.
[00:30:53.270]Meanwhile, down the street
[00:30:55.100]at a local company in a high-rise,
[00:30:57.630]a volunteer or a professional clicks a button,
[00:31:02.030]joins a webinar, and is now tutoring a child
[00:31:05.180]from that station in the classroom,
[00:31:06.800]and from their laptop at their company.
[00:31:09.970]And they do that every week,
[00:31:12.200]learning to read, giving their time.
[00:31:14.910]We made it easy for volunteers to connect to kids,
[00:31:17.930]and we made it easy for kids to read with a volunteer.
[00:31:24.060]Our impact thus far is, again, that macro-level impact.
[00:31:27.660]I was teaching 30 kids in the classroom.
[00:31:30.950]I was coaching 15 girls.
[00:31:34.060]Maybe when I built the ELL Family Night,
[00:31:37.450]I impacted 800 kids at a school.
[00:31:41.360]But this number is what really drives me now.
[00:31:45.620]And if we can get to 15 cities in multiple countries,
[00:31:49.600]that number will double, triple.
[00:31:52.390]Goes right back to the impact I wanna have.
[00:31:55.280]Helping kids, rooting myself in ending poverty.
[00:31:59.860]And we're engaging the community at the same time,
[00:32:02.690]building connections between businesses and schools.
[00:32:06.770]Pretty cool.
[00:32:11.070]This program has also allowed me to travel
[00:32:13.330]and do new things that I could've never imagined
[00:32:16.400]when I was at the university.
[00:32:18.770]That top-left picture is me in Brownsville, Texas
[00:32:21.760]working with their local teachers.
[00:32:23.720]And that's actually during Charro Days.
[00:32:26.800]Charro Days is their annual festival
[00:32:30.540]to celebrate their sister city in Mexico and Brownsville.
[00:32:35.160]And they have a big celebration.
[00:32:36.580]The whole town shuts down.
[00:32:38.400]They announced us in their parade.
[00:32:39.990]It was amazing.
[00:32:42.420]And that's the highest poverty ZIP Code
[00:32:45.330]in the entire country, Brownsville, Texas,
[00:32:49.440]one of the best most beautiful places I've ever been.
[00:32:53.500]Bottom-left is Cincinnati,
[00:32:55.300]working with some teachers there to get the program started.
[00:32:58.400]And just last fall,
[00:33:00.160]I was able to travel to our National Capitol
[00:33:03.950]to advocate and, not lobby, but advocate for
[00:33:10.590]volunteerism, and helping the Working Poor Tax Credit,
[00:33:15.440]and making sure nonprofits don't face a depletion in funds
[00:33:20.560]because of new tax laws that are going in.
[00:33:23.100]So all of my experiences take me to new experiences
[00:33:27.070]that I can't even imagine,
[00:33:28.770]and I'm excited to see where I go next.
[00:33:32.022](clears throat)
[00:33:34.530]So looking back.
[00:33:39.600]I was a high school kid.
[00:33:40.560]I didn't really feel empowered.
[00:33:42.070]I was not an empowered learner.
[00:33:43.510]I wasn't exceeding my expectations.
[00:33:46.970]I got to college, and I purposefully surrounded myself
[00:33:51.090]with people that helped me thrive.
[00:33:53.890]I agitated people a little bit, too.
[00:33:57.150]I agitated systems a little bit.
[00:34:00.110]But it was worth it, because it helped me thrive.
[00:34:03.950]And then I took my leadership, my studies,
[00:34:07.330]my involvements, and translated it to those core beliefs.
[00:34:11.850]And I got to do things like build
[00:34:14.530]a nice reading club for Burmese refugees,
[00:34:18.350]or work with the College Football National Championship,
[00:34:21.680]or travel the country promoting Vello online tutoring.
[00:34:27.940]So what's your story?
[00:34:29.830]If somebody walked up to you right now
[00:34:32.040]and said, what's your story?
[00:34:33.730]What are you gonna share?
[00:34:35.400]Where do you start?
[00:34:37.090]Where do you go?
[00:34:39.090]How do you tell it?
[00:34:43.660]Thank you very much.
[00:34:45.122](audience applauds)

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Big Red Talk with Reid DeSpiegelaere

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