Born to Lead: Rebecca Hatfield

Today in the studio I have with me Rebecca Hatfield, who is the CEO and president of Avesta Housing. Thanks for coming in today. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. It's really a great pleasure because you're working on something that I think is receiving a lot more attention than it used to as much attention as it should I believe. And also it's not an easy problem to solve, which is housing. So to have you come in here, it seems like a good time for this because there's just a lot going on in Maine and we don't have quite enough space to put everybody in. It is a hot topic right now, and it has been for the past couple of years. I mean, since the pandemic, it really has been a elevated conversation and it's core to our society right now. It's not something that's just being talked about in Maine. It's being talked about across the nation, and Avesta is right in the center of that, and I don't think that I can go to any conversation and not talk about housing now. It almost always comes up. Why do you think that we are at a place where we're now talking about it? I mean, it has been an issue for a while. I know the pandemic kind of squeezed things a little bit, but what do you think is really driving this? Sometimes it's really hard to say because when you look at the data, we've had housing shortages for many, many years and it really has not come to top of mind for a lot of people until the last few years. And I think that the reason why that is, is because it's started to touch people in a very, very real way. And we see this every day. We go out and present in front of towns or planning boards or select boards, and it's very hard for people to relate to an issue unless you can bring it down and make it real for them. So when you start giving them an example of a situation that's very similar to their daughter's situation or their mother's situation, and it's touching all aspects of our society, people with all socioeconomic status, people with all different backgrounds, and that is where the rubber hits the road, that's when it becomes really real and people pay attention to it. And you would say the same thing on the economic side for businesses they can't hire because people can't find homes. And so it's top of mind for businesses across all sectors, and that's why we have very broad and diverse attention around housing right now. It is touching every aspect of our society. What you're saying is really true. I mean, I know from being in healthcare and trying to recruit people to essentially a rural part of Maine, they would say, we'd love to come work with you, but where do we live? And I know that that's not specific to rural parts of Maine because Portland, which is very urban for Maine, is absolutely having the same issue if not more so. Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned healthcare because that's another area where we have a couple of members on our board that are in the healthcare sector. We also partner with a lot of healthcare organizations and they've been telling this story for a long time. And they say, our ability to provide care for people really depends on them having a stable home. And so we need to be able to reach them. We need to be able to make sure they have transportation to come to their appointments. We can't provide care if someone doesn't have a stable, permanent home. And the other thing is, once we provide care, there's no guarantee that care is going to play itself out outside of the doctor's office unless they have a place in which they have proper supports and a stable life. And so that's one example of, again, how it's touching people in a different way. It's not just about the house or the roof or the head. It really is the seed to many other areas of people's lives. I remember a few years back when we had a big ice storm and I was working in the hospital at the time, and patients would come in with their oxygen tanks because everybody had lost power. So here they are. We have the cafeteria is absolutely full of people who are just sitting there on their oxygen because otherwise they won't be able to live. And it seems like such a basic thing, but I mean it's so fundamental to, as you've said to people's health, is the ability to just have a plug that you can put your oxygen. Exactly. And I think that kind of leads to the conversation of why the pandemic was a bit of a spark in the housing world because everybody went home, everybody received their healthcare from home, they did their job from home. Children were getting their schooling from home. And what we realize is that a home plays a very important basic role in people's lives. Like you said, it has the plug for someone to plug in their oxygen tank. And when they don't have a home and they can't plug it in, they can't receive what they need in order to live. And so that's where I think the pandemic, although there were a lot of economic factors that led to a shortage, it also goes back to that why is there awareness now? And there wasn't awareness five years ago or not to the same level that we see it now. When everyone sat in their home for a year, it became real on why it was important. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, we know that when we sent the kids home to learn from home and they didn't have internet, so they would then take their parents' phones and sit in the Burger King parking lot so that they could access the free resource from that restaurant. I mean, that was a huge deal. So I think it really did shine a light on these pretty significant divides between the people that had access to resources and the people that did not. So tell me about Avesta. What is the mission of Avesta? The mission of Avesta is to improve lives and strengthen communities by providing and promoting safe, affordable homes for people in need. And so Avesta has, I would say 3,300 affordable apartments across Maine and New Hampshire. We have a staff of 300 people and we serve 4,500 residents every single day. And we have five areas of focus. So we develop new housing, new affordable housing. We have a large property management team that owns and operates our properties. We have a home ownership center that provides financial and credit counseling, and we have two assisted living facilities. And then we're very active in advocacy. So we're multifaceted and touching affordable housing in many ways. That's a lot to accomplish. That's a lot of different directions to go in. So how are you able to achieve these various goals that are associated with, I mean assisted limiting is a very different can of worms than a lot of the other things that you've described. So how do you approach this? I think in many ways the different areas of our business work together and we kind of find our mission is embedded. Whether you're talking about our independent affordable housing portfolio or assisted living or our home ownership center, the core of our mission really is the same in those three areas. It is about people having a stable home. The way that we're providing that home is different depending on whether you're talking about home ownership or rental housing or assisted living. Assisted living is a very different business. It has a whole healthcare layer to it. But what we've seen is half of our portfolio serves older adults, those who are 55 and older, and the average age is actually much older than 55. And we see people aging in place. And so we have had a small hand in assisted living because as we saw people age in place, we know that their level of care needs to go up. And we've seen people move out of our independent living units and move into assisted living in, we can provide that support throughout the entire life cycle, their housing life cycle, and as they age in place throughout their life. That's so important. I think aging is scary enough as it is, but with aging does come medical concerns and social concerns. And I think knowing that there is another place for you at the next kind of step on this life journey probably is very comforting to people. Yes. And that's what we try to provide. It's not just about housing, it's housing. Plus we want to support people in their life, not just in their home. You're originally not from I am not. But your husband is. I mean, this often happens. I'll say, well, why did you come to Maine? And the person says, well, there was this person and I follow, of course there. So you came all the way over from the other side of the country though, in order to come here three years ago. It's actually been almost nine years. Nine years, nine years ago. So tell me about that transition. I mean, they're very different worlds. Very, very different worlds. I grew up on the west coast, was born in California and lived there for part of my early childhood. And then we moved up to the Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon and then moved into Vancouver, Washington. And so I really claim the West coast is my home. My family is living in California right now. And throughout my life I made many moves. I've lived in many different places. And prior to Maine, the most recent place that I lived was in New York. And so I was already on the east coast. I met my husband and we moved a little bit more. We moved back to the west coast for a period of time and then decided it's time to find a place that we want to be long-term. And I knew he was from Maine. I had visited Maine one time before I fell in love with it from my first trip here. And it was either stay on the west coast near my family, which is a very different environment. And we were in San Francisco, which is very expensive, not unlike Maine now, or move to Maine and try something different. And we moved here and I fell in love with it. And honestly, it reminds me a lot of the Pacific Northwest and I call Maine my little piece of the West coast on the East coast. When I think about having gone to San Francisco, it's very different from having gone to Washington, Oregon, that part of the world. So I guess I can see that although my experience in the Pacific Northwest is a little bit rainier, it is A little bit rainier. So I'm happy to leave the rain in the Pacific Northwest and it's even better here in Maine. It's open and it's outdoorsy and the beautiful landscape, those things are very similar. The people are laid back, the work life balance. You've traveled internationally, you've spent time in London, you've been to a lot of different places. So for you this was a conscious decision. It wasn't just like, oh, me or my family. You have to very thoughtfully decide that me is the place. So aside from the fact that your husband had family here, what were some of the major determining factors for you? I feel like from the first time I came to Maine, it felt like a place I could establish a home. And as you said, I moved around a lot throughout my life, even when I was younger. My mom moved us around a lot. And then throughout college and after college through my career, I either traveled for work a lot and was very willing to, when I was offered opportunities to move across the country or move internationally, I mean, I was raised with a very open mind and I diverse mindset, and you've got to try something that's outside of your comfort zone. So I would go wherever my journey took me when I thought about Maine and a place to be. Maine presented this place where I didn't really know how my career was going to land here. I was in finance for 10 years before moving here. And so that was a bit of a risk, but I loved that there was Portland, which is very urban and there's very rural parts of Maine. You have the coastline, you have mountains if you want to hike. I grew up skiing and I could have a home and a family and not be so far away from work and not sit in traffic all day. And that's really what appealed to me. I mean that was, yes, it is 3000 miles away from my family, but I can fly back and see my family and they love come to visit here. And I really just needed a place that I felt like was going to be a home for me. And Maine was that In learning about you, I was struck by the significant influence that each of your parents had on your life and your decision making in really very different ways. Often when we ask people who are your role models? Who are your inspirations? They reach a little further afield. And you're mom, dad. So talk to me about that. My family has a huge influence on me. It almost brings me, it brings a lot of emotion out of me. My mom and my dad. It's funny, they're two very different people. My mom was a mathematician, my dad was an English professor. And so if you can just think about that purely from a right and left side of the brain, they were two very different people. My dad was very creative, my mom was very analytical. But I watched them and I watched their lives and how they raised me, and they really were role models for me in very different ways. My mom was, she is a woman of color, she is a mathematician. She persevered her whole entire life. She really brought her career along in an area that was really working against all lots. I mean, she often sat in a room full of men. She was advocating for young children in maths and sciences areas that children often were not successful. And that was a role model for who I am in terms of being independent and just kind of persevering through everything that's put in front of me. My dad, on the other hand, had quiet strength and was more of an internal processor and was very creative and thought about things in a kind of creative, analytical way. He wasn't someone who ever raised his voice and read a lot. And that's very much a part of me too, that kind of internal strength. I think when you marry my mom and my dad's personality together, it created a very, very powerful role model for me. And it's true when people ask me who my role models are, it's my parents, it's my parents, they were there for me. They did a lot for me in terms of creating stability even when we didn't have stability and showing that I could do anything. Well then in some ways it's not surprising that you're describing kind of an emotional home from which you came. And now the work that you do is physical home, but you also have already drawn, you've already created this picture that a physical home is just a structure that you can put an emotional home into. And so the fact that these are how your career have been linked to your own past somehow, not that surprising, Really. It's not at all. And people often ask me, how did you end up in affordable housing or why? I worked in both the for-profit and the nonprofit world. And I often say I'm a strategic thinker and I'm very analytical in nature. I love numbers and spreadsheets and stuff like that. But there's this other part of me that when I was in finance, I always had this intention to get to know the person. I believe in the humanity. I always want to help people. I want to find and help people thrive. And so sometimes when I think of my mom and my dad, it's the two sides of me. It's the part of me that's very analytical and can problem solve anything. But I do it from a place of people and humanity. And that's always a lens that I look through even when I'm just crunching numbers. It's not just about the number of homes that we build, it's about the people who live in the homes. When I think about this journey that you've taken professionally, you've talked about finance, you also have a background in tech. Now you're doing affordable housing. You've really had to make some pretty significant decisions and some dramatic shifts and gain additional skills in order to do these things. So talk to me about the mindset that you've needed to have in making the decision to go in those different directions and some of the things that you've learned about yourself along the way. That's a great question. So as you said, I feel like I've had three careers of my life. I started out in tech as software network, computer engineer, and then I made the jump to finance. And then my most recent jump was into affordable housing. And along that journey, making the jump from tech to finance and then from finance to affordable housing, those were very pivotal periods in my life. So when I was in tech, my undergrad degree is in computer and information science. And when I decided to leave tech, I was determining whether I should go and get, in fact, I was going to go to John Hopkins and get a biomedical engineering, and I was accepted there and decided at the last minute that wasn't for me and that I wanted to do something a little bit different and decided to go to business school. And I moved across the country, took a leap of faith, didn't quite know what I wanted to do when I went into business school. And I think what I learned about myself is that there's always something to learn throughout those experiences. They were very hard decisions and it was risky. And not everyone was, some people were questioning me, are you sure you should be doing this? But there was a strength in me. There is a desire in me to try something new. And although I'm very uncomfortable when I try something new, when I get there, I actually thrive. And that's something that I learned about myself that I can adapt to any environment if I just embrace it. And so I think that enabled me to make career changes successfully. It doesn't mean that I had all the answers. I had confidence and strength in myself that I didn't realize that I had. You have a background also as a competitive athlete. I do, yes. So I know that in order to be an athlete, you have to be able to set goals, work towards things, show up every day and do what it takes to continue to train and also kind of tune other people out. And I think as you're talking to me about listening to yourself versus letting other people kind of dictate how you view your potential future, I think it seems like that might have been pretty important that you had that background. It is. I was a competitive athlete for 18 years. I was a gymnast from the age of two. And as you know, I'm competitive athletics. There is a, you learn how to focus. You learn how to operate in and train in stressful environments or when you're out in front of an audience to really just be able to focus on the performance that you're doing right at that moment. And I think, and there is you do how to learn how to set goals and take the steps necessary to get to that goal. And that has translated into my life. I think it's also translated into my career and my ability to make career changes. I very much think that me being competitive athlete when I was a child, shaped the journey that I took when I was older. And I'm thankful for the skillset that I gained as an athlete. And it's funny, I had parents that neither my mom or my dad were athletes, but it was something that I loved and they very much supported and they never pushed me in athletics. They always said, if you don't want to be a gymnast anymore, that's okay. And if you want to do it, we'll do everything we can to support you to do it. And I was always focused on one thing. I was from a child was when I set my mind on something, I did it. I found a way to, I found the path and I got to where I wanted to be. And that has translated into my life. I can only imagine being the parents of a 2-year-old that said, no, I want to be a gymnast. There's not going to be an argument here. This is what we're going to do. And so the fact that you even had that in you and that knowledge of yourself at that young and age, yeah, I don't know if you would call that stubbornness or if you would call that self-awareness at the age or two. I don't know that it was self-awareness at the time. It was just, I'm going to do this and I really want to do it and I'm going to keep asking until I do it. And that's my mom knows that's who I am. So bless them both for providing you the space and the support because I think it would've parenting a child who says, this is what I want to do. And having raised athletes myself and having been an athlete, you're actually needing to really invest in a lot of effort on behalf of that child. And you have to put trust in that child or the person that you're supporting. I think that that's, again, it goes back to my parents. That's what they modeled. They modeled kind of unconditional support. They put trust in me figuring out my own journey. And I think as parents, as naturally parents are, they knew that I could trip up in that journey or make a mistake or do something, but they kind of allowed me to make the mistake and learn on my own. And that's the person I'm like, I just want to learn on my own. Let me make the mistake and I'll take account accountability for it and I'll move forward, learn from it and move forward. And it's funny, going through athletics and having parents like that, that's also how I lead too. I'm very much a, you've got to support people, but you've got to give 'em the space to learn in that way. And I think I'm that type of person because that's how my parents modeled it for me. And I had mentors along the way who modeled it that way as well. And that's part of my own personality and part of because the people who were around me, that's what they were. Leadership is such an interesting topic and there's so many different ways of looking at it, but I think ultimately it is trying to help bring out the best in people, which means that they have to bring out the best in themselves, but you have to not only provide them with support and skills and encouragement, but they have to be able to meet you there and work with you to do that. And that again, requires a lot of faith and a lot of trust in the individuals that you're working with. It does, and it goes back to fundamentally who I am, which is I think it all starts from within, and you have to help people find that inner strength. And that means as a leader, supporting people and being there when they need you. But you can't always give all of the answers. And sometimes I'm giving answers, right? Because that's the nature of the job. People are looking to you for answers. But sometimes it's me just probing with a lot of questions so that they can be more introspective about how do you feel about this? You're the expert in this area. You've got to trust yourself. You are a leader. You have got to trust that you know what to do in this situation. And it's a very hard thing to do. It's, we've sat here and talked about my inner strength and my ability to look within and grow through opportunities. That's not something that comes easy to me. It is something that I've done a lot through my life, but I truly believe that the people around me, if I can help them look within first, they're going to be much stronger externally. They're going to be able to navigate anything that comes in front of them. Yes, I would agree with that. And also I think it's fundamental to change leadership. I mean, when I see people who want to tell me that the way to be a leader is to tell people what to do, they'll do it. And then the change happens. I think to myself, well, that pretty much goes against most of what we know about human psychology. Correct. That's true. So when you sit with somebody and you support them and you ask them questions and they come up with answers that they get behind, then you're going to be so much more successful with anything that you are attempting to do. And it is more of an investment so much easier to just be like, please do what I say or just do what I say. No, please. But to be able to engage people and to kind of help them to get to a place where they want to problem solve and do it on behalf of the organization or whatever opportunity is in front of you. I think it's such a powerful thing. I mean, what you said is really, really important and what's interesting to me about it and that you're an expert in this area, so I'd be interested to hear what you think about this, that scale to look and trust. Introspectively, very good leaders have it. What's funny though is people who end up in leadership often end up in leadership because of their ability to execute and answer questions and make very good decisions. And so what I've found in my journey is that it's been hard as I have moved up the ladder to a leader to move away from giving the answers and solving the problems, to helping people solve problems on their own. Because my nature is I got here because I can execute very, very well. But now my job is not to execute. It's to help other people get to the place where they can trust themselves and execute. It's almost like this leadership arc or transition, and I'm not sure how you support people in that journey or that everyone can make that change. Some leaders still end up being the, I'm going to answer every question. I'm going to be the problem solver and I'm going to tell you exactly what to do. I mean, I think it all just kind of depends upon how people view themselves as leaders, right? Their own leader identity, their leader philosophy. And it is very interesting. I mean, what you've described is a true thing. We see a lot of people who are COOs, the chief operations officer who end up as CEOs. So if you're an operations and you're the person whose job is to execute as you've said, and then you end up going to the next level, then if you continue doing things in the way you've been doing it, it is probably going to be more directive and more operations focused. But is that ultimately the best thing? And is that your job? Well, can it be, I mean, if you're the CEO, I mean, how many people did you say that you lead? 300, we have just over 300 employees. Are you going to be able to actually even know enough to be able to tell people how to do their jobs at all the levels all the way down? Absolutely not. And I am the first one to admit I am not an expert in everything that we do. I am surrounded by very, very good people and I'm very grateful and thankful for that. And I feel like my job as a CEO is to help them thrive and to leverage their expertise. And I learn from them every day. They may say they learn from me or that I may have all of the knowledge or the most knowledge. I fundamentally believe I don't have the most knowledge in the organization. The knowledge is really our collective knowledge. And there's a lot of areas that I look to other people where you're the expert in this area. Tell me what you think. I fully recognize I'm not on the ground every day. And I really keep that self-awareness of I can speak at a very high level what happens on the ground, but if I want to know what's happening day to day or how the trends are changing, I need to speak to the people on the ground. They're the experts. And I think that requires a lot of different skills, including not only your own ability to communicate, but also making it possible for other people to communicate with you. And that requires an entire culture around communication and learning and growth mindset and all of the things that I think we've started to understand are very important because you can be as smart as a frontline person as anyone, but if you can't translate that information in a way that, or you're not given the space to provide the information, then it's like a blockage. You as the CEO will never get that information and you won't be able to do your job. So it's so much more involved, I think, than people sometimes realize. Absolutely. One thing that I continue to be fascinated by myself because I've worked in media, I've worked in healthcare, I have a background in leadership that I got in working with a lot of teachers. My leadership degree was with a lot of teachers, is that there's so much that can be learned from people who are in other industries. And there's so much more crossover than I think we even realize. And if you're a person who's only ever worked in one of those silos or a different silo, sometimes it's hard for you to understand that we're probably more alike than we are different. So what are some lessons that you've learned from having worked in pretty diverse fields? I think it's exactly what you're saying. I have worked in very diverse fields, and I believe that a lot of times, and I've seen and experienced, a lot of times, people are butting heads because they feel like they, in their silo, they are the expert. And there's no possible way that the person sitting next to them has anything that kind of relates to what they're doing or that it's like it's not the same. And what I have learned, because I have sat in a lot of different seats, it's very similar. The seats are very, very similar. Fundamentally, they are the same. The environment or the situation or the topic may be different. And I see it today, even in housing. We can talk about housing all day long in this very siloed way, but I spend a lot of time talking to people in other sectors. And the truth is, the challenges that we face in housing are very similar to the challenges that are being faced in many other sectors. You can talk about healthcare, you can talk about digital access, you can talk about there's many things and the barriers that we face, the systemic challenges that we face are almost all of the same. It's just the topic is different. So to answer your question, I think what it's working in different areas, and I was someone that kind of moved around, even when I was in finance, I moved every two or three years I worked at Citigroup. And their whole philosophy at the time was, we're going to put you in different areas and you're going to, one, learn how to adapt. And two, be able to sit on the other side of a table and kind of figure out where these two things intersect. And I've taken that philosophy and that's taught me that someone who's sitting across from me could be coming from a very different place or a very different sector or a very different area of expertise. But there is always common ground. There's very few instances where I sit across the table from someone and there's not some form of common ground in which we can find a way to work together to whatever our goal is. And that's where, that's the reason why I go into things. There is always a shared and common goal here, and all I have to do is find what that is. That's really great perspective, and it's something that I also completely agree with. And I am always wondering, how do we make it more possible for people to also show up with that potential mind