Leadership the United Way: Liz Cotter Schlax

Today I have with me Liz Cotter Schlax, who is the president and CEO of United Way of Southern Maine. Thanks for coming in today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful to be here. Well, I'm pretty excited to talk to you for a couple of different reasons. One, we were just talking before we started recording about your personal connection to Maine and the fact that you went out and sort of shone your light across the United States, then came back and here you are again, but also the wonderful work that United Way does. So let's start with your main connection. I understand you and I share a Waterville connection. I was practicing medicine up in Waterville for a bit, and you apparently lived there and went to Waterville High I did. I grew up in Waterville. I'm a proud Purple Panther, graduated from Waterville High School. It was a wonderful place to grow up. And then like many kids I see today, I was absolutely bound and determined to get out of the state when I graduated, and so I did. So I left and was gone for 25 years and then had the opportunity and privilege to come back just nine years ago and here I am. So let me ask you this question. How many people from Waterville High School that you graduated with went on to Harvard and Columbia? A few. Yeah. I actually had a classmate who is a physician who graduated from Waterville with me and went to Harvard and he went on to medical school, not business school like I did. But yeah, there are a lot of kids from Waterville who left and went to all sorts of great institutions and we need to get them back here. Well, I agree with you and the reason I asked this, my sister went away and went to Harvard for her undergraduate. She also went on to medical school, and I think it just underscores this idea that we really have great educational institutions in the state of Maine pretty much at every level. I mean, we have wonderful K twelves, we have wonderful college and we have wonderful graduate programs now, but it's whatever you want to do with it. I agree. I think Waterville High School, certainly I think not then and not now isn't considered sort of a premier educational institution in the state. But it was a great education for me and I'm confident that the students who are there right now are also getting a really great education. So I think you're right. I think we have a commitment to education in this state. I think we've had high standards for our students, and I think there are kids all over the state who have great education and lots of talent, and I'm so happy that we can keep many of them here. But as they leave and spread their wings, I hope many more of them consider coming back like I did, and now you happen to live in what is my hometown. And you happen to, we were talking about this, you live on the street where I used to deliver papers when I was a youngster back in the day when youngsters deliver papers and not people who were fortunate to have cars either way, it's a very, just for those of you who deliver papers, so much respect either way. However you've done it in your life, it's very early morning, however you're doing it. It is hard work either way. But you now live in Yarmouth and you came back to the state essentially for the job. You told me this is actually a work anniversary and you are now the president and CEO of United Way of Southern Maine. So talk to me about that. I mean, you weren't always in nonprofits, you had other experiences. Yeah, I've been so lucky to have just a series of really interesting jobs that have made up a really, I think, really interesting career. I did start out in nonprofits after I graduated from college and I actually started working for United Way in Madison, Wisconsin. We were there because my now husband was in graduate school in Madison, and that's where I started working for United Way. But when he was finished with grad school, it was my turn and I loved leadership and management and that was something that had always been student council all the way up. Leadership had always been sort of an important part of me and what I enjoyed doing. And so business school was a pretty logical extension of that. And so I chose to go to business school, and so we moved to New York City and had the opportunity to live there, and it was an amazing time to live there. We had an incredible experience. We were also there over nine 11, so that was a really heart wrenching, and I just have such a strong connection on that day. That was a really impactful part of my life. And when I graduated, I went to work for John Deere who had recruited MBAs into a management training program. And so there were a cohort of MBAs from around the country who had all joined John Deere at the same time. And we went through this management training program and we were placed in different assignments, and so had the privilege of working in a number of locations in the United States, but also in Germany through the work with John But I really did miss work. And so as I said, I had started out in the nonprofit sector and as I spent about six or seven years at John Deere and then I really wanted to get back to community work and had the opportunity to go back to another United Way in Des Moines, Iowa where we were living at the time, both my husband and I, working for John Deere at that time, and went into a leadership fundraising and marketing role in Des Moines and was there for seven years before the opportunity in southern Maine opened up and I had the chance to come home. And so it was a very natural career progression, but I certainly would never have predicted that when I was graduating from Waterville High School. When I think about the work you did in the corporate world and the work you have also been doing in the nonprofit world, I'm guessing that probably there are some similarities and some differences. Absolutely. And I think that was another reason why I wanted to go to business school. And I knew when I went to business school that I was going to work in the corporate sector when I graduated because I wanted to see what the differences were. I had anticipated that my long-term career would be in nonprofits, but I really thought that the best way I could serve communities was to gain a little bit of what is that secret sauce over there on the corporate side. And I think what I found was far more similarities than differences. The resources are very different, but everybody feels resource constrained. And that John Deere, I was in product development and product planning, and that's a place where you always want an extra 10 million so you can do this other product as well. So there are always choices and always have to be strategically analyzing what's in the best interest of the constituents that you're working for. So that's obviously a big difference is we were constantly very aware of shareholders at John Deere and talked about it all the time. And here we talk all the time about what's in the interest of the community. And I think that similarity is interesting that you have a group of people who are very, and that was another similarity working at a place like John Deere. I mean, the people who work at John Deere are as passionate about farming, about agriculture, about machinery as we are at United Way about community and solving community issues. So it's that place where people really feel that they can be their authentic selves wherever that is for many people that's at John Deere. But that similarity of we're working really hard with really talented, caring, dedicated people doing this great job, but it's for the benefit of others, I think was just a very strong connection and showed up all over the place in all of my roles. For those who aren't familiar with the United Way, can you give us a little background on the work that your organization does and maybe the evolution in Maine that you've seen? Sure. All United Ways are local and independent. And so there are actually over a thousand of us across the country and 1100 of us across the globe in 40 different countries. So United Way is a huge network, but it operates at a very local and sometimes hyper-local scale. And so we have seven United Ways in Maine. When I started at United Way, what was then United Way of Greater Portland, nine years ago, we had 10 United Ways in Maine. And so in those nine years, we have consolidated and merged to seven of us, and we do that like any other organization when it makes sense for the communities that we serve to share resources and do things on a bigger scale. But United Way's work at that local level to address the most pressing, urgent community needs, whatever those are, and addressing the root causes of systemic issues. And so what that means for us here in southern Maine is we're really focused right now on childcare. We're focused on housing and homelessness, we're focused on food insecurity, and we're looking a lot at mental health and substance use. And so those right now are the most pressing and urgent issues. And so you can think in your head about, okay, what do we need to do today to make sure that people have a roof over their head? But also how do we get upstream and ensure that the people of tomorrow don't have to be in the situation where we're trying to find a roof for them today, that they have had the systems and supports in place to enable them to access housing, for example. So that combination of both the most pressing and as determined by the community. And so that's why that local focus is so important because while all United ways across the globe are working in the areas of education, financial stability and health, all of us are what a particular United Way may be most focused on, may be different according to the needs of that local community. And so we have that ability to really be locally directed and locally focused, but also the benefits of a national and global network where we can learn best practices and we can do federal public policy work and things like that at scale. I know you're working on a project called Alice along with all of the, it sounds like the United Ways of Maine, and I think there's a lot of crossover between the work that you are doing and the work that we do in social determinants of health in the medical system. Absolutely. I was reading this, I was like, wait, they're speaking just a slightly different dialect of the same language that we speak. So talk to me about Alice. I'm really glad you asked. Alice is a really important way to describe a group of people in our state that have always been there and we've always known about, but we haven't had a really great way to talk about. And therefore, to address the issues that they face, Alice stands for asset limited, income constrained employed. And so what that means is these are working individuals who are really struggling to get by. They barely make ends meet every month. And in our state, the data shows that 42% of households in Maine are at that Alice threshold or below. So what that means is those families cannot meet a basic budget of rent, utilities, childcare, if you have children, the basic transportation, those basic expenses that we have at 42% of households in our state are not able to meet that basic budget. And so forget about saving for retirement. Forget about saving for your children's education. Forget about Christmas presents or vacations. That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about the basic budget. And these are the individuals that all of us work with and see every single day. So these are often in our healthcare environments, they are in our retail environments, in our food service environments, administrative staff in corporations and offices and Alice families are all around us. And what we found in Cumberland County, for example, is, and I have my little cheat sheet here, about $34,000 a year is required for a single adult to meet that basic budget here in Southern Main in Cumberland County. So that's $17 and 41 cents an hour that an individual needs to make in order to meet that basic budget. And we know that there are a lot of jobs that don't pay 1741, just again, forget about saving for retirement and all those other things that we know we need to do. So all the United Ways in Maine joined a national network of, I think we're the 27th or 28th state to join in this project of assessing this. And as I said, I mentioned the Cumberland County data. It's on a county by county basis. It tallies the actual average cost of all those things, rent, food, utilities, blah, blah, blah by county. And then it also looks at the jobs and says, okay, what are the jobs in your area paying? And therefore that's where you get that 42% number of saying, Hey, our jobs are not able to provide the incomes that our families need right now. And so all the United Ways in Maine, all seven of us came together to do this report with the generous support of the John t Gorman Foundation. And this is something that we will get data every year. We'll get small slices of data, and we'll get a full report every two years updating this data and statistics to make sure that we're with the most recent information. It's primarily for us to work with lawmakers to make them aware of the way that families are struggling in our state and also to work with the people in our local communities to address housing affordability, childcare affordability. We're working with many partners in the community right now on those two particular topics. For example, yesterday in our office, we were talking about access to mental healthcare and the costs associated with that as so many providers have gone to private pay only. And as you noted, you may have noted when I said the list access to a private therapist was not on the list of basic expenses. So that is out of reach for many people in our community. So we see, to your point, how all these issues come together as the social determinants of health, as keeping people from being as healthy as they can be in our state. And so as I said, United Way works in education, financial stability and health, and we know that all of these are intricately intimately connected, and the success in one area has very strong outcomes in the others. In my job, I'm one of the chief medical officers for a healthcare system, and in my job, one of my service lines, it's called Addiction Medicine services, although what we're calling a now is substance use disorder. So the medical director said to me, what he's hearing now are people who no longer qualify for main care being dropped from the main care roles, and they're working individuals who were able to access help with substance use disorder as a result of having access to main care. But now they are working, they make too much money to qualify anymore. They can't afford the health insurance that they need to stay actively sober. And they're going, if they can even do this at all, they're going to the streets to buy the medications they need to actually support them in their ongoing recovery. And so when I heard that, I thought, well, here's a great example of something that was probably a benefit through covid, which was wonderful. I understand why from a financial standpoint, longer term it's going to be hard to do to keep people covered by MaineCare, but also here's the unintended consequence and this is what it means to our community. And so when you talk about the nature of health and financial stability, everything is so intricately connected. Absolutely. And I think another example of exactly what you're talking about is childcare. And as I've been talking to employers, I talked with a key leader at an organization in our community this very morning at breakfast talking about childcare challenges and how employees can't afford childcare, can't access childcare. Last year, the legislature put in place a great benefit to provide additional stipends. So at its very basic level, you can't pay enough to childcare workers to get them to join the workforce as a childcare worker and also enable parents to afford to pay for that childcare. So it is clearly an example that the market cannot fix With our current economy, with the low unemployment rate, there are so many opportunities for childcare workers who are highly skilled, wonderful with human interactions and all those skills that they have to make more money elsewhere, frankly. And as much as they love children, they have to feed their families as well. So many people are leaving the profession due to the pay. And if you, okay, well, let's just increase their pay. And then families say, are you kidding me? Childcare is an enormous expense already and we can't make it more expensive for families. So clear example of where the market can't fix it and therefore it needs some sort of other intervention. And so the legislature did that last year and they put in place stipends for childcare workers from the state. Great idea. Well, with those small stipends, a few hundred dollars a month, a number of childcare workers lost various benefits because they went over that benefits cliff and total unintended consequence. People were trying to do the right thing to try to fix this issue that exists in every single community in our state. And so many childcare workers then refused the wonderful augmentation to their salary that they had been offered because it would've put them in a place where they actually would've been worse off because they would've lost the benefits that they need. And whether that's Maine care or whether it's a housing subsidy or any of those other things that are needed for low income and moderate income individuals in our state, again, just to get by, they would've lost those. So I think you're exactly right. We do that all over the place and that's why systems approaches are so important that you have thoughtful people coming together to solve issues together. And yes, we'll get it wrong. Sometimes we'll make a mistake, we won't see the road at the consequences, but when we do see them, what do we do about it? And so in this example that you're talking about, what are we going to do to ensure access to people who are ready to take that step in their own health journey, that all of us as a society want them to take and need them to take for the overall health of society? How are we going to intervene as a society to enable people to get on that path where they can access the services that they need? I agree with you, and I also think it's been interesting for me, again, having worked for the particular healthcare system I work for, I mean, we have an early learning center. So one of the things that we've done in our organization, because we know that we employ primarily young women who are having the children in the family, and often they're the first ones to stay home with the kids if they don't have childcare, is we've now expanded our early learning center and it's wonderful and we subsidize it and it's prorated based on income so that we are doing all the right things. And also, I don't know that we will ever be able to completely meet the need. I mean, we still have also a very, very long waiting list, I'm sure. So I think it's another great example too of we're an organization that needs to also make enough money to remain sustainable, to continue to offer healthcare to the community. So it can't always be put on employers. It can't always be put on government. It can't always be put on private individuals. And how do you get the stakeholders all to the table? How do you first of all identify them? How do you get them to be willing to have conversations? How do you utilize the information they bring forward so that you can actually influence change? I mean, these are large questions. I don't know that you'll be able to answer them in our short period of time, but do you have thoughts on this? I do. I mean, I often joke about the cheesy name of our organization, but it's not, it is actually descriptive. And United Way has existed in our community since 1929, but United Ways across the country founded in Denver in the late 18 hundreds exist for exactly the reason of there are so many issues in our society and always have been that not only can no organization by itself solve the issue, but no sector. And it's pure hubris to imagine that we can. And so United Way, we really exist to bring the community together from all the sectors. So government sector, nonprofit sector, the corporate sector, philanthropy and caring people who don't see themselves as part of a sector but want to be part of the solution. So how do we bring everybody together rowing in the same direction on some key issues so that we can tackle them? Because you're exactly right. And I think your example is perfect. You are doing your part, and that's amazing. And local nonprofits in your community are doing their part. They have slots that are available that are subsidized, that are funded by their local United Way to ensure children are in childcare that's affordable and quality for the families, and the government is putting in various subsidies. So in many of these issues, it is going to take all of us coming together to address it from our own place. And unfortunately, I don't see a time when we will just solve all of these and they will just all go away. But we have to keep addressing them and getting smarter and better at the role that all of us play. And I think using best practices from business, for example, to bring into how we tackle some childcare financing, for example, and how we help childcare providers to become more economically sustainable through a mix of funding resources, we can use expertise from other sectors to support that work in addition to funding, in addition to donated land. I have this example that I tout all over the place because it's so impressive to me. Kennebunk Savings Bank had extra land, and we all know we have a housing crisis across the state, and so they're partnering with a Vesta housing to build some housing. I believe it's senior housing in Kennebunk because they had the land. So it's that kind of like what asset, what resource do I have as an individual, as an organization, as an entity, as a network, what asset do we have that we can bring to bear on this issue? And it might be expertise or land or money, but it also could be advocacy. And that's another place that United Ways across the state, we have a full-time public policy director specifically for that because awareness of issues is so critical so that everybody can lean in and everybody can understand what their role is to play and how they can play a part in solving these issues. And so I think that it really does take all of us, and I think we're at a time right now where I believe strongly that people's urge to care for each other and help each other is still as strong as it always has been. But people are overwhelmed right now themselves. Obviously the Covid pandemic through everyone for a loop. And I think people are, perhaps some people are regaining their footing now and maybe feeling like they're in a more stable place where they can predict the future a little bit better. And maybe that allows them to sort of broaden their aperture a little bit now and come back to, okay, let me look around and let me see how I can be useful to my community or how what I have to offer can be of use to others. But for a few years there, people were incredibly hunkered down, and I understand that totally. But our society cannot operate that way. We cannot operate where it's every person for himself. And where I don't see the issue of homelessness, well, no one in my family's homeless, so therefore it doesn't impact me. We can't go to that place because our whole society depends on all of us working together to address things together and move forward together. And I feel hopeful that we can do that again. But right now, I think people are just gaining their footing again to be able to see, okay, how can we work together to address things? And I hope that United Way can be a helpful part of that process in some of the key areas. We are working hard in some of the key immediate issues that we're seeing in our area, but there are many other institutions and organizations working to bring people together to solve issues. And I hope people see where they can contribute because whether it's going to school board meetings or participating as a volunteer on your kids' soccer team or whatever it is, we need everyone to lean in to be part of community again, because for a few years we were sort of prohibited from that. And we're seeing some effects of that right now. Negative effects that I think we've got to reverse through real engagement. Well, I can't help but notice that you were part of up with people for more than two years, which I think is pretty notable that of all the figs, that this remains on your notables for your life. So I can tell you're already predisposed to having a very specific and optimistic view of the world. And also you mentioned nine 11, and I could tell just looking at you that it still makes you feel emotional. It makes me feel emotional. It should make any of us feel emotional. And I think I can tell you from my standpoint, my response to that was, oh no, we cannot let ourselves be held captive by fear and by anger. We need to move through that. So tell me how that impacted you. Oh, absolutely. I think I do have a hopeful and optimistic nature. I was lucky to be born that way and have that cultivated in me. And I think I did travel for three years up with people and lived in homes of people all over the world and was able to see that people are the same and people have the same hopes and dreams for their, I was in families that were very, very different from how I grew up in all ways, religion, economic circumstance, political views, just as different as can be. And I really gained an appreciation. I really do believe that the vast, vast majority of people want the same thing and are in their hearts hoping for peace and hoping for safety for everyone around them. I really believe that. And nine 11 shook all of us. It was actually, now you can tell exactly how old I am, because it was the day before my 30th birthday. And so I was getting ready to celebrate with friends and all that stuff, and this just enormous life event happened. And walking around New York for the next few weeks, I was terrified. I was scared of everyone around me. I was cautious in what I did. I was sad, and I really didn't know what the future would hold. And I think from talking to others, I think a lot of people experienced that same thing where it just seemed like, how can we possibly ever go back to anything resembling normal again after this? And then time went on and I saw the amazing way that people came together. I saw how kind people were on the New York subways to each other. I saw how people recognized the humanity around them and the struggle around them that other people were facing. Hope came back and it came, and then within a year it was a sense of normalcy and it was a sense of, okay, that has forever changed us. And to your point, we are not going to let this forever change us in all the ways that make us a society that cares. We had a lot of laws that were put in place and we had a lot of large reactions. And I think over time we've recognized and modified as a society and come back to an equilibrium place. And I really believe that that is how our country will continue to operate. I really do. I really believe that as we have these pendulum swings, and I feel very much like we're in one right now, and it's very uncomfortable in a lot of ways. I'm part of something right now and again to this sort of lifelong commitment to perhaps optimism, but I'm part of a national cohort called the Civility Leadership Institute. I'm just finishing up with that. And the focus on civility, the focus on being able to sit down and discuss with people who have different views from you and recognize them, their essential humanity, and recognize that we have shared interests and they want a safe and healthy America and a society that works for everyone. We have very different views in some cases of how to get there. How do we find the things that we do agree on? How do we find the things where we can find common ground, at least for right now, to just start flexing that muscle again, to practice what it looks like to work with others who disagree with you, to address things. I've been privileged, the issues that we work on at United Way, people can have very different approaches to them and very different views of who should solve that problem. But I have found in all the years that I've worked at United Way in three different communities, that people from all political stripes are willing to come sit at the table and talk about it and willing to come to some place where we can address these big issues. And so I have a lot of hope as we've seen as a society moved on and not forgotten the lessons. I think of nine 11, I have a lot of hope that we will continue to march forward with progress toward a civil and cohesive society. I really do. But right now, we are in a place where we need a lot of help and we need people to demand that of each other and of our leaders, that they be part of bringing people together instead of the rhetoric and the actions to divide us. We have to demand that of our politicians and our other leaders in community. And that's at the small level, that's at the school board, that's at city council, that's at everything. I'm not just talking about the national politics, which we know are so fraught, it's we're seeing it in very easy to make the other guy the enemy. Not just, I disagree with you, but you're the enemy. We can't be doing that. We can't be doing that at school boards. We can't be doing that at city councils. We can't be doing that in how we believe we should address homelessness. We're all trying to solve the same thing. Let's work together to make it happen and let's not vilify each other. So I think it's a very long and rambling answer to a short question, but I do think that that carry through. I do think we need optimistic, hopeful leaders who haven't given up yet. We just have different ideas of how to get there. Well, I can't even begin to top that. I think that was just a perfect answer. And I think it is incumbent upon people who have lived through things like nine 11 kind of on a larger scale or even personal things on a smaller scale and have come out on the other side and have said, we can do this. We really can. As humans, we don't have to sink to the depths of despair. We can acknowledge our pain and our sadness and our anger and frustration, but we can get there because done it before. So I think that is the benefit of unfortunately living through terrible, terrible things is knowing that there is light on the other side if we want there to be. And we have to. I mean, we don't have a choice. One of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes