Your Fed, Your Voice: Michelle Tucker

Seema Sheth: Hey there, and welcome. This is Your Fed, Your Voice. I’m your host, Seema Sheth, regional executive with the St. Louis Federal Reserve. You know, one of the coolest parts about my job is that I get to talk to people about how they experience and impact the economy. We love data here at the Federal Reserve, but behind every data point is a person with a story to tell or a way in which they impact the economy. This podcast is a way for us to share those stories with all of you. And today, I’m super excited because we have a fantastic guest. Her name is Michelle Tucker, and she’s the president and CEO of the United Way of Greater St. Louis. Michelle, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today.

Michelle Tucker: Absolutely. I’m happy to be here.

Sheth: All right, so I’m going to have you start at the beginning. Let’s start with some big picture questions. Tell me about what United Ways are and how they help the economy and community.

Tucker: Well, thanks for asking. United Way of Greater St. Louis, I like to say we’re part of the fabric of the community. So that means that we are here and sometimes in the background, even when you don’t see us. We’ve been around for over a century, 103 years, to be exact, here in St. Louis, and we’ve been helping people live their best possible lives for, like I said, a very long time. Right now, the way that we help people is by resourcing and keeping at the ready a network of over 160 nonprofit agencies, and we call it the safety net of the community. And that means that we have that safety net in place and ready to catch people and bounce them back when they are experiencing challenges.

Sheth: As you look forward, what is your vision for the organization, and where do you hope to land?

Tucker: So let me just say this up front. It takes a village. So we are not doing this alone. It really is through cross-sector collaboration and our strong relationships with business partners that puts us in a position where we are able to help over one million people on an annual basis. And that’s one in three people. And so my vision for this organization is to continue to show up in ways that no other organization is able to show up, to make sure we’re resourcing the community, especially the ecosystem across the nonprofit sector. We are resourcing them enough to be able to be strong and resilient through challenging times because we are going to continue to experience challenging times. And so I want to make sure our United Way is there and able to assist for a long time, well beyond my time here, for generations to come.

Sheth: You wrote an article for LinkedIn called “Who’s Invited” that explains this multi-sector collaboration concept. So can you address some of, perhaps, what you see as these systemic barriers, and what do we do about it?

Tucker: We want to work together to understand what’s really a root cause of some of what we’re talking about. Because unless we start to address root causes and we do it together, then we’re going to continue to see these challenges. And so that article was really to lift the understanding around making sure that the table includes the right people and decision-makers and various perspectives that are weighing in on trying to figure out, OK, so how do we get to a next place as far as resolving an issue? Always important to me---I’m going to tell you that the theme of this conversation will be collaboration because one person and one organization cannot do the work that needs to be done alone. So that was really to bring forward just that theme, really. And hopefully, it resonated with people as they think about, yeah, we need to have the right people at the table and not always just a single voice because the single voice---I mean, we can’t keep doing what we always have done. You really need to stretch thinking, challenge the room in order for us to see different results.

Sheth: OK, so tell me, how has that influenced your work so far? Has there been fruits to that idea?

Tucker: Absolutely. And so what I knew was---and I still know this. There are so many resources that are available to the business community as far as training and readiness and preparation. And I thought, you know, it would be nice if we could open our doors to, again, sharing some of the information over. And what I want to stress is, as a leader in the nonprofit sector, I think that people tend to believe that the requirements are less of leadership in the sector. I will tell you that the requirements of any CEO are the same requirements of a CEO in the nonprofit sector, if not greater. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because we have to do so much with so little. And so you have to be really creative, really creative with your strategies, to make certain you are stretching resources as far as they can go and even beyond that to make things happen. And I’d like to say, we aren’t fueled solely by passion. It has to be know-how. And to keep the doors open, to help people, then you have to make sure you have business knowledge.

And so one of the things that I’d say I’m making sure that I leverage into this sector is just the things that I know about what makes for a successful business, what helps to keep the lights on, the doors open. And so it’s really thinking about things in terms of how do I think about this as a business and not a nonprofit by the definition that so many people think that we should be thinking about things in relation to?

And so it really is treating this like a business and knowing that the impacts that we’re having, they translate across lines. They translate across lines. The way that you are able to help people is the way that a business might deem success in product sales or things. Yeah, so it’s really just translating things.

Sheth: I also think it must be challenging because---let’s say you’re a traditional business and you don’t meet your bottom line. There may be a profit implication. But in the world of nonprofit, you don’t meet your bottom line or you don’t---those are people in the balance. I was just thinking that---people implications.

Tucker: And yeah, it hits different. And I struggle with how many times we have to say no to things because we don’t have a path to a yes. But believe me, we are working every day to try to figure out a path to a yes or helping people beyond some of the limits that sometimes our resources place on us. So I think collaboration is very important. And so as you think about nonprofits and what they are able to do from a standalone basis, I think that, again, one of the things that I would really, really stress is reliance on partners to help. Where one nonprofit may have to step back, the other can pick up and help with wraparound supports because, frankly, people don’t typically just present with one issue. If they come and they say that they’re in need of food resources, then you just need to probe more to understand why are they in need of food resources? And you find that maybe they’re underemployed or unemployed and that there are other challenges that we have to respond to. So, really, when I talk about that safety net, it’s all of us working together collectively to try and help people.

Sheth: Well, thank you so much for sharing that and for sharing this conversation with me. You’ve been a phenomenal guest, and I think St. Louis is really lucky to have you doing the great work that you’re doing.

Tucker: Thank you so much, and thanks for the support of the Federal Reserve because you all are key partners in all of this, and you are helping us to help people. And so, again, it takes all of us.

Sheth: Well, thank you for that. We try our hardest. Your Fed, Your Voice, this podcast is aimed at making sure that we amplify those really interesting stories that are happening within the region. And if you liked it, please be sure to like and subscribe here on YouTube. And hey, tell a friend that you had a good time too. I’m your host, Seema Sheth, and until next time, this has been Your Fed, Your Voice.

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