WCCF: Why should people in the business and finance world care about things like early education and child care, and how does that issue affect the workforce at your company?

Jon Stellmacher: I think it all starts with the idea that business leaders need to be interested in the strength of today’s economy and in our future economic growth, and by the way, as an aside, my interest in this whole broad topic of early childhood investment includes not only education but also physical and emotional well-being and social development.

The logic is sound suggesting that investments early in life can pay dividends later. And the research has shown that as well, as far as investments early in life contributing to a more successful school career, resulting in a more productive and fulfilling adulthood, and it just seems that early investments augmented by good education, a safe and secure living environment, all of those things reduce welfare expenditures or reduce the demand for social services because instead of fixing a problem we prevent a problem in the first place. I think that’s something that motivates me personally and also our company, and I would think would motivate business and finance people. Get people prepared for working in the future and being contributors to the community, to society, as opposed to people who need the support services of the community.

Another thought from my perspective is that when we talk about investing in young lives, those are people who are going to shape our future society, they’re going to pay the bills that our generation has committed to, and frankly, also that they’re the ones who are going to be forming the social support programs that we’re all going to depend on some day ourselves, so there’s a little bit of self interest there for individuals and corporations. And to me, it’s just the right thing to do, a matter of social conscience and responsibility. And while Thrivent is really a financial services organization, we’re unique in that we’re also a fraternal benefit society, which means we’ve got a very active program of community involvement and philanthropy. We’ve got a history of being family-oriented and community-oriented because we serve families, and that has evolved into some of our corporate interest in issues like economic self-sufficiency, poverty, homelessness, and as you know there’s a close link between these issues of poverty and issues of early education. So as an organization we saw the connection between getting a good start in life and avoiding some of the issues of poverty later. And we’ve actually made this one of the small number of focus areas for our own community granting in the Fox Cities and the Twin Cities.

So going back to your original question, they should care because (a) they’re gonna someday need a strong workforce, and (b) their workforce lives in a community and you want that community to be the best it can be, the best quality of life for people, and that’s why it should matter to us.

WCCF: You’ve been one of the central players in a new entity called the Partnership for Wisconsin’s Economic Success, which appears to be focused primarily on these early education issues. What exactly  is the partnership and what can we expect this group to b e doing in the coming months?

JS: The Partnership is a network of folks from business, government and nonprofits, and it’s grown out of the interest of several individuals as they’ve learned more about the benefits of investment in children at an early point in life. Our PWES is actually modeled after a national group called the Partnership for America’s Economic Success, and in fact we’re the first state chapter of the national group. We’re still in the formative stages, but we’ve adopted a mission and some goals. The mission talks about making the success of every child one of Wisconsin’s top economic priorities, and we’ve got these goals about increasing awareness of the connection between quality early childhood investment and social, intellectual, physical and emotional development and a strong economy. We hope to be able to build some public-private partnerships of leaders from all sectors to advocate for early childhood investment, and we need to think about the resources we create both publicly and privately to support quality early childhood experiences for every child. I would also point out as we think about this from a business perspective, I think every businessperson involved really puts emphasis on outcomes and effectiveness, on evidence-based impact of any programs we have, be they education or otherwise. We want to create that understanding and awareness by the public the business community and the legislature, but we realize the best stuff happens in local areas or regions, so we want to stimulate some action at that level, to recognize that solutions must often necessarily be locally targeted. We’re batting around ideas like creating a sort of speakers bureau that could share information at service clubs and other venues where business folks are present. But ultimately we’d like to get more business people involved in learning more about his sort of thing and understanding the tie between investment early on and the benefits in the long term.

WCCF: You’ve also been actively engaged in the Project Promise anti-poverty campaign in the Fox Cities. What led you to get involved in that initiative?

JS: There is a group in town called the Community Health Action Team, which is a team of community leaders from all sectors who try to look at issues of health with a broad definition in our community. We periodically do what we call a plunge, where we have a full-day immersion in an issue. We’ve done them on alcohol and substance addition and abuse. We’ve done them about domestic abuse, rural health, literacy, and a number of other issues. One of them a couple years ago was a plunge on poverty, and folks experienced a poverty simulation. We visited agencies and heard from people who are living in poverty, working and not. Out of that, the group decided to create an emphasis on raising awareness about poverty during the first quarter of 2007. That initiative created a lot of attention so we kind of relaunched it in 2008 as a community coalition to coordinate  and facilitate our continued focus on poverty in the Fox Valley. So we’re really excited. We’re still in our infancy, but we’ve established three committees, one about analysis and information, gathering statistics, identifying the root causes of poverty and the continuum of care available in our community. We’ve got another committee building awareness and education about poverty in the community to create greater interest in advocacy. And then finally we’ve got an action and impact team that’s initiating events and activities to address poverty head-on. So it’s pretty exciting. We like to say our goal isn’t to reduce poverty, we want to eliminate it, and we’re going to measure progress toward that.

WCCF: So far we’ve been talking mostly about early care and education. From your perspective as a member of the business community, what other kinds of family supports should employers be concerned about that can help stabilize the lives of workers and ultimately enhance the business environment as a result.

JS: First and foremost I think the best thing a business can do for its workers and their families and their community is to operate successfully in order to retain business, retain jobs, and grow jobs. We face this very competitive global economy. We’ve got consumers who rightly demand top-notch products and services, but they want to pay no more than absolutely necessary. And sometimes businesses feel like they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. In my mind it’s unfortunate that so many times folks perceive business as being selfish or unconcerned for employees, and I’ll grant you that some are, and they deserve our scrutiny. But in my experience in interacting with business executives in the Fox cities, most businesses and business leaders are concerned not only about their shareholders, but also about their employees and the community. I haven’t yet met a businessperson who got into business to eliminate jobs. We enjoy growing businesses, and as part of that recognizing that a business can’t grow without great employees. So I think businesses do need to consider what they can do to be family friendly. One example is flexible scheduling, especially in the summertime. A lot of companies offer on-site day care or other family-oriented programs. Obviously things like paid time off, family leave, other employee benefits, some of them are legally mandated, others are kind of competitively mandated. We also do what we can to develop employees’ knowledge and skills so they can contribute more to the success of the organization, but also to equip them with marketable skills so they can continue to grow in their career, whether it’s within our organization or maybe outside the organization if they find better opportunities elsewhere. Are we building a sense of community and are we committed to making a difference in our own community? Because I think that ultimately will be for the benefit of our employees, and that’s who we ultimately depend on for our success. So I think it clearly goes beyond early childhood investment. We need to think about right from the start all the way through the school years all the way through adult employment years. I think there are a lot of organizations out there, both businesses and non-businesses, that are trying to work together to make their communities better.