Save What You Love with Mark Titus

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:36:23
Mark Titus
Welcome to Save What You Love. I'm Mark Titus. On today's show, I get to hang out with my friend Virginia Tenpenny, who is the Chief Aocial Impact Officer at Starbucks. That's a big deal. We talk to all kinds of folks on this show, and this is one of the bigger ones. And I'm so excited to share this episode with you because Virginia has such a compelling and pioneering and clear story about how she has found ways to save the things she loves on a big, big scale, and that includes her own family.

00:00:37:01 - 00:00:57:06
Mark Titus
So if you love this show, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. It really helps a bunch. And if you want to write a review, go ahead and do so in your own words. It helps her visibility. And if you're looking for summer grilling options, look no further than Eva's Wild, where we have flash frozen wild Bristol Bay sockeye filets for sale.

00:00:57:08 - 00:01:19:12
Mark Titus
They'll ship right to your door. You will love them. And a portion of every purchase goes directly back to the people working to permanently protect Bristol Bay for future generations. The United Tribes of Bristol Bay. The people that know the place best. That's Eva's Wild. That's the word save spelled backwards. Wild dot com. Enjoy the show today.

00:01:19:12 - 00:01:22:22
Mark Titus
We'll see you next week.

00:01:23:00 - 00:01:58:12
Music
How do you save what you love?
When the world is burning down?
How do you save what you love?
When pushes come to shove.
How do you say what you love?
When things are upside down.
How do you say what you love?
When times are getting tough.

00:01:58:14 - 00:02:00:14
Mark Titus
Virginia Tenpenny. Welcome.

00:02:00:16 - 00:02:01:20
Virginia Tenpenny
Great to be here, Mark.

00:02:01:22 - 00:02:03:10
Mark Titus
It's summer. Finally.

00:02:03:13 - 00:02:06:05
Virginia Tenpenny
Finally. Yes. Heat is coming.

00:02:06:07 - 00:02:15:03
Mark Titus
In. Is coming in this moldy corner of the United States. People don't think it happens, but it does. And we're about to experience it.

00:02:15:05 - 00:02:16:23
Virginia Tenpenny
Yes. Alleluia

00:02:17:01 - 00:02:42:18
Mark Titus
I am so grateful for you to be here today. We've been friends for many years, and I have watched your trajectory just explode. You have done incredibly inspiring things with your life choices and your career and just being a mensch and an incredible human being. And I would love to start with you just kind of telling us your story.

00:02:42:20 - 00:02:59:07
Mark Titus
What how did you get to be right here sitting in this chair today? Obviously, sort of the encapsulated version, but, you know, hit the high notes like, how did you come into the work that you do and what keeps you going with with the story that you came from?

00:02:59:09 - 00:03:38:07
Virginia Tenpenny
All right. Well, thanks again for having me. I guess to take it from the top. I'm the youngest of three. Born in Georgia to a father who was in the Army and a southern mother from Alabama. And we moved a fair amount when I was little. We went from Georgia to Indiana to Nevada, where I fell in love with the mountains, ended up in Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, which was a very the for the formative years for college and a little while after and that really nurtured my curiosity and kind of expanded my horizons.

00:03:38:09 - 00:04:08:16
Virginia Tenpenny
And after college, I was looking for some adventure. Boulder, despite its kind of lack of diversity and being in the middle of the country, it did nurture a global worldview and a lot of curiosity. And so I got a certificate to teach English as a foreign language and bought a one way ticket to Vietnam, in part because my dad had done two tours in Vietnam and we'd grown up hearing more about Vietnam as a war than a country.

00:04:08:18 - 00:04:55:07
Virginia Tenpenny
And when I started scanning for where I wanted to go teach, Vietnam had a lot of opportunities and not a lot of Americans, which is was part of the appeal. So I landed in Ho Chi Minh City, which in my family we only called Saigon and had a couple different encounters and took a month to travel up north to Hanoi and really quickly found a job and had a fascinating year, really experiencing what it's like to be different, what it's like to be the only white person in a room to explore American history through the lens of a Vietnamese person.

00:04:55:09 - 00:05:20:09
Virginia Tenpenny
My dad was obviously not crazy about the idea originally of me going to Vietnam, but he is an awesome guy and loves me a lot and still agreed to come over and visit, which he never had really had interest in visiting. As one can imagine. And so I had a really important year there working with other teachers from around the world and kind of slowing down and reflecting.

00:05:20:09 - 00:06:02:15
Virginia Tenpenny
Boulder had been a great run and it had been really fun. But this was a chance to kind of slow down and think more deeply about the world. And teaching was a great avenue to do that. 911 happened while I was there, which was a fascinating and tragic experience. Anywhere you are in the world, but really interesting to be in a country like Vietnam, where I can remember a couple of days after 911 on one of the front page papers of the Hanoi newspaper, it was a photo of a hospital that the Americans had bombed out next to the towers and just understanding Vietnam from that lens.

00:06:02:16 - 00:06:21:12
Virginia Tenpenny
My parents were on one of the first and they had had their trip planned to Vietnam right around then. And so they were on one of the first international flights over. And for them, I was planning at that point to go to Indonesia and then West Africa, and they felt this urgency to come home and America's folding in.

00:06:21:12 - 00:06:42:04
Virginia Tenpenny
And you got to be part of the you know, you got to be part of what our country is experiencing together. And much to my mom's chagrin, I did not. I stayed I actually ended up going from Vietnam to Senegal, which is a muslim country in West Africa, where I was visiting a friend who was in the Peace Corps there.

00:06:42:04 - 00:07:02:02
Virginia Tenpenny
And the intent was to go and do a bike across the Gambia, which is a little country inside Senegal to raise money for women's education. But because of security issues at the time, we weren't able to do that. So I ended up spending time out in the fields learning about Islam at a time when the world was calling for jihad.

00:07:02:04 - 00:07:35:12
Virginia Tenpenny
And so just learning about another culture at a time in the world like that, I think that is one of the most important experiences I had. And really helped me clarify my purpose in the world and trying to be a change agent, trying to promote equity and the importance of curiosity in everything that we do and just how narrow our worldviews can become if we aren't out there constantly challenging our assumptions and biases.

00:07:35:14 - 00:08:03:13
Virginia Tenpenny
So came back, had a great overall, a great like hard year, but really important year, and then went back to Boulder for a little while, applied to the Peace Corps, thinking that was my next move, and went down to Ecuador to teach and work on my Spanish before my post started. And in Ecuador kind of was exposed to a very different experience for people in the Peace Corps and realized that was not going to be the best use of two years.

00:08:03:15 - 00:08:29:00
Virginia Tenpenny
So I had a good experience traveling and teaching in Ecuador, made a stop in Cuba, which was really fascinating, to really learn about the difference what we think about communism from the American view, and contrasting Vietnam to Cuba and stayed with the family there. That was another really good, important experience. And then made my way to Seattle. My sister was here.

00:08:29:00 - 00:08:54:09
Virginia Tenpenny
She had an empty basement that I could crash in, and I started grad school always thinking Seattle was just a very temporary pit stop on my way to the Big Apple. And while here, Nordstrom was looking for someone to travel around the world, training their factories on their human rights requirements. So they were looking for someone with adult education experience who's willing to travel 75% of the time.

00:08:54:10 - 00:09:25:00
Virginia Tenpenny
And so it was like a dream job. And it was the first time I learned about using business for social change. I always thought I was kind of destined to work at a nonprofit or maybe if I was lucky, a foundation, but really discovered the role of business in effecting change at scale. So I learned a lot at Nordstrom and then from there made my way to Starbucks, where I got to start a program on ethical sourcing for manufactured goods.

00:09:25:00 - 00:09:43:02
Virginia Tenpenny
And at Starbucks, I felt like I'd found my people, I found my tribe and people who, wherever their post was in the company, were similarly committed to being part of something bigger and part of something that was trying to effect change in the world. So that was 15 years ago at Starbucks.

00:09:43:04 - 00:09:58:23
Mark Titus
While so much there. But to stick it on Starbucks for a second and your entry into it, how how did you enter into it? I mean, did you was there a role to be filled or did you start from the ground floor or how did it work?

00:09:59:01 - 00:10:30:18
Virginia Tenpenny
Yeah, my the woman I had worked for who had given me really my first shot at Nordstrom, who is willing to take, let's just say, raw talent and polish it up a little bit and help me find my way into the corporate world at Nordstrom, she left Starbucks after she left Nordstrom to start this effort at Starbucks, who had been doing a lot on the farmer side in terms of looking at coffee farmers and cocoa farmers, but hadn't been looking at the billions of dollars spent on manufactured goods.

00:10:30:20 - 00:10:56:12
Virginia Tenpenny
So Kelly, Jody, John brought me over, brought me with her from Nordstrom over to Starbucks, and I started as a regional manager and have had a lot of opportune money. And it's I always say it's like the power of being believed in. And when somebody is willing to take a chance on you and see something and then you're just given a chance to do your best.

00:10:56:18 - 00:11:23:16
Mark Titus
So you said a word in your wonderful story, curiosity. And I couldn't agree more. I was just pondering this this week. I had some some interesting news this week and some things to deal with. And I stopped in my tracks at one point and I was like, I'm not curious about this situation right now. I'm feeling different feelings.

00:11:23:16 - 00:11:58:08
Mark Titus
I'm feeling some resentment or some other things. But like I could notice that the curiosity had evaporated. Have you always been that curious on this track? Is there a clearly you've done and made decisions and created opportunities for yourself to immerse yourself in places that would naturally leave you curious? But has that been something that you have absolutely mandated of yourself to continue to be curious?

00:11:58:10 - 00:12:23:13
Virginia Tenpenny
Yeah, I think curiosity for me started as a sense of adventure and maybe being the youngest of three, a little bit of defiance, like the adventure may have been born out of defiance a little bit. And, you know, being a little bit of a rebel. But I'd say my curiosity has evolved from that sense of adventure to recognizing how little we know.

00:12:23:15 - 00:12:44:00
Virginia Tenpenny
And I was just having a conversation this morning about bias in the workplace. And when we talk about bias, sometimes there's like shame around it or it's like, well, you you are biased around this. And it's like, actually bias is just our human experience. There's no avoiding any buyers and sellers recognize, yeah, we all have bias. Of course we do.

00:12:44:02 - 00:13:06:09
Virginia Tenpenny
So let's just always be curious. And as I was just doing a session with my team yesterday on like what is the checklist that we need to have where we're constantly checking our curiosity? What are those rituals that we have around? How does our curiosity show up and how do we build in check points to make sure that we're really being curious?

00:13:06:09 - 00:13:23:10
Virginia Tenpenny
And so I think it's gone from an element of my personality to more intentional practice and one that I think will help serve as an element of my leadership, but also just serve me in terms of how I experience the world.

00:13:23:12 - 00:14:07:13
Mark Titus
I think it might be the most important aspect of personality, that it continues the work that I want to do too. I'm reading a book right now called The Hidden Life of Trees, and if you haven't read it, it's fantastic. And it is it drops the veil of this thing that you look at and you experience, and it creates this incredible sense of wonder, this intricacy of connectedness by a mycelial network that is vast and and that sense of wonder that's in the every day is is that like you said, I mean, so well, there's so many things we don't know.

00:14:07:13 - 00:14:28:07
Mark Titus
There's so many things that are just full of wonder. I mean, in our everyday lives, if we're able to, I think, kind of get out of our own heads about that and get curious. And so I love that. And that was the first thing that rang in my head while you were telling your story was this is a light that has to be turned on.

00:14:28:07 - 00:14:53:06
Mark Titus
And if it's not, it's a good idea to check. Why not? So we talked to folks of all walks of life on the show. There's artists and entrepreneurs and entertainers and scientists and people all all have one thing in common. They're doing wonderful things to say the things that they love big or small in their lives or their communities or on our planet.

00:14:53:08 - 00:15:16:16
Mark Titus
And I'm going to start from the top of the funnel, the wide part, and kind of narrow down into the work you're specifically doing. So from your perspective, from where you're sitting right now, how does one go about and this applies to everybody, but from your mind, how does one go about saving the things that they love?

00:15:16:18 - 00:15:49:11
Virginia Tenpenny
I think it starts by naming it and declaring it. So paying attention to what is it that that you love and how do you declare that? And then how do you reconcile how you spend your time in your resources and your energy, you know, reinforcing your love of that? So I think that would be the first thing. It's kind of, what do you declare that's huge.

00:15:49:12 - 00:16:18:16
Mark Titus
That's not what I was expecting. And yeah, and it can be surprised to. Right. I mean, I think in my case, you know, I grew up loving salmon but didn't really understand that it would be the transformative physical reality and the metaphor, you know, these animals that give their lives, the life itself can continue. What what what are some of the things that you love that you found heart space for that you absolutely focus on?

00:16:18:18 - 00:16:45:16
Virginia Tenpenny
Well, I would say it's part of it's almost more of a sentiment than a thing. But I think I'm a big believer in the power of human connection. And so when I think about that in my job at Starbucks and the role of our company in terms of powering human connection and creating a place for human connection, creating a moment of connection that happens in our stores all around the world every day.

00:16:45:18 - 00:17:14:00
Virginia Tenpenny
When I think about the human connection that I feel with my family, with my community, with the global sense of community. And so I think it's not necessarily a thing, but as an element of being human that I think needs to be nurtured and preserved and in the context of an environment that is fractured and fracturing more and there's a loss of human connection.

00:17:14:02 - 00:17:44:06
Virginia Tenpenny
We're in a moment where how can there be a great resurgence of connection? How can we find more common ground? When you think about it in the US, in the interest of preserving democracy and turning the tides of the division that's happening now? But more broadly, I think, you know, the more the people and planet intersections come together and there's so much threatened people have to be willing to come together against a common cause to address things as threatening as climate change.

00:17:44:08 - 00:17:50:23
Mark Titus
Does this connection factor into the people positive initiative that you're heading up at Starbucks?

00:17:51:00 - 00:18:19:18
Virginia Tenpenny
Yeah. So in my tenure at Starbucks, I've led a lot of different programs and initiatives and they've all been somewhat current state. And now I have the moment to step back and think about in the context of 2030, what does it mean to be a people positive company? We have a very clear planet positive agenda to ultimately be a resource positive company where we put in more than we take out.

00:18:19:20 - 00:18:45:09
Virginia Tenpenny
And so on that journey we have 20, 30 goals to cut our waste water and carbon by 50%. So very clear, measurable enterprise wide, we operate in over 80 companies. How is the entire enterprise coming together to achieve those goals? I am charged with working with a lot of really smart people inside the company and outside to define what does it mean to be a people positive company.

00:18:45:11 - 00:19:08:00
Virginia Tenpenny
There isn't the same science based targets. What does it mean? So we look at that through the lens of inclusion. What does it mean to feel a sense of belonging, to feel that sense of connection through opportunity? How can we be a place that helps people grow and achieve their full potential and then community in terms of how are we fostering communities?

00:19:08:00 - 00:19:16:21
Virginia Tenpenny
How are we being the neighbor that every neighborhood wants and really leaving communities more tightly connected than when we found them?

00:19:16:23 - 00:19:43:12
Mark Titus
That's going to be tricky. I mean, it's I've always admired your work and I've admired the work that Starbucks has done. And and yet it's massive and it is ubiquitous and and there are moving parts that are not you can't control every employee. You know, like you you do your best to put your work out there. You create an ethos.

00:19:43:14 - 00:20:22:23
Mark Titus
And I mean, obviously there have been issues in the last five years where there have been some perceived issues of racial injustice that have happened in Starbucks stores. And I've noticed that there was an immediate response. But like, what does that feel like on the inside? Somebody who's working so hard to create this positive not only place to work and place for customers to to experience life and connect to each other, but like, you know, be a source for change and activism.

00:20:23:01 - 00:20:47:17
Virginia Tenpenny
Well, I think, you know, specifically Alex referred to the Philadelphia incident that happened three years ago. I was just talking about this, that while we are a company who has held these values around inclusion and diversity and belonging so tightly and as a company, we have done a lot to invest and further those goals. The reality is we're all a bunch of humans and humans have bias.

00:20:47:17 - 00:21:14:21
Virginia Tenpenny
And that was an issue of racism. It wasn't a reflection of a corporate culture, but we're humans. It was a human who made a bad decision. And so ultimately that incident exposed the sense of the extent to which the system isn't in place to reinforce. And, you know, set up the structures to address that bias. And we're not honest about that bias.

00:21:14:21 - 00:21:42:12
Virginia Tenpenny
And so that really set us on an important journey that we realize you have to earn that every day. And we created a great course called to be welcoming that's open sourced and available for all. To really check your bias and bias isn't just a race issue. It's all of our worldviews. And how are we really learning and being curious about other people?

00:21:42:14 - 00:22:11:02
Virginia Tenpenny
And so there's ways that we're thinking about that on the individual level. And what is that? The course was the journey that humans need to go on to get more curious and be more involved in that way. What is our responsibility like? How can we be part of that journey? And then as a company, we have done really formal civil rights assessments, basically auditing all of our practices to say like where from a system or a structural place, are we falling down?

00:22:11:02 - 00:22:35:04
Virginia Tenpenny
Are our ambitions broad enough? Are we invested in the right ways? And because systems are developed by humans, there's all this bias built in. And so we constantly have to keep coming back and reassessing and bringing in different points of view to look at all of our practices and look at the data and reconcile. Okay, here's our ambition, here's the reality How do we solve this?

00:22:35:04 - 00:22:58:14
Virginia Tenpenny
And what's the journey to true where your values are in the practices are? And so I think the truth is we'll never get there. We can only continually evolve and continually ask ourselves how we're doing on that journey and try to be better and try to share the journey with all. I think all of our practices are really open sourced because these are not Starbucks issues.

00:22:58:14 - 00:23:11:22
Virginia Tenpenny
I mean, they can play out at Starbucks, but they're human issues and every we have a lot to learn from other companies, but hopefully we have things to share too, in terms of our practices and insights along the way.

00:23:12:00 - 00:23:54:21
Mark Titus
They like they're lucky they got you. I can't think of a better human to tackle this. Did you notice? I mean, I'm just coming back to the moment when you're you're in Vietnam and 911's happening and like, did you notice your own inherent biases as you traveled throughout the world? Were they were they kind of I'm just really curious about, you know, were they instantly flattened by being exposed to other human beings or did you have to mentally check yourself in and challenge yourself at some point based on the way you were raised here in the U.S.?

00:23:54:23 - 00:24:16:11
Virginia Tenpenny
You know, in the case of 911, it's like the emotional curve that you go through is first is terror and watching it. It was late at night in Vietnam and watching it. And then there were thought there were like train crashes and there were like it felt like there was a series of all of these things which some were not connected with.

00:24:16:11 - 00:24:43:12
Virginia Tenpenny
The time. It was so much to process and feeling so far away. And then having been really one of the only Americans in my cohort. And it's easy when you are outside of America for a while to become quite critical, especially in your early twenties, when you're, you know, learning and questioning everything. And it's easy to be critical about a lot of things.

00:24:43:14 - 00:25:16:02
Virginia Tenpenny
And so my parents came over to visit and I remember my mom, you know, saying, America's folding in. You must come home and reflexively feeling defiant to that. And while yes, America was attacked, it was like, look at what we've done in these other places. You know, there was a lot of other perspectives, non-American perspectives that I leaned into because I was, you know, outside.

00:25:16:02 - 00:25:35:21
Virginia Tenpenny
And I wasn't feeling the pain that a lot of people here probably were. At the same extent. But that all evolved. You know, the more you travel, the more you travel, the more you realize how little you know and how few places you've been. It's like and the more you know, I don't know how many countries I've been to, but it's it's irrelevant because there's so much yet to discover.

00:25:35:21 - 00:26:00:06
Virginia Tenpenny
It's like I have only scratched the surface of this tiny part of the world. And so there's just so much more to discover. It's like, you know, I probably use less than 1% of what my iPhone is capable of, and I feel like there's so much more to discover and I could use there. And it's like I've probably discovered less than 1% of what I'm capable of discovering about the world.

00:26:00:06 - 00:26:10:09
Virginia Tenpenny
And you constantly have to challenge yourself to like, get out and learn more and live into more of that potential and discovery.

00:26:10:11 - 00:26:40:17
Mark Titus
I'm contemplating this a lot right now. Like, I don't know if it's because I'm approaching. I'm trying to go next year, next summer, and I don't know if there is some sort of biological ticker going off, but I've been pondering that thing like I just this week I was thinking about, man, there are there's there's just no way to experience even, you know, a portion of all of the cultures and incredible things on this planet that are out there that exist.

00:26:40:19 - 00:27:11:04
Mark Titus
And and looking at the face, I was up in Bristol Bay this last week and the wonder and the exaltation in the women that were preparing the fish, they've done this thousands of times, thousands and thousands of times. But the fish had returned again and they're carving it up and they're coming up with joy because it was it is inherent to their connection to the land, to each other, to physically nourishing them.

00:27:11:06 - 00:27:36:19
Mark Titus
So like that, that sense of wonder, I think, kind of overrode this sense of anxiety about like, I'll never be able to experience it all. It was like, I can have wonder in discovering what trees are actually about or in our own, you know, hood with connecting with another human. And I want another hour on top of this one to just go down that road with you.

00:27:36:19 - 00:28:02:21
Mark Titus
But I want to ask you about, you know, for our listeners out there who are thinking about their path in their careers, and if you could elucidate for us what is the path to be a chief social impact officer, that's a big title. Like how do you how do you go about how does one go about getting down that road?

00:28:02:23 - 00:28:33:13
Virginia Tenpenny
I will acknowledge a good part of my situation has been luck, right time, right place and having the privilege of being believed in by a lot of people around me. So that said, I think beyond that in the business world or in the context of an organization, I think the first step is finding an organization whose purpose is aligned to yours, and that's you can't reconcile things.

00:28:33:13 - 00:29:11:13
Virginia Tenpenny
I think if you don't have that is kind of the precondition to achieving your potential in that type of environment. And then I would say really understanding a company's strategy and thinking about within the context of a strategy how do values get deeply embedded? And so the way the social impact or corporate social responsibility, ESG space, environment, governance, social and governance, the way the spaces evolved over the years, when I first started at Nordstrom, it was kind of a risk analysis.

00:29:11:15 - 00:29:35:07
Virginia Tenpenny
And so if you want to avoid bad headlines in the news, you have to have these programs to show like we're doing our due diligence to reduce risk. And then it has evolved into now I am deeply heartened by consumers and particularly Gen Z as employees and consumers who are demanding more of their companies and they want to know and they'll research.

00:29:35:07 - 00:29:54:04
Virginia Tenpenny
They grew up in the digital age, so they have access to so much more information than we ever had growing up. And so they will take their employers or the brands that they reward financially, they will take them to task and say like, what are you doing down your supply chain? How are you treating your workers? What are you doing with the environment, How are you sourcing your products?

00:29:54:06 - 00:30:26:20
Virginia Tenpenny
So I think that exposure of information and that pressure has helped companies go from looking at this from a risk to like, how do you want to be rewarded by your employees and your customers for the good things that you're doing? And how do you build that directly into your business model? So rather than companies used to say, well, we want to do well so that we can do good, it's doing good, so you can do well, It's really putting that at the center of everything that you're doing.

00:30:26:22 - 00:30:47:14
Virginia Tenpenny
So I'll give you an example. At Starbucks, one of the initiatives that I was a part of was helping to launch a hiring commitment for veterans and military spouses. And you think about what does Starbucks have to do with veterans? Well, actually, we hire a lot of people. And so when you think about one of our greatest social impacts is the jobs that we create.

00:30:47:14 - 00:31:08:21
Virginia Tenpenny
And then the experience that people have on the job. And so that really led us to thinking more broadly about how do you region two populations that have barriers to opportunity and how do you build a pipeline to bring them in? How do you give them an experience where they feel welcomed, believed in, supported? So it started with veterans and military spouses.

00:31:08:21 - 00:31:33:00
Virginia Tenpenny
Then we hired Opportunity Youth, formerly known as at risk kids disadvantaged to say, look, actually this is a talent pool that just needs a chance and we need to abandon all of these myths and stereotypes and just give them a chance, believe in them, break some of those old tapes and that extended to refugees and then returning citizens, which are people coming out of the justice system.

00:31:33:02 - 00:31:46:20
Virginia Tenpenny
And so that's one example of how you look at like what is something that's fundamental that your business has to do and how do you put that through the lens of how can we give this a purpose that's going to advance a social good?

00:31:46:22 - 00:32:17:05
Mark Titus
It would seem that Starbucks resources, ample resources, would be able to manage that better than, you know, smaller startups and things like that. I mean, that seems like a lot like to figure out how to properly go about doing that work. I was visualizing that as you're speaking of all these different types of groups of folks, is that just a big, big team or I mean, how do you guys go about doing that, physically doing that work?

00:32:17:07 - 00:32:38:01
Virginia Tenpenny
Well, I would say one thing is it is it is not just me. It is not just a social impact team. It's ensuring that it is embedded in the ethos and the values of the DNA of every role. And so I'll talk to someone in finance and it's like, okay, how does your role help contribute to our social impact agenda?

00:32:38:01 - 00:33:02:15
Virginia Tenpenny
And our finance team is really innovative. We use our Treasury dollars to make available for loans for people of color and other people who otherwise have a hard time accessing capital, or farmers who otherwise would have a hard time accessing capital. Our procurement teams understanding how the decisions that they make and how they award business is a way of reinforcing our values.

00:33:02:15 - 00:33:29:01
Virginia Tenpenny
And if you are a vendor to Starbucks and suddenly they're not just asking you about your price and your timing, but they're saying like, tell me about the diversity in your workforce. Tell me about what are your values and how are you contributing back to the community? It's like we can, in theory, everyone who touches Starbucks or any organization, you have an opportunity to influence and reinforce that doing the right thing is good for business.

00:33:29:03 - 00:33:55:17
Virginia Tenpenny
And so it's part of ensuring that it's not a central team. On the hiring initiatives It was once you just kind of declare again, like, you know what, here's here's a group of talent that is having barriers to opportunity. Here's everything that they have to offer. And the on the Veteran and military Spouse initiative at the time, there's been a real divide in people who are connected to military service and those who are not.

00:33:55:17 - 00:34:18:16
Virginia Tenpenny
So unlike my dad's generation, the draft where everybody knew somebody, everybody was connected in the past 25 years, 30 years, 40 years, it's this much smaller population of people who decide to serve, volunteer to serve. And so many people, they don't know anybody who served and so there's just that disconnect. There's that lack of connection, there's that lack of understanding.

00:34:18:19 - 00:34:36:10
Virginia Tenpenny
And so you have to nurture that curiosity and you have to be able to tell the stories to say, hey, this is what it means to serve. This is the experience they have. This is the values that they have now are hiring managers, which is manager of every store. You think about, you know, over 8000 stores here in the US.

00:34:36:12 - 00:35:00:11
Virginia Tenpenny
When we declare something like that, they they will embrace that because everyone my sense is people who work at Starbucks, they all want to be part of something bigger. And so they just need a little direction sometimes. I mean, a lot of times they're doing this on their own. But when we declare a more company wide initiative, people are very responsive to embrace that and understand like, how can they be a part of that.

00:35:00:12 - 00:35:11:03
Mark Titus
Did your experience growing up with your dad, who did two tours in Vietnam, influence the work you did with providing opportunities for veterans?

00:35:11:05 - 00:35:33:21
Virginia Tenpenny
You know what I remember I mentioned I'm the youngest of three and my brother and sister lived with my parents in Korea as part of my dad's service. And then when we were in Indiana, that was his last last assignment. And then we moved west to where? To Nevada to where he had grown up. And what I experienced more was the transition.

00:35:33:23 - 00:36:07:23
Virginia Tenpenny
And he went from being a man in uniform and he was pretty strict. And, you know, a commander's lieutenant colonel. And he was a professor of ROTC at Ball State to struggling to really struggling. And that loss of identity and moving west and trying to start a small business. My parents had their own challenges in that. And so I think what impacted me was more of his transition and the challenges around that than his service.

00:36:07:23 - 00:36:37:13
Virginia Tenpenny
We were all very proud of his service, but my siblings probably identified more with his time in the military than I did. But when we came back, this goes to your line of business, Mark, which is the power of storytelling. And one, a colleague at Starbucks hosted an event where a medal of Honor recipient came down and shared his story and kind of his courage.

00:36:37:15 - 00:37:09:20
Virginia Tenpenny
And there was a call of action afterwards to say, like, we need more hiring managers to hire people like this. Like raise your hand if you are willing to come and help us figure out, like, how do we do more? And so I got involved and part to honor my dad's service in transition. But then as I learned more about the disconnect and the power of stories to really help people reconnect with their own patriotism, honestly, what we found was people went from like, Yeah, you know, I had this cousin who served in Iraq.

00:37:09:20 - 00:37:31:12
Virginia Tenpenny
I never actually talked to him about it. So like all of a sudden people would come out of the woodwork to say, like, I run the cookie program, we want to do a cookie for Veterans Day. Like, how can we help? You know, let's do some military families stores and like, let's do art for military families and all these ideas because people needed a way to channel to connect with and then channel that they actually do honor service.

00:37:31:12 - 00:38:03:03
Virginia Tenpenny
But they've never been a platform for that. There had never been a way to direct that. And so I think again, it started with honoring my dad's transition, but then it became really energizing to see the power of storytelling and unlocking that connection to service for so many people across the company that we've, I think, become a more patriotic company as a result of that initiative again, which was not just me, it was a ton of people coming together, but it was really fun to be a part of.

00:38:03:05 - 00:38:50:03
Mark Titus
You are a font of creativity and graciousness. And you mentioned struggling. We we talk about struggling on this show. I'm open about my recovery and we all struggle and we all go through some sort of recovery in our lives no matter what. And I've watched the work that you've done not only as an incredible professional, but you're also a mom, you're raising two kids and you went up and decided to up and raise two kids, start this process really smack in the middle of COVID, you know, and you fought very hard for that privilege.

00:38:50:03 - 00:38:55:00
Mark Titus
Can you tell us the story of how your family came together?

00:38:55:02 - 00:39:23:20
Virginia Tenpenny
Yeah, like a lot of stories, your point there was struggle and there was trauma. My husband and I had a hard time conceiving and went through a long fertility battle and prevailed. And I got pregnant with a healthy girl. And right at the end of my pregnancy, had a cord accident and delivered a stillborn, which was very obviously traumatic.

00:39:24:00 - 00:39:57:21
Virginia Tenpenny
And it was really my only shot at motherhood because we had exhausted all of the other rounds of fertility. So that was a big blow. And as part of my recovery, I was with a friend who is a Rwandan genocide survivor who wanted to give back to Rwanda. And so we went back on one of her first trips back to Rwanda after she left as a 18 year old.

00:39:57:23 - 00:40:20:11
Virginia Tenpenny
And we were researching how we could how she could start a nonprofit and really connecting with what are the resources for young women and girls. And through the course of that work, I connected with a social worker and asked about adoption. I'd had a had an encounter my first morning in Rwanda on Sunday mornings in the downtown area.

00:40:20:11 - 00:40:50:23
Virginia Tenpenny
There's no driving allowed, and so it's super quiet. And I was taking a walk by myself. And these two little kids, a little boy and a little girl came up through the photo, came up and just held my hand. And they weren't begging, they weren't asking for anything. But I was still very broken hearted. And we just walked silently and then they just kind of, you know, they were probably three and four ages now, my kids.

00:40:51:01 - 00:41:09:12
Virginia Tenpenny
And then they just kind of went in, do their thing. And I had this moment, you know, the universe sends you messages. And it seeded the idea of like, you know, maybe our course is adoption. And maybe that's part of why I'm here. And so talking with a social worker, she said, yeah, you want to adopt? Okay.

00:41:09:12 - 00:41:30:06
Virginia Tenpenny
There's a there's a big issue with abandoned children, abandoned babies, specifically. And so she said, okay, come back tomorrow at 4:00. She's doing a boy or a girl. And I said, Well, I'm just starting this truck reception. I said, I just want to help the child. And so that night I had to call my husband like, Wow, tomorrow I'm going to meet children.

00:41:30:06 - 00:41:52:10
Virginia Tenpenny
You know, I'm going to, you know, And he's like, What? But you just slow down. You just announce this idea over curiosity around adoption. And so he's on face time. And the next afternoon I go back and I walk in and I meet this beautiful little girl, and I said, That's it. This is my crew. And the people said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down.

00:41:52:10 - 00:42:12:22
Virginia Tenpenny
I said, I don't want to meet the boy because Lyle and I had agreed. Under no circumstances would we adopt too, because that would be crazy. And we were just not equipped to adopt to children. We were questioning, are we even equipped to adopt one? And so then I go in and I meet this little boy and his name is blessing.

00:42:13:00 - 00:42:32:21
Virginia Tenpenny
And as I'm holding him, I said, you know, this is about how old Louise would be, the little girl that we lost. And he was born on the same day and his name was Blessing. And it's like, if the universe isn't telling you something. So Lyle and I, you know, I said, okay, Lyle, you choose, you know, are we doing the boy or girl?

00:42:32:21 - 00:43:02:11
Virginia Tenpenny
Because there's no you know, there's no way we'll do both. And he said, Well, of course we're going to do both, you know, like there's no way we can choose. And so the social worker was like, Greg, come back next month, no problem. And I had no idea we were in for the fight of our lives and I probably wouldn't have had the fortitude to go through it had I not had the encounter and met this little guy blessing and had such a profound attached meant to him.

00:43:02:13 - 00:43:26:11
Virginia Tenpenny
And so an 18 month battle pursued. Rwanda had been closed for adoption for 12 years and was just becoming a party to the Hague Convention to oversee international adoption. The US had no ties in adoption wise to Rwanda, and international adoptions have greatly declined here in the US and a lot of complexities. But we used every lifeline we had.

00:43:26:11 - 00:43:51:23
Virginia Tenpenny
Fortunately, Howard Schultz, our former CEO at Starbucks, was good friends with the president of Rwanda, so they helped. We had Madeleine Albright helping on the U.S. side, just every lifeline we had. And it became really a a part time job. And so the little girl that I had originally met ended up being adopted domestically and we were destined for our little girl, Lola.

00:43:52:01 - 00:44:15:23
Virginia Tenpenny
And so now we have Joshua Blessing, who goes by Blessing and Lola, a Kaser and a Kaser means the beautiful one in Kinyarwanda. And we got them just before just a few months before the pandemic hit. And so, like becoming a parent is intense, becoming a parent like bombing into toddler years is intense, particularly with two and then a pandemic on top of it.

00:44:15:23 - 00:44:41:03
Virginia Tenpenny
It's like some things really show you what you're made of. And this was a big growth survival year growth year. But as we were talking earlier, it's like this is a year to also remember your privilege and remember your blessings and context for what so many people around the world are going through. So many black Americans here been struggling with generational racism.

00:44:41:05 - 00:44:51:15
Virginia Tenpenny
So just a lot a lot to reflect on and a lot to be curious about in terms of how we go forward in trying to make the best possible impact we can have with what we have.

00:44:51:17 - 00:45:31:21
Mark Titus
Well, again, I would love to this is kind of scratching the surface here. So I would love to write a frustrated refusal to have you back another time. Incredible story. It always moves me to hear this story and and it's just uncanny. It's unbelievable to have those two kids come at this time and on you know, in a time when America's boy long, long fight for social justice is really in in a crucial phase and.

00:45:31:21 - 00:45:48:07
Mark Titus
So good on you. It's beautiful. What advice do you give young people who want to get involved in the path that you're on for for social justice inside of businesses in our country?

00:45:48:08 - 00:46:16:20
Virginia Tenpenny
I think the first thing is declare your purpose. Know your what you love, declare what you love, and find an organization, as I mentioned earlier, where that there is alignment there. I would say attach that to the business strategy. Don't take no for an answer. Every role I've had at Starbucks hasn't existed before. I've had it and so embraced the idea of being a pioneer and always ask.

00:46:16:20 - 00:46:45:12
Virginia Tenpenny
Ask yourself, Ask your peers, ask your bosses. Are we thinking big enough and are we doing everything we can and then come with ideas and solutions? And I think if we all continue to do that and we have our own personal conviction that is aligned to following through on those commitments that are happening at scale over and over again in our personal lives, in our professional lives, that's how we will change the world in a really big way.

00:46:45:14 - 00:46:48:07
Mark Titus
What gives you hope for the future?

00:46:48:08 - 00:47:20:10
Virginia Tenpenny
I think it's young people. It is this next generation. When we think about Mark, the problem of that, that they're going to be inheriting from a environment, climate change perspective, from a human perspective, from a democracy perspective, there is so much that is threatened. And I believe that this generation in this cohort that's coming up is going to have the strength and the fortitude to be able to address all of those.

00:47:20:12 - 00:47:23:15
Virginia Tenpenny
I'm I have strong belief in that immense history.

00:47:23:15 - 00:47:48:14
Mark Titus
I'm with you. Okay. The little rapid speed round here before we turn you loose, you're just to say, God forbid, it's getting hot out there. Your house is on fire. This is a completely mythical solution or scenario here. Your House on fire. You can take other than your loved ones. Clearly, you can take two physical things. What do you take out of the fire?

00:47:48:16 - 00:48:15:14
Virginia Tenpenny
We have life books for the kids. That's really their stories and artifacts, I think their origin stories and really wanting them to be attached to wonder. Those are things that can't be replaced and there's no digital replacement. There's no way to capture those. And so I think it's everything. And the boxes of their life, boxes with their life books that relates to their origins.

00:48:15:16 - 00:48:28:05
Mark Titus
Best answer yet. Okay, awesome now let's let's go a little metaphysical here. Let's call it your spiritual house. What are the two things about you that make you, Virginia, that you take out of that fire?

00:48:28:07 - 00:49:00:21
Virginia Tenpenny
I am fortunate that I have a hard wiring around optimism and hope. Lyle has diagnosed and is pathologically positive, which can drive me crazy. But I think that hard wiring is essential in the context of all the other challenges that we have. That and being a little lighthearted. So not taking yourself too seriously so that when you we've got a lot of things that we got to overcome and be resilient around.

00:49:00:21 - 00:49:04:07
Virginia Tenpenny
And so how do you stay light and push through some of those things?

00:49:04:11 - 00:49:10:21
Mark Titus
Yeah, yeah. Anything one thing that you would leave in the fire to be burned up, purified.

00:49:10:23 - 00:49:36:23
Virginia Tenpenny
Like that, I would say. Any fears and I can't think of a specific fear. I obviously have fears around anything happening to my children, but any other there are fears that don't serve us and making sure that those that get burned up in the fire.

00:49:37:01 - 00:49:47:15
Mark Titus
Virginia Tenpenny So grateful for your presence today. How can folks follow along with the work you're doing? Get involved. What do you recommend.

00:49:47:17 - 00:50:08:11
Virginia Tenpenny
From the work that I'm doing on the Starbuck side, I would say go to Starbucks stories dot com and you can see all the great things that Starbucks is doing well beyond anything that I touch. But the power of stories. You're a storyteller and I really believe in the stories to inspire people. I'm terrible at social media. I'm going to get better at it, but I try.

00:50:08:12 - 00:50:15:14
Mark Titus
To do that too, saying, Yeah, thank you so very much and let's do this again. Yeah, okay.

00:50:15:14 - 00:50:16:00
Virginia Tenpenny
Love to.

00:50:16:04 - 00:50:16:13
Mark Titus
See you.

00:50:16:18 - 00:50:28:07
Virginia Tenpenny
See you.

Music
How do you save what you love?
How do you save what you love?

00:50:28:07 - 00:50:51:09
Mark Titus
Thank you for listening to say what you love. If you like what you're hearing, you can help keep these conversations coming your way by giving us a rating on Apple Podcasts, you can check out photos and links from this episode at evaswild.com. While there, you can join our growing community by subscribing to our newsletter.

00:50:51:11 - 00:51:20:12
Mark Titus
You'll get exclusive offers on wild salmon shipped to your door and notifications about upcoming guests and more great content on the way. That's at evaswild.com. That's the word save spelled backwards Wild dot com. This episode was produced by Tyler White and edited by Patrick Troll. Original music was created by Whiskey Class. This podcast is a collaboration between Eva's Wild Stories and Salmon Nation and was recorded on the homelands of the Duwamish people.

00:51:20:14 - 00:51:38:06
Mark Titus
We'd like to recognize these lands and waters and their significance for the people who lived and continued to live in this region whose practices and spiritualities were and are tied to the land in the water, and whose lives continue to enrich and develop in relationship to the land waters and other inhabitants today.