From Crisis to Stability: James Jesse, Executive Director of EOAC

0:02Hello everyone and welcome to the Fortell COD podcast. Today I'm joined by James Jesse, the executive director of the Economic Opportunities Advancement Corporation or EOAC based in Waco, Texas. Um for 60 years, uh their organization has helped families across nine central Texas counties move towards greater stability through Headstart energy assistant weatherization. Um as well as a few other things. And it's been an interesting time because under James's leadership, they've got this broad mission together around one clear idea, moving families forward. So, um, James, we want to say welcome so much to the podcast. >> Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. >> Now, you recently asked your team quite a simple but quite a difficult question, which is what does EOAC actually do? So, what was the answer and how's that kind of question come about? Yeah, absolutely. Excuse me. Well, um, if you'd asked me that question when I very first started, I think I would have answered much in the same way that anyone at the

1:04organization would have done, which is really listing our programs. We do weatherization, we do energy assistance, we do case management, we do head start. Um, and while that is all true, those are our programs, but they are not our purpose. Um, so families don't experience EOAC as programs and they don't experience life as programs. They experience crises. They experience obstacles. And so it's our job to sort of take that complexity away for them and and give them um more ways to access our services more easily. >> Right. >> Awesome. And with the kind of like new mission focus that you're moving families from crisis uh towards long or lasting stability, which I think is like really amazing to kind of see that arc. Um like what does lasting stability look like in practical terms? Like what does that look like daily?

2:07>> Yeah. Um, well, I I think everyone knows that statistic about more than half of Americans or or one financial uh interruption or crisis away from homelessness. I think it's something about like missing one paycheck would would would send their family into homelessness. And I think with the rising cost of living, especially in our area, that sort of pinch on families is becoming even more acute. For me, lasting stability really means not that no one's ever going to need help again. I think that would be unrealistic, but really that that margin between um what they're able to live on on a day-to-day basis and then being able to absorb those crises as they happen without totally derailing um their families. I think that's that's the lasting stability that we're looking for. like one flat tire shouldn't mean that a family suddenly starts experiencing homelessness. >> Yeah, I totally I totally believe that and that's definitely true. I mean the

3:10one thing that I was when I was reading your strategic plan, it talks about no wrong door and the thing with no wrong door is it means different things to different people. I mean we Scott and me are fairly obsessed with this idea of you know using an AI to take phone calls and make sure you get people to the right things and also like programmatically know that you know one one person can be a you know can have access to this program but also they may have access to that program too. So that sort of intelligence but talk us through what it means for you what it was and you know sort of how you're evolving it as well. >> Yeah. So, no wrong door for us really is about no matter how you enter EOEC, um you're able to access the right service at the right time. It also has to do with like streamlining our intervention services so that we're able to meet the real needs that families have. Um, so I think like everything that's in the current system, the way that the programs are built, most of our programs are publicly funded and so they have very strict and complex compliance requirements, eligibility requirements,

4:14and everything about that system is sort of incentivized to stay in their own lanes. Um, doing so creates some operational simplicity um, and makes things more streamlined in that sense, but it misses the opportunity to holistically serve a family and really help them make progress. Um, and so I think like the most difficult handoff that we do is the first one when they call, what is it that they need and what is really what is really going on? Maybe they think they need one thing, but they might actually need something else that they might not even know that we do or that we have access to and and could help coordinate for them. >> Oh, that's great. And so I want to take a step back um and really because I know we kind of dove into some of the strategies that you're doing and what that kind of looks like for clients. I'd love to just kind of hear more from you like what made you kind of take this job like what what is the reason what is

5:18your why in doing this work and um what does that look like for you? >> Yeah, absolutely. And so I grew up in a small town in West Texas, town of about 5,000, but it was the biggest town in our county. So very rural upbringing. Grew up in a low-income family in a low-income community. Um and I was the first generation in my family to graduate high school and graduate college. Education for me was a very transformational experience. It totally changed the trajectory of my life. Um what I was able to earn, how I was able to provide for my family and the kind of opportunities I was able to provide for my kids. So much of my journey is has been about how do I pay that forward? Um, so I originally started working in higher education in programs that helped students stay in school and graduate school. Later I started my own nonprofit where I worked with high school youth in rural areas and help them access college. Then I worked in Dallas for a time at a program that was working with

6:22elementary and middle school students for college and career readiness before accepting um this role at EOAC where among other things we do uh head start and early head start. So my career sort of has been working upstream like where can we intervene and make the most difference. I think one of the things that I've learned is it doesn't all intervention at any stage is really valuable and they all have their place in sort of our system of support but those early years those years really are foundational and they represent our greatest chance to really change that trajectory for people. >> So you mentioned something fascinating. You started your own nonprofit. What was it doing? Is it >> called opportunity resource services I co-founded it with uh my very good friend started that in 2012 and then we built that over 10 years and had a lot of success and a lot of fun and a lot of stress and all kinds of things. >> Yeah. Well, I'm telling you Scott knows startups suck a lot of the time. [laughter]

7:24>> So what like and so what yeah like who are the who are the communities you were doing? What like tell tell us more about it. That sounds really interesting. Um, so that work was about ending generational poverty in Texas. That was our northstar. Um, we started with college access programs in two rural high schools. >> There's an after school program and a summer program, mostly federal funding for those programs as well. >> Okay. >> Uh, we started with those two schools, but over 10 years we expanded to eight schools and three counties and went from 16 kids to almost 500 kids. And then along the way, we also um added a program for adults who needed to be reskilled or retrained um to reenter the workforce. Uh and we ran that program for Johnson, Tarant, and Dallas counties as well. Um so about 3,000 adults served every year in that program. Started with just an idea and then when I left, we were at about 2.5 million. Um, and so lots of great work and and they're still

8:26working in Johnson County and doing and and Karen and Dallas and doing great things. >> That's amazing. And you know, I know it it really sounds like education was like a big part of your kind of journey into kind of ending some of that um kind of generational um experience. And so, you know, I think about it often because, you know, I think you know this, but you know, being a Head Start kid myself, like that was that was transformational. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was transformational for my family as well. Um, and I think about, you know, I was just actually talking with my spouse the other day. We were talking about right before we had our first kid. Um, you know, I was working two jobs. She was working full-time and we were still weren't able to pay our bills. And that was like really overwhelming for us. And so, you know, as I think about Head Start being around for 60 years, you know, what have you learned about the relationship between child care and

9:30parents ability to work and economic mobility? What does that look like tangibly? >> Um, that's been, I think, one of the biggest learnings for me coming into this work with with early childhood. um is that it's both a workforce issue now and an economic mobility issue for the future. Um, so parents need child care now and there's very much some shortterm, you know, one to fiveyear economic outcomes. They're important for families and communities that childcare access now provides. And Head Start is a part of that. Um, it's one of the things, but it's part of that. And every community right now is experiencing child care crisis, affordable childare crisis, what we call it. There's not enough affordable childare spots. And in the state of Texas, there's an estimated 100,000 families that would go into the workforce tomorrow if they had access to childcare. So there's there's an immediate cost to that and every community right now should be triaging that effort. Um, but I think more

10:34important and something that we shouldn't lose sight of is that long-term economic growth and development. We know that the first five years of a kid's life are critical for early learning, for nutritional development, brain development, and all those things. And there's so much that changes for a kid if you provide a comprehensive program like Head Start. Um, so we always say, you know, Head Start isn't isn't child care, right? I mean, we care for children, but it's not child care. Head Start is childare and early learning and health and nutrition and so much more. Um, and those investments in kids pay dividends not just now but for years to come. And um I I was going to mention just before we started on the podcast because Texas is such a unique animal especially you know coming from a Brit right who's traveled around a bunch of the states it's because Harold was telling us about you know his area he's having so much growth right in terms of people coming

11:38coming into the area where you know it's kind of creates an unusual set of problems actually right but the the thing I was interested in is is from talking to you and reading the website and all the rest of it is you know you talked about success should be measured by where the families make what you call meaningful progress, right? Not just we gave them a service. So tell me about what like elite performance looks like at your agency. What does great case management look like? What does that feel like? Because I think that's what a lot of executives directors are striving for, but you know, in in practice, it's a really difficult thing to do. Well, >> well, full disclosure, we're still figuring that out. Um but I think the point still stands um we we experience the same thing. So right now we have a lot of outputs. If I was doing the sort of theory of change model, right? That's my nonprofit um background. If we were doing the theory of change, we have a lot of outputs. And so we are very proud to say last month we helped 10 [clears throat] families avoid addiction and we helped 200 families keep their

12:40lights on. But the question still remains like but then what? I mean like what really changed for the family. >> And so there are a lot of indicators that we could look at. >> Um some of them are easy for us to pull together and others of them might require more sophisticated technology than we currently have now. But you know if we provide this intervention for their utility bills, are they able to continue their utility bill payments after that? Was it truly a one-time intervention that bridged them um in a difficult moment in a pinch? Um or did we not do the work that we needed to do to get them stable? Um but things like wage growth, job attainment, I mean these are the sort of outcomes that families experience to help them move towards their goals that sort of get lost in the in the details of outputs. So, I'd say we're trying to move from outputs to outcomes and we're still working on how exactly we'll we'll measure that. >> Yeah, I appreciate your transparency around that because I think sometimes as

13:44leaders like it's hard because you want to, you know, help your team grow and develop and also you want to show like, hey, we're making strides, but also there's like it's this roller coaster, let's be honest. Um, yeah. So, I'm gonna just kind of, you know, this is our last question for you. So, um, but you know, because Rob and I often are constantly talking about this around like technology and what does it mean to impact community action agencies, nonprofits, uh, but also like how do we allow humans to do the things that they're really good at? So my question for you is where could technology remove the most like administrative burden you know things within your organization for families and for staff and what parts of the experience like must be always retained by humans. >> Yeah. Um, so when I think about technology and how

14:48it plays a role in EOAC, maybe every nonprofit, but definitely EOC, I think about uh transactions, time, and transformation. So when I very first heard you guys talk and talking about Foretell that was because I've said that so many times to our team when you guys were talking about saving time that really resonated with me uh because there's a lot of our work that is transactional and we need that all to have dignity and respect and we need it to be communicative and inclusive and all the different things um that we can do and we can do that with people. We can do that with technology. We can do that a lot of different ways. Um, but those transactions eat up a lot of time and and a highly trained case manager can really make the most impact if they're not answering the phone a 100 times to answer the status qud question about their application. But if they're really working with families and making a difference, that is a much better investment of our of our time and our energy. Um, so I think technology plays

15:54a an important role in streamlining and reducing the amount of time it takes for more transactional work so that we're able to do more transformational work. >> And it's kind of like become a bit of a buzzword for us, right? Like this idea of removing repetitive work. But just to give you like a a really interesting example. So like Chris, my co-founder, you haven't met yet, James, but um you know, me and Scott work with him for for a long time now. You know, we had a previous business 10 years ago which he has to write all the code for and now we have the AI write all the code for him. And it's just this weird thing where I'm like, wow, the repetitive stuff that you had to I I also think he should be paid a lot less. That's why I'm paying. [laughter] But um but in in all in all seriousness, like I I don't think I don't think I had to sit opposite him and he had to show me what was going on. I knew he was doing this, but it was just amazing to see all these AI agents happening. And I do just get a sense of like what does that mean for, you know, we are a technology company. That's our whole gear, great. That's

16:56what we live and breathe and have to. I mean, you know, I've been teaching about technology. He's been teaching me something um that begins with an E called empathy. And you know, I'm I'm still learning. But the um the bit that's kind of interesting for me is like what that means for a nonprofit. Like what where do you see that? Like what do you see what would your future you know you started one yourself, right? What do you see for UAC in that in that regard? >> I think honestly I think it remains to be seen. Um I'm not I think there's a lot of different directions that it can go, but I think something that's that I'm taking to heart and doing all this is it's not about, you know, being able to use less people, >> right? >> But it's being able to use this the same people we have to do better work. Yeah. And so I think as long as we hold true to that, like we'll never lose that people part of what we do. >> Yeah, I agree. I think we should only reduce Chris's salary. Your team absolutely should not. [laughter]

18:00>> I'll take it. >> Yeah. Um but yeah, James, thanks so much for coming on with us. We really appreciate it. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> And I'm just going to stop recording somehow. There we go. >> Yeah, James, thanks so much, man.