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Will Acuff

Jun 9, 2026

12:30
What was the genesis of like, okay, I think that either I'm done or this needs to get passed off or whatever? Yeah,
12:39
so I, I will start with we always wanted to help get something started, but didn't want to be the center of it.
12:47
We had this internal value that we called get off stage fast.
12:52
And so part of the way we did that was we said, hey, we're going to hire folks from within the community, graduates of the program, like that's how we're going to grow our staff.
13:02
And then as we interact with those folks and see them run things and get leadership development, we actually want to find our next executive director out of that pool of talent.
13:13
So there was some of this that was like baked into what I would define as like a model of community ownership of the thing.
13:23
And so when we hired our executive director, Shana Berkeley, she first came on, she was a graduate of the program, and she came on to help scale that particular program.

10 MINS LATER

23:20
That's today or at some point in the past?
speaker_2HOST
11:43
Oh, my word.
11:43
Went from 35 to 85,000.
11:46
Now, I recently spoke with her, she's doing over 200K.And I said to her, "What is this meant for you and your kids?" And she said, "Well, we're in a new neighborhood.
11:56
My kids are in a new school.
11:58
In fact, I'm getting my son his passport." She said, "I don't have my passport.
12:04
Poverty told me my life had to be small.
12:06
What I'm learning is that I can build this bigger thing."

31 MINS LATER

speaker_2HOST
43:05
Okay.

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