Influencers with Andy Serwer: Gerald Chertavian

In this episode of Influencers, Andy is joined by Year Up founder and CEO, Gerald Chertavian, as they discuss racial inequality and the work Gerald is doing to help close the opportunity gap for young Americans.

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ANDY SERWER: Promising jobs data and accelerating vaccinations point to a massive economic recovery. But many workers remain left out. African-Americans and young people each face roughly 10% unemployment. Gerald Chertavian knows how to get them back to work. For more than two decades, he has run Year Up, a nonprofit that provides mentorship and job training for young people. His group has served more than 30,000 students across 35 campuses and partners with many of the world's biggest companies, like Facebook and Goldman Sachs. A former Wall Street banker and tech entrepreneur, he left business to make sure the next generation gets the same crack at success that he did. On this episode of "Influencers," Gerald join me to talk about what the country's biggest employers are looking for, why the Biden administration asked for his advice, and how corporate America should address its lack of diversity.

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Hello, everyone. And welcome to "Influencers." I'm Andy Serwer. And welcome to our guest Gerald Chertavian, the founder and CEO of Year Up, which is a youth workforce development program that works to close the US opportunity gap. Gerald, welcome.

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Andy, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

ANDY SERWER: So I guess the first question is, what exactly is Year Up?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Great. So Year Up is a national nonprofit organization that in one year or less, empowers low-income young adults to go from either no income or low income to a livable wage career with some of the very best companies in this country.

ANDY SERWER: I know there's a lot of back story here about how you got involved and how you came up with the idea. We'll get to that in a little bit. But I want to ask you, Gerald, what are the biggest impediments to equality of opportunity for aspiring young people?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: So for many young adults that we serve who come from low-income backgrounds, the opportunity to gain access to higher education is often limited. You know, Andy, the one cost that's gone up more than health care in the last 20 years in this country is higher education. And for many, many young adults, feeding your belly takes precedence over feeding your brain.

And so for many of our students, they have economic responsibilities, could be sibling responsibilities, parent responsibilities. So making sure that they can take care of those basics properly is a prerequisite to them consuming higher education. So for many young adults, financial access is a key barrier that prevents folks from getting the education that they need to get into that livable wage job market.

ANDY SERWER: I think you said something like, Gerald, that talent is widely dispersed, but opportunity isn't. I'm kind of paraphrasing something you said, which it seems like you kind of realized that a long time ago. Now many more people are talking about that. How did you come to that realization?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Andy, the-- you know, people often say, who was your best teacher in life? My best teacher's a 10-year-old boy from the Dominican Republic. And so I was matched with David more than 30 years ago. And I spent every Saturday of my life with David through the Big Brothers program. And so I was a big brother.

And so having spent every Saturday of my life for several years with David in the housing development that he lived in, in the Lower East side of Manhattan really opened my eyes to some fundamental truths, which were David's opportunities and the opportunities to which he had access were being limited by his zip code, by the bank balance of his mom, by the color of his skin, and by the school system he attended. And it struck me back then in the late '80s that this was so wrong, that we are wasting so much human capital in a country where we have no one to waste. And so back then I made a vow to myself that at some point in my life I'd try to close what I was perceiving at that point was this opportunity divide that was preventing so many talented motivated young people from actually contributing in the ways that they want to, to make our communities and country stronger.

ANDY SERWER: Did you stay in touch with him? Have you stayed in touch with him over the years?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: I talked to him just last week. Now, David's very much a member of our family. So I've been blessed to know David since we first met. He's lived with our family over the years. I consider him one of my children. And so in our way, shape, and form he's part of the family, and I love him dearly and will always love him dearly.

ANDY SERWER: Your group works with corporate partners like Goldman Sachs, Amazon, and Uber. What do those relationships entail?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: So many companies, at the end of the day, talent is always on your top-five list, right-- accessing and gaining access to good talent. So the companies we work with are recognizing that if you only fish in the BA pond, the college graduate-plus pond, that actually will not ultimately provide you with all the talent that you'll need to grow and sustain your organization. So companies work with Year Up, whether it's an Amazon or Bank of America, JP Morgan, because we have great talent, right?

We can provide those organizations with a source of relevant, invaluable talent that now measures in the thousands. So goodness, Bank of America took 500 interns from Year Up last year. So these are significant relationships we can plan together to help an organization to grow its talent base. We happen to serve young adults who are all low income and 94% of color. But actually, what we're saying to corporate America is we have a source of talent that you perhaps haven't tapped into in the past. We're going to provide you with that opportunity to see those young people, to experience what they can offer. And you have the opportunity to hire them into your company's full time.

So this is not a charitable act, in and of itself. It clearly is good for the community. It creates a healthy community around a business when people have access to economic mobility. But our partners do this because they want relevant, valuable talent to be the best companies they can be. And those are our best relationships. Those are the ones that continue to grow and prosper when we are a channel and an access to young adults that they haven't had access to in the past.

ANDY SERWER: How many thousands of young people have gone through the program, Gerald?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Yeah, we've been blessed to serve, goodness, 32,000 young people. We now place more low-income young adults of color into the Fortune 500 than pretty much any other organization, institution, in the United States of America. We're focused on working with companies who say we believe in these young adults. We want to create career paths. Our average starting salary is about $43,000 per year. And our students are going into technology, into financial services, into operations, project management, with good career paths for a young person so they can actually get into the livable wage job market and ultimately take care of themselves and their families.

ANDY SERWER: And how is this program connected to college? Do you have to go to college? Is it before college, after college? And then also, Gerald, how do these people pay for this training?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Sure. So Year Up program is free to the individual. They earn a stipend when they're with us, both during the training period, which typically is three to six months, and during the internship period, which is often six months. And students are often dual enrolled in college at the same time. So the majority of our students are dual enrolled in community colleges while they're actually attending Year Up. And we co-located with those community colleges around the country.

So for our students, success is both a livable wage job, as well as a path to continue their learning, whether it is certificate, certification, degree based. And so they're kind of learning and earning as they continue through their life's journey as opposed to doing it sequentially, go to school and then go to work, which is not the way the majority of Americans consume higher education today, right? The average college goer in America works 30 hours a week today in America, the average person who goes to post-secondary education. So we have to accommodate those pathways for people who both need to earn money, as well as learn skills and advance their educations.

ANDY SERWER: Have you seen increased interest by companies given the emphasis being placed in corporate America on diversity, equity, and inclusion, say, over the past year or so?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Very much so. Following George Floyd's murder and May 25, many organizations saw the work we're doing and really made that link, that economic justice is racial justice. And providing young adults with a chance to get economic mobility, in specifically the communities we serve, is part of racial equity. So we've seen an increase in interest from organizations and they look to build more pluralistic societies, increase their diversity. And I'm hopeful that that trend is one that will persist and grow because this is not just about diversity. This is about building a stronger company, a company that makes better decisions.

The fact is diverse organizations perform better. So this is not about representation, in and of itself. It's about building great competitive, creative companies that can problem solve and help their companies be competitive.

ANDY SERWER: Was it difficult at first to get companies on board, though, Gerald?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Andy, when I started Year Up, I would have walked over broken glass on my hands and knees for a quarter of a mile to get one company to say yes. This is back in, you know, 2000. So the reality is, is, you know, I started with a business plan and nothing else. And so talking to big companies, some of our early founding partners, saying, will you take interns? They said, well, have you done this before? No. Have you ever run a nonprofit before? No. Have you trained anyone in these skills before? No.

Why should I believe you? And I said, you know, I have had about 20, 30 years experience working with young people as an avocation, right, on weekends, through programs like Big Brothers. And I know and I can guarantee you, if you just give these young adults an opportunity, you are going to be delighted. And I tell you from the CEOs of the largest companies in this country would go on record to say they are delighted with our young adults and want to hire more of those young people to help their companies be stronger.

ANDY SERWER: Do you have any, you know, kind of amazing success stories that you point to people who are now, you know, senior vice presidents or how does that work?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Sure. We have many, many success stories. I think it's an interesting question, Andy, is what is success, right? And so I go back to one of our graduates, who told me the story about, hey, Gerald, I was raised in foster care. I didn't have the stability growing up. Unfortunately, I didn't know my dad, and my mom had some challenges with addiction.

And so through Year Up, I've now been able to build a career. I've been in one company for now about 13 years. I've been recognized at that company for being an excellent service provider. But let me tell you what success for me is. He said, I carry my children over the threshold of the home that we purchased with our hard-earned money, right? I tuck those children into a bed at night that they will never be without.

And let me tell you, when you didn't have stability growing up like I did, it's hard to ever understand how successful that feels to provide your children with a stability, with the dinners, with the beds that they will have such that they can grow up healthy, strong, empowered. So we have thousands of success stories all over this country. Just this year alone, the graduates from our program in one year earned $86 million of income, one class over one year, right? And so we are creating taxpayers, voters, citizens, community supporters across America. And frankly, our country is going to be better and stronger as a result.

ANDY SERWER: That story you just told about that individual is certainly amazing and suggests a lot of things that the rest of us might take for granted in our lives. Let me ask you about COVID-19 and the past 12 months, Gerald. And how Year Up adjusted its services in response to COVID-19 and the pandemic?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Sure. COVID, when it started, really appeared to me to be an existential threat to the organization given what we do for-- for a living. And within three weeks, we shifted all of our students, all of our staff, all of our interns to virtual environments. And we learned a great deal.

On the positive side, our students responded incredibly well to building community virtually, right? I probably should have known that. As a Baby Boomer, I probably should have had greater understanding. Young people know how to build community ritually. Young adults also can learn professional skills virtually, right? Because often those soft skills you think, can you learn that not being in person? The fact is our clients are delighted with our students who have been learning and gaining skills virtually as well.

On the challenging side, we have to make sure we meet our students where they are. So that means providing laptops, headphones, MiFi connections to make sure they have the infrastructure that they can learn within. And so if you're working in a virtual environment, you've got to make sure you provide that. So we spent, you know, many, many dollars supporting young adults during the pandemic so they had the appropriate infrastructure to learn within.

So that big shift for us going all virtual, we'll take some of those lessons and apply them going forward. But we'll also look forward to the day when we can come back in person, perhaps not 100% of the time, but certainly coming back in person for the key things we believe are better suited to being done face to face. But we'll apply the lessons from the / it will make us, hopefully, a stronger, more flexible organization as we continue to grow over the next five years.

ANDY SERWER: Gerald, let me ask you about the administration and if they've checked in with you in terms of their policies and goals and your work?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Yeah. It's been great, Andy, on a few occasions that the administration has reached out to just get perspective, thoughts around that broad issue of how do we truly invest in workforce training and skill acquisition. So we've been grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to take kind of 20 years of learning and observing how these systems work or, in some places, don't work and try to contribute whatever we can to help the current administration to design and fund the best policies and programs that actually will move more Americans into good jobs in this country. So it's been a welcomed set of interest, I would say, from the current administration.

ANDY SERWER: Speaking about the new stimulus plan, Gerald, the law provides a monthly allowance for families with children. How significant is that part of the plan? And does it go far enough to help kids in poverty?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: So the-- in our program, probably 15% to 20% of our students have children. So to that extent, that will provide some additional support such that they can invest in themselves to get those good jobs. And I think overall the stimulus is-- is providing, as best it can, an opportunity to reduce child poverty and ensure that folks are getting the resources they need to get us back on track as a country. Remember, there's still 1 out of 10 African-Americans are unemployed today in this country, which is almost double the rate of white Americans. And so reality is that support is needed to help people get the time, the space, the energy to invest in themselves so they can get that next job and get into the career of the skilled job market.

ANDY SERWER: What about access to broadband internet? I'm sure that's something that you guys have wrestled with over the past year. How big of an impediment is that? And what sort of solutions do you envision there?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Yeah, broadband's a big impediment, if not solved, to our young adults to consuming the education online every day. So we had to put in place kind of point to point MiFi connections to allow young adults to have access to broadband. But it's a-- it's a serious issue. And solutions that provide greater broadband access, especially for low-income communities and rural communities, to me, is absolutely critical because the way in which we're gaining information, education, knowledge, is through a connection, is through the internet. And so we've got to address that as a country, that infrastructural element of our country, to assure that that playing field is more level for folks to use the tools we have today to live their lives.

ANDY SERWER: What sort of skills and coursework are most important for young people today, Gerald? I mean, is it all about STEM? Or are there other things as well?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Health care's a huge industry. Sales and customer service is a function that's going to keep growing and evolving, clearly technology, financial services. But I think if you look kind of below sometimes the jobs, look at the competencies, right, being a good project manager, understanding process management. These are competencies that are growing in our society both to communicate in a complex environment, right, have empathy, have compassion to manage customers.

So if you look kind of broadly, what are the competencies that are growing and whether it's complex communications, critical thinking, problems that can't be solved well with a computer, that's going to continue to grow. But we're going to have to help our citizenry to gain those skills to be productive and to be as valuable as they can be in our society. We placed folks, Andy, across, goodness, whole suite of technology areas from cybersecurity, data analytics, software engineering, help desk support.

We also train people to be scrum masters for agile development. We train project managers, back office, finance, and operations. We go where the market is in order to ensure young adults have access to good jobs. And we will shift what we train in, depending on how that market continues to shift over time.

ANDY SERWER: Is corporate America doing enough when it comes to diversity and inclusion? I mean, some of these companies, Facebook 4% African-American, Uber about the same level. What else do they need to do? It seems like quite a bit.

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: They do need to do a lot. And I do believe, Andy, that the tide is turning on companies seeing that and being willing to take the steps necessary to change. Let me talk a little bit about that. So we were heavily involved in the 110 Initiative, which has just been launched, 110.org. It's 41 of the largest companies in the country that have committed to hire a million Black Americans over the next 10 years. It was led by Ken Frazier, Ken Chennault, now co-chaired by Ginni Rometty as well.

And it's not only looking at hiring, which is important. But it's looking at how do companies need to change their practices in order to make sure that it's not just about hiring a person of color, but ensuring that they're retained, advanced, get the support they need to be successful within those organizations. So what we believe is it's-- it's about the practices of a company. How do you hire? Where do you recruit from? Have you reduced bias in the hiring process, in the interview process?

When someone comes into the organization, have you trained managers to manage a more diverse workforce? So we think it's not just about hiring. We believe it's equally important to look at what are best practices in retaining and advancing talent that's come from underrepresented communities. And we see, especially looking at our clients, looking at the clients who've joined the 110 Initiative, I do believe that corporate America is taking some strong stances and steps to move in the right direction.

We'll see over the next 10 years how that plays out. But I'm more optimistic than not. And I have the benefit, I guess, of having seen this for 20 years and working with hundreds and hundreds of large companies. We work with more than 40% of the Fortune 100. And I do see and sense something different than I have in the past 20 years.

ANDY SERWER: How important is networking? And what are the things that people really should focus on, that young people should focus on when looking for a job?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Well, 80% of the job interview-- job interviews are gotten through some form a networking, right? If you just point to the last few weeks, how many folks said, hey, Andy, someone so-and-so's applying to a job. Can you put in a good word? Can you make sure their resume gets at least taken a good look at, right? Think about that. 80% of interviews somehow are manifest by a connection, a network.

Our young adults, on average, don't have access to that network, which means they're then competing for the 20% of jobs that are left over. So we have to think about initiatives that expand our networks. LinkedIn is doing a really interesting initiative. They call it the Plus 1, where you bring someone else into your community in-- in increased their networks by giving them access to yours. This is a big issue.

We teach networking to our students. We help them to appreciate how do you do that well and recognize that it's part of their own success long term is building a network where they're contributing to, as well as occasionally asking for support. But it's a two-way street. And it's one of the things that our young adults most value about our program is getting confident and comfortable networking with folks that they meet, who they can both give to and occasionally ask for support.

ANDY SERWER: Let me ask you a little bit about your background, Gerald. And I know you grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. Your parents were immigrants, correct?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Yes, that's-- well, my grandparents were immigrants from Armenia. My folks were born here, although my-- my dad was and his whole family when World War II veterans. And they benefited from the GI Bill, which, as many people know, that was largely reserved for white veterans not veterans of color. So when think about Gerald's family had their year up, right, back in 1946 when Gerald's dad got to go to college for free. And he went to medical school, dental school, for free. And he had access to that because of his skin color, right?

And you think about the trajectory that put our family on and what that meant for intergenerational support and/or access or wealth and you kind of look at where are we today, what's contributed to where we are today. We were fortunate, right? We-- we had our year up at that point in time. And it changed the trajectory of our family.

And I think everyone needs a year up, in some way, shape, or form. And many of us have had it, whether it's through parents, teachers, great bosses. Our young adults need a year up as well. And our society will be richer if we can ensure that they all have access to it.

ANDY SERWER: And you went to Bowdoin College, which I know, proud of that, and HBS Harvard Business School. And then you went to work in business, Wall Street. Tell us about-- you talked a little bit about this epiphany where you realized you wanted to change your career. But drill down a little bit more into that. You just decided to throw away everything 21 years ago [AUDIO OUT] business career to this completely different field.

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Yeah. The-- after the-- and I wrote about starting Year Up way, way back when. I wrote my essays to get into Harvard Business School about starting Year Up, which was in 1989. And so, in fact, the director of admissions at HBS sent me a typed-- this is back when we used typewriters-- sent me my file. And he just wrote a note, and he said, seems like you did what you said you were going to.

But he sent me that application essay, where I said, look, let me into the school, and I promise you someday I'm going to try to close this opportunity divide. I want to serve young people who haven't had access. And you know, Andy, when you see the truth-- look, I grew up in a middle-class family in Lowell. I didn't really understand about systemic racism. I didn't understand the opportunity divide. When you see that truth, right-- because, remember, my little brother David, he lived with us over the years, right? I spent every Saturday of my life with David.

I started to see things that to me were not just. They weren't right. And I think when you see that truth up close-- I mean, as mu friend Bryan Stevenson says, proximity is so critical to being part of the solution, right? And so for me, I was able to get proximate to what was life really like for David. I learned a lot about what from his eyes and his experiences in ways that really absolutely impacted me, and I started talking about making an effort to serve in that community in a powerful way back when I was in my early 20s. And luckily, when I sold my technology company in '99, it put me in a position to have the flexibility to now spend the last 21 years focused on making our contribution to serving young people to close that opportunity divide.

ANDY SERWER: And finally, Gerald, what do you see as your legacy? And where do you want to take this thing further over the next few decades?

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: So my legacy is probably not that interesting to many folks, I would argue. The legacy that Year Up-- we most aspire to is to making a meaningful contribution to closing the divide. And just to explain that, Year Up has built bridges over divide for a long time, right? 32,000 young people-- we're the largest program in the country who serves this population, moving them into good jobs.

But the goal shouldn't be to build bridges over divides, right? That's working with the symptom. Ultimately the goal should-- we should ask ourselves as Americans, why is there such a divide? Why does that divide exist? And why does it manifest starkly for some more than others? And then commit ourselves to saying, you know what? We can't guarantee equality of outcome. But, boy, equality of opportunity, to me, is one of the founding principles of this country.

So Year Up's ultimate impact in working with large organizations is to say if those organizations shift the way they do business, the way they practice talent management, the way they hire, that could create a new normal. And Andy, we have done this as a country in the past in the environment. Remember 20 years ago, the early adopters of the environmentally friendly movement, right? And then we get standards and best practices, and we got carbon footprints and recycling. And we started to look at our emissions and our LEED-certified buildings. Imagine that same trajectory around being an opportunity friendly, right?

Imagine companies saying, the S in ESG means something real, and we're going to measure it. We're going to be held accountable for it. We care about it. And we believe we'll be a better company as we continue to invest in that S in ESG. We are absolutely committed to that trajectory of companies becoming more opportunity friendly over the next decade, two decades. And we see a parallel in the environment, and we believe this is the next big wave that CEOs and others should be on-- getting on because it'll be good for their competitiveness long term. That's our ultimate, the legacy of the folks who work at Year Up would be most proud of.

ANDY SERWER: Truly inspiring stuff. Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of Year Up, thank you so much for your time.

GERALD CHERTAVIAN: Oh, thanks, Andy. A total pleasure to be here with you. Appreciate it.

ANDY SERWER: You've been watching "Influencers." I'm Andy Serwer. We'll see you next time.