Kerry Murphy Healey
President, Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream
“I want everyone to walk out of there with a resolve, and for those who have experienced the American dream, I want that resolve to be that they're going to pass it on to someone else. The story of being successful in America doesn't end with your success, it has to end with making sure that you help other people experience what you've experienced.”
Summary
In this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan is joined by Kerry Murphy Healey, President of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, where they reflect on Kerry’s decorated career of public, private, and civil service. Kerry reflects on her time as Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and later as President of Babson College, and how her parents’ support gave her the foundation she needed to thrive.
Kerry and Alan discuss her lifelong passion for public policy and combatting social issues surrounding drugs, crime, domestic violence, and child abuse and neglect. Now in her role at the Milken Center for the American Dream, Kerry shares how she and the Center are creating the foundation to support new generations of dreamers and innovators to reach their dreams and lift others along the way.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Listen to the Start Small, Dream Big podcast
Guest Bio
Kerry Healey’s career spans higher education, elected office, and foreign and domestic policy. In July 2019, she capped six years as the first woman president of Babson College, the 100-year-old business school consistently ranked as the country’s leading institution in entrepreneurship education. During her tenure at Babson, Healey championed women entrepreneurs, created greater affordability and access for students, and oversaw a dramatic $200 million renewal of the Wellesley campus.
Previously, Healey served as Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor, where she led bipartisan efforts to improve services for the homeless, tackle the opioid crisis, and increase protections for victims of child abuse, drunk driving accidents, and sexual and domestic violence. Healey has been a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics and Center for Public Leadership and is on the International Council of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She holds an AB in government from Harvard College and a PhD in political science and law from Trinity College, Dublin. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of the American University of Afghanistan.
Clips from this Episode
On her experience serving as Massachusetts’ Lieutenant Governor
On the impact that Kerry hopes the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream will have
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann.
My guest today has had an incredibly varied career, serving as a leader in roles in academia, politics, and now as the head of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. Kerry Murphy Healey is the former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, where she served alongside Mitt Romney. She is a renowned policy expert, who for years helped lead the public-private partnership for justice reform in Afghanistan, before heading up the Milken Center. She was president of Babson College for more than half a decade, bringing the college into the high echelons of American academia.
Now, in her current role, Kerry's thinking deeply about the American dream and what it means, has meant, and should mean as we go forward today. It is an idea that has driven so many generations within our country and inspired millions around the world. And it has never been more important to strengthen the concept and the message of the American dream. It's never been more important than it is today.
It is a pleasure to have you on my show, Kerry, as a friend, I should say. I'm looking forward to discussing both your impressive career and the big news you're now working on and to welcome you on Leadership Matters. And to really talk about this extraordinary journey that you've been on and the journey that we all want to be on with you as we go forward. Welcome, Kerry
Kerry Murphy Healey
Thank you, Alan. So nice to see you.
Alan Fleischmann
So nice to see you too. And it's great to be with you. I wanted to get started with a little bit on your history and your early life. You grew up as an only child in Daytona Beach, Florida. Your father was in real estate and your mother taught in an elementary school. What was life around home like? Please share just a little bit about the early years.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Well, first of all, my parents were just wonderful people. When people ask me what my great advantages were in life and how I've been able to get to where I am, I think it's because I had parents who loved me and who were just decent, kind people. They were never particularly successful or well known in any way. My dad actually was frequently unemployed. But he was brilliant and caring. And I think that support for children in their household by their parents is so undervalued. People really don’t realize what a contribution they're making to their children just by being there and loving them no matter what they can or can't give them so. So, my parents were great.
My dad was in the military for about 27 years. My mom was eventually an elementary school teacher later in life, and she ended up supporting our family when my dad had a serious heart attack when I was 15. And I was not only an only child, but they were only children as well. So, we were a very small family.
When this happened with my dad's health, we really needed to pull together. It was a huge burden on my mom. At that time, my dad had been making a little bit more money than she did as an elementary school teacher. In the south at that moment in time in the 1970s, teachers were not making very much money. My college was coming up, but we had used all of the money that they had managed to save for my college education to pay for my dad's medical expenses during his heart attack. So, we really had nothing, we were sort of starting from scratch trying to figure out how we were going to not only keep our house and move forward, but also pay for my college education.
Those early years were ones where I was able to get out there and start trying to help support my family at an early age. I got my first job at 15. It was working in a shell shop, a souvenir store in Daytona Beach, and I sold things like puka shell necklaces and t-shirts. Actually, a hermit crab once attacked me while I was trying to put it in a bag. But from there, I realized you really needed a good education because I did not want to be doing that my whole life. Many people you know are in a situation where they need to work in minimum wage jobs throughout their life if they don't get a proper education. So, I redoubled my efforts to make sure that I got the training that I needed in order to make a living.
I went to the local community college and studied computer science there, which was an entirely new field at that moment, and that I think really gave me the boost that I needed in order to get into Harvard and also pay for it.
Alan Fleischmann
How did you do that? First of all, for you to realize that you had what you needed to get to college, but also that you had the right background to go to Harvard. How did you find it?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I had no idea whether I had the right background to go to Harvard. My high school was pretty rudimentary, and there wasn't a lot going on in the classroom there. I was never asked to write a paper, I was never asked to read a whole book as part of my curriculum. And so, I pretty much took that time in class to read. One of the things I started reading in the library was a group of books called the Harvard classics. And I figured, well, somebody called them classics, maybe this is what I should read. And so, I literally just started reading these volumes.
I'm sure that the people in Harvard laughed when they got my application when they asked “What have you been reading the last year?” and getting “Harvard classics.” It was completely coincidental that I went to Harvard—I never knew anyone who went to Harvard. When I asked my advisor in high school where Harvard was, she said she thought it was in Connecticut. I had to go to the local library, the public library, and look it up.
I remember looking at the address and writing away and I was very intent to go far away. I had been in Daytona Beach, and it's such a little small world. But I'd been reading all these big books, and I thought that there was a big world out there, and I wanted to go see it. So, I was writing away to Oxford and Cambridge saying, “How do I apply?” And of course, they didn't even have the tests that were necessary for me to do that in Florida at that time. So, it was complicated. It wasn't like you could go on the internet and find out about these things. You literally had to write letters and ask questions and wait for replies. And people weren't super responsive.
Alan Fleischmann
But you got through, and you got it. How did you finance it?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I financed it in in several ways. One was I saved money from my three jobs from the time I was 15 to 18. I did get some scholarship from Harvard, as well. And then my mom scrimped and saved and sold anything that she had inherited from her parents. They were citrus growers in in Florida during the Great Depression, and she had inherited a little citrus farm that was still outside of Tampa that wasn't doing so well. And so, I think that between that, and little tiny legacies from my great aunts and uncles who passed away during that time, we pulled it together. We just basically all worked together. And since there was only one of me, they could devote all their resources to it.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow, that's amazing. They put all the family future on your shoulders. When you went to Harvard, did you test your leadership there? Did you get involved and engaged in campus life?
Kerry Murphy Healey
Well, what's interesting is I think I was much more of a leader in high school. That was a place where it seemed very natural for me to be a leader. Once I got to Harvard, I had a lot of catching up to do. I had a lot of books to read. So many people had had wonderful educations that I hadn't, and people had traveled to places I hadn't had a chance to see yet. They understood how America worked in a way that that was still very new to me. People would introduce themselves as being from the Upper East Side of Manhattan as if that meant something to me, or I would be expected to understand who certain people were in society. And I just didn't know.
So, I think I stepped back a little bit during my years at Harvard and really tried to absorb as much as I could. I took six classes a semester, and I just wanted to learn. And that was such a privilege. I was so scared that the time would pass before I got a chance to learn everything that I needed to learn. I didn't realize that you could learn your whole life.
Alan Fleischmann
That's an important realization. I'm not sure we were told back then that you could learn your whole lives either.
Kerry Murphy Healey
That's right. Back then, this whole notion of lifelong learning sounded so trite. At this point, it was much more like, “this is the period of time where these four years are set aside for you to learn everything you need to know for the rest of your life.” And then you were supposed to go get your job and stay in your job for the rest of your life. If you learned later on, maybe it was like you read a book before you went to bed at night.
Alan Fleischmann
Exactly. If you're lucky, it was a novel, as well. And then you went off—did you go right to Trinity College in Dublin?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I did. I was lucky to get a rotary scholarship to go study in Ireland. I wanted to do a PhD in political science and law, so I needed to spend a year studying first with various professors and then had to be invited into the program. So, I went there, but I didn't I started my PhD formally for another year after I'd sort of jumped through all the hoops.
In my second year there, I met my future husband, who was also a rotary scholar. It was a great moment in my life. I learned a lot in Ireland during that time, because they were going through a terrible period of economic depression. Now, when you think of Ireland, you think of the Celtic Tiger, and you think of all of this wonderful prosperity that they've had in relation to the rest of Europe. But in in the 1980s, it was really much more like the 1950s, economically, in Ireland. You saw terrible scenes, like children begging in the streets. They were using very cheap coal, so all the buildings were black, and there was a lot of air pollution. It was sad. A lot of unemployment.
What they did at that time was so brilliant. They realized that they had no natural resources, but they had their people. And so, they put all of their money into education. They dropped the tax barriers to investment from foreign countries and invited all the headquarters of various companies from around the world to come there and take advantage of their educated populace. It was brilliant. The economy took off within a decade of these policies.
So, even though I studied human rights and constitutional law in my studies, at Trinity, what I really learned was what was going on in the country at that time, and how the economy worked, and how you could bring jobs and prosperity to your nation.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow. Then did you go directly from Trinity College to Cambridge when you got your degree? Or did you go home again and come back?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I got married during the course of this process when I was 25, and I followed my new husband back when he was going to Harvard Law School. And so, I had to figure out how to support him. We had no money when we married. We had his student debt and that was it. His tuition was $15,000 a year and we had to figure out how to pay for it. Fortunately, my education being in Ireland, even the overseas tuition was only $1,000 a year, so we could afford my education. We just had to figure out how to live and how to pay for his.
I ended up working for a company in Cambridge called Abt Associates. It was named for a man called Clark Abt, a brilliant researcher. They had a number of different projects with different U.S. state agencies. The group that I worked for, worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, and I worked on research projects that had to do with criminal justice for almost a decade after that.
Alan Fleischmann
And you taught during that period, also, right? You taught also at UMass Lowell at that point?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I did. I ended up teaching. Whenever I finished a research project, I was anxious to talk about it, so I would teach briefly. But I always enjoyed the research more in the policymaking more than I enjoyed the teaching. So, I would always want to get back into what I considered to be more real life than that.
But it was interesting because I did not do this job because it was my career goal. I did the job because it was the only thing I was qualified for. If you think about it–if you're a 25/26-year-old graduate student, what are your skills? You can do research and writing? That's it. That's all you’ve ever done. And so, I looked for a job where I could do research and writing.
Alan Fleischmann
And was that also working in a think tank? Had you started getting a political bug at that point or not yet?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I think I'd always had a political bug. When I was in Florida, at 16 I had gone up to intern—or rather I was what was called a page—in the Florida Legislature in Tallahassee. I remember taking a bus seven hours up there and staying in dorm rooms at Florida State and working in the legislature. It was the Wild West.
I remember members of the legislature getting into fistfights in the aisles. There was no way to communicate except for literally having a page carry a note from one place to another place, so you're constantly running around, so you would see all the back and forth. And the rest are all these sorts of smoke-filled rooms with curtains that could be drawn for privacy so people could cut private deals. It all seemed very mysterious, and it was all male at that point.
I thought, “this is something that I'm interested in. I want to know how this happens. I want to know how they can have impact. What are they doing? How are they leading? What is this?” I think I always had a certain amount of curiosity about how the sausage gets made.
And then in my work for Abt Associates, I actually got to do a deep dive into what the policies should be around drugs and gangs and crime and domestic violence and child abuse and neglect, all of those things. The question was I now felt I knew what needed to be done in some of those areas. I'd spent 10 years studying it. Why couldn't I communicate that to those people in those smoke-filled rooms? Why couldn't I? Why weren't they paying attention? I was publishing all these reports—why weren't they reading them?
Of course, they're not interested in reading them. They were going into what we used to call the “circular file,” gathering dust on somebody's desk. I thought the best way for me to actually be impactful was to engage in politics, because politics is where the power is.
Alan Fleischmann
What was your first foray into politics? One of the things that people don't really realize is I would argue that Massachusetts is one of the states of the country where politics is a sport. And because of that, a lot of the boys got involved and it became very much the “boys sport.” It probably still is, for that matter. But it certainly was always really hard for a woman to break in.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Female mayors now in the city of Boston go in quick succession. It's starting to break, and if I had to put my money on it, I would say that we might finally have a female governor this next round. So, we'll see. We'll see what happens.
But, my first foray into politics: it was 1998. I had one child who was four years old, another who was six years old. I wanted to wait until they were in school until I did something. My thought was, I've been writing all these reports, and everyone's ignoring them. I think I have some answers that I'd like to share, even if I run and nothing happens other than the fact that I get to talk about these issues that I care about. At that time, it was very much about child abuse and neglect and domestic violence. I think I saw that as a win, it was just a way of getting into the conversation and raising people's awareness about some issues that I thought were important.
So, I ran for state rep in my hometown—I only lived there for about two or three years at that point. I knew maybe 100 people, so the likelihood that I was going to win was almost zero. If you added to that the fact that the Republicans registered in Massachusetts at that time comprised 13% of the population, my likelihood of winning was almost zero. So, I knew what I was doing, but I put myself into it 100%. It was an incredible learning experience. Rationally, I knew I was going to lose. I didn't want to lose. I wanted there to be a miracle at the end and for something to happen.
It was a great experience. I met wonderful people, and it was a dirty race, the way that political races can be. Every day, I'd have to go and put out 50 new lawn signs, because someone would have been there all night taking all of my lawn signs and throwing them into some ditch and setting them on fire. I put blue axle grease on them, eventually, so I could find the people who were stealing my signs. It was just very silly. It was this silly kind of politics that I think seems so innocent at this point in time.
Alan Fleischmann
What was the result of that election? What were the results?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I think I got like 33% and the other guy got all of it. This also sounds so naive, but I literally drove over to his headquarters during his victory celebration, shook his hand, and congratulated him. It feels like the good old days.
Alan Fleischmann
That was good, decent character.
[SHOW BREAK]
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with my good friend, Kerry Murphy Healey, the former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, who is now the head of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. We're catching up a little bit on her journey, which is pretty amazing when you consider that very few people have been leadership roles in public, private, and civil society. You've managed to be not only engaged, but seriously gaze at the helm of all three.
After a few statehouse campaigns, you became the chairwoman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, right?
Kerry Murphy Healey
Yeah. So let me tell you what that meant. First of all, it meant roughly 10% of the population in Massachusetts. And at the time, I think it was like 12 people in a room. We were bankrupt. I remember that our carpet was held together in our office by duct tape. There was one secretary, she hadn't been paid for several weeks, and she was crying at her desk next to a dead phone when I walked in, so it wasn’t an auspicious start to being chairman.
I mean, it sounds so glamorous, being chairman of something, but there was nothing to be chairman of at that time, really. So, we started to build back. We raised some money, we paid off our debts (we were about $100,000 in debt at that time), started to hire some people. We bought a computer. And we did the things that parties need to do.
The most important thing that I was able to do, and the most prescient in retrospect, was I had to think about who was going to be the next Governor of Massachusetts. I was in charge of putting on the convention that would nominate the Republican candidate.
For those of you who are not from Massachusetts—Massachusetts has this funny dynamic in that they generally don't elect any Republicans whatsoever, except they will elect a Republican to be governor, because they like that balance between the Democratic legislature and the Republican governor. That's a check on spending, and that's worked for them for almost 30 years now. Most of the time, there has been a Republican leader in that position. And so, it was really important who we put forward. At that time, we had our first female governor, or acting governor, Jane Swift, who was going to seek election. She had supported me as I ran for chairman of the party, and so it was a really difficult decision on my part to decide that I needed to recruit someone else to be the nominee. I would have loved to see the first female governor be on my watch. I knew that I needed someone who could win.
I started to look around, and there were really very few people who could have done it. Andy Card could have done it at the time, but he was Chief of Staff for the president right after 9/11, so he wasn’t going anywhere. Then the other person I thought of was this man called Mitt Romney, who had run against Ted Kennedy back in ’94 and had done pretty well, but not really well. But, who wins against a Kennedy in Massachusetts? No one.
So, I decided that I was going to go out to Utah. He was running the Winter Olympics at that time, and so I begged and begged for 15 minutes of his time and proposed that he come back and run.
The good news is, he did come back. That was really the pivotal moment in my career.
Alan Fleischmann
Was it hard to convince him?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I think he's a rational guy, and I think he must have been thinking about many options following the Olympics at that time. I think he thought about going into a nonprofit. I think he thought about running for other offices. He obviously still had a great business career waiting for him if he wanted to do that. So, I think he was looking at a lot of different options. I'm just very grateful that he chose to come back to Massachusetts.
It wasn't easy. His residency was challenged in court, and it was a process. It was a fight. And, I ended up running with him. I did not expect it.
Alan Fleischmann
That was not your plan, obviously.
Kerry Murphy Healey
That was not my plan. Actually, it was the farthest thing from my plan. If you think about it, I lost for state rep twice. This was my political career. So, I was looking for people who had actually won something who had a following who could help his ticket. He felt very strongly that he wanted to work with me, because I had a background in public policy and social policy. He had great expertise in economics. Together, we really did have the skills necessary to think about what policy should be for the for the Commonwealth.
That was the turning point. And I was terrified—I think terrified would be an understatement of how I felt—when I jumped into that lieutenant governor's race.
Alan Fleischmann
On that note, you did not know what to expect, obviously. Was that a good experience?
Kerry Murphy Healey
Yes, it was a fantastic experience. All of the things that are terrifying at the moment are the things that are growth experiences. I urge people to do things that they’re uncomfortable doing every day, or else you're not growing. It was both an uncomfortable experience on many occasions, but it was also a great experience.
What really makes it worthwhile to me is that here we are fifteen years later, and I’ve actually been out of office now for fifteen years. But I still have people come up to me and say “this law you signed” or “this policy you put into place” or “these schools that you founded”—the high schools that we founded, I still go to see their graduates from time to time and I feel such pride. I’m so glad that we were able to do many of the things we were able to do. And not all policy endures. But certain institutions do, certain laws do. I’m very proud of what I was able to do in terms of cutting back on drunk driving fatalities during my time in office. I was very proud about some of the things we were able to do for homelessness at that time, although that’s pushing back against a wave, and you can lose ground there very easily.
Alan Fleischmann
You were the Republican nominee in 2006, and ultimately lost to Deval Patrick, who was an extremely strong candidate as well. It's never easy to lose an election. Knowing your personality, I’m sure that wasn’t an easy thing to swallow. On the other hand, you didn’t really lose, ultimately. In your good examples of your earliest years, it just redirected you.
Kerry Murphy Healey
It's very interesting—I had looked around, and I'd seen what other women had done who had lost elections, prominent ones and ones that were very high profile. At the end of a gubernatorial campaign, probably about 85% of the people on the street know who you are. It’s a very odd thing to go to the grocery store or to try to go out and live your life after you’ve been in such a high-profile position, especially one where you lost. It was really important for me not to hide and not to stop doing the things that I cared about.
For me, it was particularly good that I was in office because the election was in November, but I still had to be lieutenant governor in November and December. That made it so that I had to re-acclimate myself to being seen and to doing my work for those two months. I think that really helped me adjust and go on and do other things that I was very passionate about. And, to look at the good side of it, which is tremendous—the people you meet, the people who are devoting their life to public service are an extraordinary group.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s amazing. They're giving up so much of their lives. People don't realize how many how public servants really are public servants, that they'll give their time, their energy, and that they're not making money. They're there for all the right reasons. They're there for a purpose that is greater than themselves.
Kerry Murphy Healey
And all the people who are working in the bureaucracies as well, and all the people who are working on political campaigns, they're giving their time. They are making a contribution to society, they're engaging. I think the worst thing is when you don't engage.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right. So, what fascinated me is when you left the lieutenant governorship after the gubernatorial election, you did something really interesting. You went back to justice reform, if I'm not mistaken, which is your roots and really what brought you into public life. But you did it globally.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Yes. So, the odd thing about having run for governor and having been lieutenant governor is you know one thing really well—your state. There are 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. We would literally read all the local papers every week to know what was going on. I was a liaison to municipalities, so I knew the state deeply. The one thing I didn’t want to do was sit around for the next however many years, second guessing my successor or brooding about what I would have done in this town or that town. I needed to think about something entirely different and redevelop a different expertise.
When I did my PhD, it was in international human rights, and so I thought, “Okay, I am going to look outward and try to find a place where I can contribute that is not Massachusetts and where it’s not going to draw me back into ruminating on the past, but it’s going to move me forward.”
That opportunity came up after Mitt Romney’s 2007 presidential campaign ended. Some of the people with whom I had been working were now working with Condoleezza Rice on this program looking at how to bring the rule of law in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, that actually did become the central question.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. How long did you do that for?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I am still involved with these things today. I'm still a trustee of the American University of Afghanistan, and it has gone through really terrific challenges, as you can imagine, during this most recent withdrawal. They've now withdrawn and had to relocate many of their students around the world. They were once in Iraq, but the main campus is now in Qatar. But we have students all over the world, and it's still a challenge.
But young people comprise the majority of people in Afghanistan, and they deserve the freedom to live their lives that they are not getting right now. They are brilliant and hard working. The women are brilliant and hardworking. I hope that people understand the human tragedy that's occurred in Afghanistan in this past year.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, and I’m sure it’s been amazing for you to look at this last year through a different, very personal lens as well.
Kerry Murphy Healey
I think, for so many people, we all felt—and I think I can speak for many people, obviously, not all people—but for people who had been involved in Afghanistan over the course of the last 20 years, many people felt they had personally encouraged others. I know I did. I encouraged women to become lawyers, to become judges, to put their lives on the line in order to fight corruption or to open up new opportunities for women in new ways.
I know that just the act of attending college for many of them was such a brave act, whether it was going there every day and the risks that they had to take going back and forth, being associated with an institution that had the name of “American” and what that meant often for their families.
I was involved with a number of different programs in Afghanistan, and I was always stunned by the bravery of the young people and their willingness to go back and try to change the future of the country. And so, I personally felt like I had encouraged people to take very serious risks with their lives. So when people needed to get out, I also felt that I really needed to be a part of that effort to relocate as many people as I possibly could, because I felt like I had let them down. It was a very difficult period for a lot of people.
Alan Fleischmann
And it probably is ongoing. It’s very difficult.
How did the idea of becoming the president of Babson College come to you? I think of Babson as being a great college that focuses on entrepreneurship.
Kerry Murphy Healey
It's the number one college of entrepreneurship in the world, I think. They actually invented the idea of teaching entrepreneurship 30 years ago. Some professors at Babson got together and said, “hey, this isn't just something that God gives you, you can actually learn how to do this.” People thought you were born an entrepreneur or you weren't. And so, it was a pretty revolutionary idea that you could teach entrepreneurship. As you know, academia is pretty staid, so new ideas don't catch on fast. But I think now, everyone agrees that entrepreneurs can be either improved or created with proper training. Babson is still at the forefront of all that.
I actually just got a call from some people who are looking for the new president and I would never have thought to apply to be a college president. I had a PhD, so that sort of made me qualified to do it. But I had not been involved in academics a great deal. I had taught a couple times in different colleges. I’d been a fellow at Harvard. I’d been playing around the edges, but I’d never actually been involved in academia properly.
The idea that they were reaching out and saying that they thought that I had the skills necessary to lead this college was really a surprise to me. It took some convincing on the part of the search committee to get me comfortable with the idea. But the mission of Babson, this notion of bringing entrepreneurship to the world and empowering people to be entrepreneurs was so powerful and so inspiring to me that I wanted to be part of it.
Once I got there, I found that I actually had a great deal of enthusiasm for all of the various elements of running a college, but it is one of the most difficult things I think I've ever done in my life.
Alan Fleischmann
One of the things that people don't realize is that I love when people who have been in politics want to do something less political and then want to go into academia. I think the most political place is a college campus.
Kerry Murphy Healey
No, that's absolutely right. I think there's a Henry Kissinger quote about that. But it is a brutally political place. And I don't mean political in terms of left or right, just in terms of the fact that it's a closed community and everyone understands the history of everything, and they've been there together for a long time, which is sometimes why it's important to bring someone in from the outside.
I certainly spent probably the first six months of my life there listening to everyone's stories and trying to create an oral history of the college so that I could understand people's motivations, and where the pain points were, and why you couldn't just announce a new policy and expect that anyone was going to implement it, because I was no longer lieutenant governor.
Alan Fleischmann
I'll tell you one thing that's really amazing—when you think about how much our country has been wrestling with how to be more affirmative around creating diversity and inclusivity, and how, since George Floyd's tragic murder, so many companies and organizations have really been focusing on trying to drive their agendas in a different way to promote and encourage and adopt policies that make diversity, not something of an aspiration, but a reality. I think of your tenure at Babson, and you did that well before this time. You were one of the legacies. You won many awards while you were there, national awards. But you also expanded the diversity of the student body there. I think the teachers are also majority women or something, if I remember reading correctly.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Well, I didn't do as well with the faculty, because it's very hard to expand the faculty quickly. But certainly my cabinet, my staff, the students, all the things that you can control on a more rapid basis, we absolutely adjusted for that.
One of the forms of diversity that I sound so fascinating was that Babson was 40% international students. When you start folding that in on top of the domestic diversity, you get this rich mix of cultural experiences, religious orientations, and life experiences. I think that one of the great advantages of going to a college like Babson was that you would meet people from every single walk of life. We had people who were coming directly from villages in India with literally nothing on full scholarships. We had royalty from around the world—people who had only lived a very cloistered life before they came due to their privilege. And we had people from the Midwest from public schools who had an absolutely typical American existence, perhaps.
It was a great mixing pot, if you will, of everyone, and we all learned from each other a great deal. What struck me was that I think their businesses that they were building were so much better for it. They could draw on so many different types of needs and experiences and understandings of the world that most people could never reach. So, it was a great experience.
I went there through the centennial. I signed a contract to do two turns and to bring them through their 100-year anniversary. I was the first woman probably in 100 years, so I thought that was an exciting moment to be there. We had a fantastic celebration. And from what I hear, they're still doing extremely well. So good for that.
Alan Fleischmann
Have you stayed involved?
Kerry Murphy Healey
I've stayed involved with their Global Advisory Board and also the Global Scholars program that I founded. Those are my two passions that keep me linked to the college.
Alan Fleischmann
That's wonderful.
[SHOW BREAK]
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with Kerry Murphy Healey, the former Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and the former president of Babson College.
She's also the head of where I want to spend a little time now, the Milken Center for the Advancing of the American Dream. The idea of the American dream—we’ll get to talk about that in a minute. But I know Mike Milken well. I’m a big fan, he’s been on the show, and we’ve talked a great deal about his journey. You are the personification of the American dream when you think about it, as well, from where you started and how you pulled the pennies together to go to Harvard and saw the world illuminated through books, through learning, through opportunities, through life experiences. And then obviously, you rose to top levels, both in academia and in politics and policy reform.
Was it an easy ask when Mike came to you and said “I’m building something”? I will say, I’ve been there on the hardhat tour with you and Mike. It’s amazing what you’re building. It’s not just an ideal, which is so extraordinary, it’s a living museum with bricks and mortar right across from the White House, across from the Treasury Department. And truly it will be one of the great opportunities for those who come to Washington to experience what we all dream will be the future. But tell us a little bit about this.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Well, to back up just a little bit, when I decided to leave Babson in their centennial year, I put the word out that I was looking for something new and completely different, and that I would be interested in anything. I interviewed for some crazy things during the course of that last year. The one thing that made me think “this is the job I have to have,” “I want this job,” was this notion of creating an institution that examines the idea of America. When I heard about it, I thought, “this is it. This is what I have to do.
You’re right, part of it is that the Milken Institute and Mike, we’re able to gather these extraordinary buildings in the center of Washington, D.C.—there are five buildings altogether, more than 300,000 square feet, and we’re building a sixth atrium connecting them—and it’s going to be a place to not only study (the Milken Institute is in residence with us there and we will have our own studies around economic and social mobility), but it will also be a place where people can visit and explore the stories of America in all of their complexity. We’re not going to hide from that complexity. We want to make sure that everyone feels welcomed, everyone feels seen, and everyone feels represented when they walk in the door. We want everyone’s story to be there because countries are complex. America is arguably one of the most complex countries you can imagine, with people hailing from every single country around the world, trying to fit in, and trying to juggle and jostle for position in some ways.
People come here because they believe in this idea, this idea of equality, this idea of equal opportunity and to achieve one’s dreams, to express oneself freely, the freedom to become whoever you might be. These are things that are not present in every country around the world. They are present in some more than others—I would say that they are more present in democracies than in countries that are not democracies. But some countries do a better job of supporting, for example, entrepreneurs, innovators, and people with ideas, than others.
I think one of our challenges as Americans is to think about what those qualities are that make us desirable, that have made us a magnet for people from around the world. For better or worse, whether it was legitimate or not, whether people came here and actually found their dreams or not, what were those qualities that were attracting people to us? And how can we amplify those qualities? Can we really become a country where all people are equal, and all people genuinely have an equal opportunity to succeed? Can we be a place where innovative ideas are genuinely valued and nurtured and supported and understood to be really valuable objects by their communities? And can we really be tolerant of other people's religious beliefs and political beliefs? Can we respect one another the way we would like to be respected?
These are real questions for us, and we can't survive as a nation that was founded on these kinds of ideals unless we are constantly reflective and constantly challenging ourselves to move closer to the ideas represented in our founding documents. So, we have never been perfect, and we're not likely to reach it. But we need to continue striving. I think the big danger right now is that people are losing the will to try and the optimism and the hope that is necessary to try.
Alan Fleischmann
How are you going to get to folks? And part of this has to include not just if you come to Washington and you're going to visit this extraordinary complex, but how do you bring it to the people that don't come to Washington?
Kerry Murphy Healey
We are hoping that our online presence will be even more robust than our physical presence. We're going to be doing that through competitions, we're going to be doing that through films, media of all variety. One of the things that we've begun to do now, Alan, and I think you may have sat for one of these already, is we're doing 10,000 interviews with people of all backgrounds and all geographies about their American Dream experience.
Some of those stories are uplifting, and some of them make you cry. Others are real stories of struggle. It's important to tell those stories so that we know, at this moment in time, what was America like? What did people experience here? I also use those stories often to get people to reflect on the journey of their entire family. Because to some degree, the American dream is multi-generational. It's not just that I had these opportunities, and I was able to do these incredible things of my life because I was lucky or I worked hard. It was that my grandmother came here from Germany fleeing political oppression at the turn of the 20th century with $4 and her mom, and she became a hatmaker. She married someone who became a citrus farmer during the Great Depression, and my mom was sent to college as the first woman in our family to go to college, at age 16, to Tallahassee, and she eventually became a schoolteacher. And then, she acted as a role model to me and told me that I could do anything I wanted to do if I got a proper education.
So, my story isn't just mine, it's all of these generations of stories of everyone contributed to it. And I want my daughter to go on and achieve her dreams, whatever they may be. This isn't the last chapter. I hope that people after visiting the center will be much more reflective about their own experience, and their family’s experience, but also think about others. I hope that it builds empathy. I hope that it builds this sense of this incredible tapestry that we are as a nation. And I hope that people are challenged a little bit by what they say.
But it will be a place of celebration and learning about oneself. We're working with Gallup, with Jim Clifton and Gallup, to make sure that people leave with more knowledge about their talents, their drives, and their ambitions, and we hope that online will be able to also provide some real direction around “Okay, well, if this is what you're interested in,” or “this is what you're talented in, so look at these opportunities. You can have these jobs in the future.” Because we really don't know what the future is going to be. And I find it a really exciting project.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. It's not only a place to learn and to reflect on the past, but to engage and figure out your own personal journey and contribution that you can tap for the future. This idea of your “strength finders,” or something to that effect, that you're doing with Gallup. To really ask, “what is it that I can do to be part of this dream as far as the individual, as well as the collective community?”
Kerry Murphy Healey
I imagine that there are going to be two kinds of people who will walk in the door of our center: half of them will be people who have experienced the American dream to some extent in their life, or who feel like they're getting toward it, and then the other half will be maybe people who feel that it's never been there for them, whether there's been historical discrimination or whether they just don't feel that they've had the opportunities that other people have had because of their family or their economic situation.
I want everyone to walk out of there with a resolve, and for those who have experienced the American dream, I want that resolve to be that they're going to pass it on to someone else. The story of being successful in America doesn't end with your success, it has to end with making sure that you help other people experience what you've experienced. I hope that for those people who have doubt or concern or don't believe in the American dream, that they leave with a little bit more hope and belief that there are people who will support them with more resources and direction about how they might be able to achieve their dreams, and just more agency. I want them to feel empowered to achieve what they can achieve.
One of the things that I heard from Jim Clifton first, which just broke my heart, is that if you ask fifth graders, “Will you create or do something that changes the world? Are you going to change the world?” Almost all of them say yes. A massive amount of them say yes. And then as you ask that question each year as they get older toward college, it drops off to the point that it's down to maybe like 20% of the people who are actually graduating from high schools still think that they're going to be able to do something with their life that impacts the world in a favorable way and changes the world.
We want to capture in a bottle whatever that is that every child feels in fifth grade, and say, “Yes you can, and here are the various paths, here are the supports for you, here's how you should go get it, just go do it.”
Alan Fleischmann
I love that you have programs and four pillars—education, public health, entrepreneurship, and economic freedom. You have active programs and each one of them engages communities to get involved in this as well.
Kerry Murphy Healey
These are the lenses through which we're looking at people's ability to achieve the American dream. We think that in order to achieve the American dream, you have to have a proper education, and that can mean a whole bunch of things to different people. Proper education for various ventures looks very, very different. It doesn’t necessarily mean a college education. It can mean a lot of things. But you need an education.
We think you need good health—and that’s not exclusively your responsibility. That’s also the responsibility of society, as we can see here with COVID-19. Public health is incredibly important. Medical research is incredibly important. But you also need to know what you need to do to lead a healthy life.
You need access to capital, and that’s such an abstract idea for many people. But without access to capital, you can't take out loans to go to college, you can't buy a car, you can't buy a house, you can't move forward with your idea for a company. And so, having that access to capital is such a critically important aspect of allowing people to achieve their dreams. The corollary to that is financial literacy. You have to know what to do with that capital and how to manage the money that you’re making when you get it. We’re very focused on that.
And then, finally, supporting entrepreneurs and innovators is our final pillar. We do have, and we are developing, pieces to support each of those pillars. Over the course of the next few weeks, you’re going to hear a rollout of a major scholarship program with online training. That’s going to be pushed out to more than 200,000 people in the U.S. It will be a scholarship that will be available to help people pivot into better paying jobs, either directly out of high school or if they’re in college or another job that they don’t feel is meeting their needs.
We’re also going to be working with junior achievement. We have an app that is being tested right now (it’s not fully launched yet) called Earn and Learn. It allows parents and others to put money into a fund for their kids, so they can go online, learn about financial literacy and learn about entrepreneurship and jobs of the future, etc., with little quizzes. Have you ever used Duolingo?
Alan Fleischmann
Yes.
Kerry Murphy Healey
So, it looks like Duolingo and has 10 question quizzes. When you finish, you get one dollar, and it goes into your investment account. Then with that account, you can actually invest in fractionalized shares. So, you not only learn financial literacy, but you are able to practice it all within the same app.
And then we have a number of other programs that we’re excited to be rolling out in the next few months.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s very exciting. So, you want to encourage people to come to the center once they can. It’s not open yet, right? You’re not open for people.
Kerry Murphy Healey
We're not open yet. We're going to be opening, and we'll have a grand opening on July 4, 2023. So, mark your calendars. One thing I can guarantee you is fireworks.
Alan Fleischmann
And the view from there is amazing, also.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Exactly. Our view is phenomenal, right over the White House. And I think it will be the place to be on July 4, 2023, so that you can not only appreciate the fireworks, but I'm sure that there'll be entertainment and programs throughout that week leading up to it. So, we're planning quite a celebration.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow. So Kerry, you're on the board of Apollo Global Management, which is a leading investment firm in the world, one of the biggest in the world. You’re doing all this at the Milken Center. You’re involved in so many things. Still, I imagine the next decade will be your best ever. Knowing you as I do, I don’t see you slowing down in any way, shape, or form.
Anything you’d want our listeners to know about you? What to expect and anything you want to ask them as we wrap up?
Kerry Murphy Healey
Oh my goodness. Well, Alan, one thing I should just point out, I think it was Arthur Brooks who has written a great deal about how your 60s are arguably your happiest decade after your 20s. So, as I'm embarking on my 60s, I'm certainly hoping that everything you say is right and that it turns out to be the best decade yet. So that is wonderful.
What I would ask from the listeners is now that you've listened to this podcast, you might be interested in a podcast that I do called Start Small, Dream Big, which focuses on the experiences of entrepreneurs in America, and especially small business entrepreneurs—people from Main Street who have started all kinds of businesses. We have whiskey makers, we have people who sell mannequins, we have people who offer every kind of service imaginable. And their stories are just fascinating. I have to say that I am humbled. Having interviewed all of these wonderful entrepreneurs and hearing their life stories, my life story isn't special at all. It's just one of millions in America that are the American dream.
Alan Fleischmann
But we’re at a time right now where we need role models. We need hope. We need inspiration. And we need to know that if we were to roll up our sleeves, either as the entrepreneur or as entrepreneurial people that want to work with them, we can. So, I urge people to listen to your podcast as well.
I just want to thank you. Thank you for a lot of things. Thank you for what you're doing now. Thank you for your service to our country before. Thank you for your continued leadership. You're an extraordinary friend and extraordinary role model to so many people. And what I love about you, Kerry, is with everything you've done, as you've opened up doors—in many ways the first door to open for a woman in particular—you've always looked back and opened up windows and doors behind you so that more women, more men, more people have the opportunity to follow you than when you walked in the door in the first place. And it's a stunning example of leadership. You are really that humble leader that we look for and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our wonderful listenership, our great team here Leadership Matters for joining us today.
Kerry Murphy Healey
Thank you. Thank you so much, Alan, you’re so kind.
Alan Fleischmann
You’re wonderful. Thank you. Keep doing what you're doing. Talk to you soon.