This is a transcript of the Spur of the Moment episode “Narrowing the diversity gap in agriculture with Kristin Kirkpatrick.” It is provided as a courtesy and may contain errors.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I think the real question is to say, what is actually in our control and what can I do to show up?
Jocelyn Hittle: Welcome to Spur of the Moment Podcast, the podcast of Colorado State University Spur campus in Denver, Colorado.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: We’ll need to produce more food in the next 30 years than we have in all of human civilization.
Jocelyn Hittle: On this podcast, we talk with experts in food, water, and health about how they are tackling the big challenges in these areas. I’m Jocelyn Hittle, and I’m thrilled to be joined today by Kristin Kirkpatrick, the executive director of Together We Grow. Welcome Kristin.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Thanks so much for having me Jocelyn.
Jocelyn Hittle: Thanks for being here. I’d like to start out by introducing your organization Together We Grow, can you tell us a little bit about it?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Yeah. Together We Grow was started in 2016 as the brainchild of secretary, Tom Vilsack, who at the time was President Obama secretary of agriculture, as well as the chief human resources officers for several major agribusiness companies here in the U.S. And essentially what they were doing was looking at art industries imperative to feed the world and the challenges that we face in the coming decades. We are looking at a population that will boom, estimates are that we’re going to reach somewhere around 10 billion people by 2050. And to put that into context, we’ll need to produce more food in the next 30 years than we have in all of human civilization to feed that increase in population. So that sounds like a big number, but it really is a big number. We’ll have to do that with climate impacts, changing weather patterns, more severe weather events, less water, less land.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: So as they were looking at the challenges that we face and how important food is to the world, they felt that the best way we are going to be able to drive the innovation we need and to solve the problems and the challenges that we face is to bring new talent into our industry, more diverse talent with different backgrounds to really help us drive that innovation. So right now Together We Grow has 50 member organizations that represent some of the largest interest in agriculture in the world, working collectively to make our industry, our workplaces, our academic institutions, our educational programming with kids, more inclusive and more equitable.
Jocelyn Hittle: Great. Thank you. So you mentioned innovation as you’re talking about how we need to address these pretty serious challenges that you mentioned and described. Could you break down what innovation might mean? I think for a lot of people that might mean technology, new approaches that are a little bit more technical or less about people, but a lot of what you’re talking about is about people. So could you break Together We Grow’s mission a little bit more? What does it actually mean and why is the people part important?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. So, I mean, our mission is to address the monumental challenge of feeding rapidly growing global population while using fewer resources. And essentially, what we’re talking about when we talk about innovation is a huge bucket of ways that we might tackle this work. So you could look at … I mean, if you’re only looking at water, for instance, you would pose the question of how are we going to grow more food with less water? And there’s so many ways that you can approach that challenge. What we’re really doing as a consortium is saying, how do we drive that innovation faster by bringing more diverse mindsets to help us create that innovation? And so for water, for instance, we could look at vertical growing operations. We could look at genomics with seeds and how we make varietals that need less water. We could look at land use patterns and where we are planting what we are planting and where we would get ideal harvest from a macro scale in terms of land. We can look at water storage, soil sensors. We can look at so many ways of innovating just that one portion of the food system. And essentially, what we’re doing is trying to do a design sprint over the next 30 years of how we do that in every way, shape and form.
Jocelyn Hittle: It’s a little bit of everything, and it doesn’t need to be. I mean, it sounds like from your description of the challenges that we’re facing, climate, water, population growth, all of those things, they really need diverse approaches to solving those problems because the problems themselves are so diverse.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I think that’s true for several reasons. I think the innovation challenge really requires more diverse backgrounds to be able to solve them. And then particularly when we’re talking about inclusion and equity, and you look at food insecurity around the world, you look at places where we know that we have really significant challenges around famine and migration. And it requires us thinking really holistically about food, water, and health, the exact things that this podcast is about because not only are we talking about food production, but we’re talking about in the context of this larger environment. And then we’re also talking about our end consumer who are people, and we recognize that there are not equitable opportunities for everybody to get their food needs met, both in this country and worldwide.
Jocelyn Hittle: Can you talk a little bit about diversity in agriculture now? How diverse is the agricultural sector?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: We have a lot of room for improvement Jocelyn, and there’s a couple of reasons that we know that this is true. One of the main ways that we monitor diversity in agriculture is through the United States Census of Agriculture. And their most recent census study was in 2017, and the findings from that are that there are 13 times more Caucasians and Whites involved in agriculture than any other ethnic group, and also twice as many men in agriculture as other demographics. So we know that we are nowhere near representative of the U.S. population in this country in terms of who produces our food.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: The other way that we monitor this data is through a partnership that Together We Grow has had with USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. And we’ve been working across our members to analyze their employment data. And what we find is that for Together We Grow’s agribusiness members, there are five categories that we’ve really been monitoring for demographics. And primarily what we’re interested in are underrepresented groups, meaning that there are fewer people in these demographics in our industry than in the general population. So we’ve been looking at gender, race and ethnicity, veteran status and disability status. And what we find in these data are two things that we’re focusing in on, not only are we underrepresented, but we have higher than expected turnover for our underrepresented groups as well. And secondly, we have more diversity at the start of our talent pipeline than we do at the end, meaning that we have more diversity at our entry level job points than we do in senior leadership or board roles.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: So we know that we have a lot of work to do, but we also have some targeted areas where we know we can engage in this work. We do want to consider our recruitment efforts obviously, and make sure that we’re building really strategic pipelines of talent. But we know we also need to focus in on how we build inclusive cultures where people have a true sense of belonging at work and can unleash all of that limitless potential to help us solve these really big challenges. And we also really need to examine the way that we promote and mentor and hire for our top jobs. I also want to add that these data points aren’t unique to our industry, this is true in a variety of sectors, finance and tech come to mind. But this is why we have to be really strategic about addressing these issues. We can’t create cultures of inclusion one organization at a time, this is really a societal shift. And that’s why Together We Grow is working so collaboratively across the industry with businesses, with higher ed institutions, with NGOs to make sure that we’re all doing this work together.
Jocelyn Hittle: And I do want to come back to the membership that you have, but one followup question there, do you have a sense about why there’s more turnover?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I think that it really boils down to inclusion and belonging. So diversity work in organizations has been around for decades, and the shift that you’ve really seen these past years has been around a sense of belonging. So diversity is counting numbers, right? We have X number of women, we have X number of men, but inclusion is when you really have a sense that you are invited into the organization, that you belong there. So this focus on belonging, I think, is really important because essentially what we’re saying is that you do your best work when you feel seen and valued and that the unique background that you have is what helps to make you a really important member of the team. And especially when we’re solving problems and generating ideas to come up with solutions, that is so crucial that we aren’t in a group think sort of situation where you’re able to challenge me because we don’t have identical backgrounds to pull from when we’re coming up with solutions.
Jocelyn Hittle: So we’re going to listen to hear Kristin to some of your TED talk that you did as part of TEDxCSU, focused a lot on the themes we’re talking about today. And the segment describes a little bit about where we are with diversity in agriculture right now.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: When we looked at the status of agriculture today, we know we have a lot of work to do in this realm. According to census data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture in 2017, there were 13 times more whites involved in agriculture in the United States than all other races combined. There are far more than double the number of men than women currently engaged in agriculture. Not only is there a business case for why diversity matters, but in an industry that is fundamentally important to the survival of our species, this industry in particular should better reflect the people that it serves.
Jocelyn Hittle: Kristin, is there anything you’d like to expand on from what it is that you highlighted during that TEDx Talk about where we are in diversity in agriculture today? You mentioned a number of different things that you are measuring and how you get that information. What are we missing here? What’s the next layer around where we stand today?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I would add to that that Together We Growth membership has really been focused in on looking internally at our own data. We’ve been able to do some pretty in-depth analysis thanks to the United States Department of Agriculture, USDA, and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. And as they look at the data of our employment numbers for our industry that our members have been releasing, what we see is that when we’re looking at gender, race and ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, that we’ve got a couple of trends going on, and one is that we’re more diverse at the start of our pipeline than at the end. Meaning that we hire in more diverse ways at for entry level positions, and then we’re not seeing that same diversity in thought leadership at the senior most levels in our organizations. That’s problematic in a couple of ways. And also a place that really informs strategic strategies that we should be engaging in.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: The second thing that we see is that we have higher than expected turnover, particularly for underrepresented groups. So in agriculture, that includes women, people of color, veterans and persons with disabilities. And when we look at that higher than expected turnover, I think the challenge for us is really coming back to that issue of inclusion and belonging and how do we truly create a sense of being seen and valued in the workplace so that you can really bring your whole self to the workplace because that’s what we know actually drives that innovation and helps us to capture the value of diverse talent.
Jocelyn Hittle: Great, thanks. Yeah. I think one of the things that you noted and that I’m thinking more on myself right now is that agriculture isn’t unique in having some of those challenges around turnover and around that sense of belonging. That does mean you can learn from other industries that are experiencing similar challenges, is that something that you’re focused on?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. There are a couple of efforts that I think are really interesting. The tech industry, for instance, has really led the way in this space in terms of bringing the industry together, to focus really holistically on how to create more diverse pipelines of talent. What I think has been interested in the last year is that you’ve also seen an interest in coming together at a consortium level in the energy industry. The insurance industry has been coming together from a mentorship perspective. The finance industry has been really looking critically about how they do their part. So I think you’re seeing right now a groundswell across our corporate community of people really recognizing, this isn’t something we’re going to get right one organization at a time, one leader at a time, one manager at a time. This is something where each of us needs to really do our part and work together.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: And part of that is saying, “We launched this program or initiative and it really had amazing impacts. So we want to share that so you can do that too.” We’ve seen that with two of our members, Cargill had a global day of belonging that they felt like really was successful in helping them to engage in difficult conversations. And several of our other members have started a similar initiative in their organizations. But also it’s important to share I think things that didn’t go well and that sometimes requires more humility, but it’s just as important.
Jocelyn Hittle: And so Kristin, along similar lines, we know that there are statistics in other industries that show why diversity matters when it comes to performance. So can you talk a little bit about specifically to the food and agricultural sector what you’re seeing, how diversity actually impacts performance as well?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. I think that this question is so great and it is different for the agriculture sector, I think, than it is for some others. There are two primary reasons that we feel really compelled to focus in on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And one is that the business community has been very swayed by research from firms like McKinsey & Company, which have found an edge for businesses that are more diverse. They have found that more diverse teams drive more innovation, they generate more solutions to any given problem. They’re more objective and more careful when discussing facts and they’re ultimately more profitable, which is something all corporations care about.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: But for our industry, there is an additional pressure that is deeply felt, and it’s not felt in lip service, this is truly ingrained in every person who works in this industry. It is part of the obligation that I think everybody feels both driven to perform to, and also takes very seriously in terms of the responsibility and sort of the weight of this requirement and responsibility. And that is that we are responsible for feeding the world. And when you are responsible for doing something that is so foundational to culture, to survival, to so many things that are really important in our humanity, there’s an additional moral obligation that we reflect the communities that we serve. And in doing so, that we’re able to think differently about our role in community and that equity and food justice and food access is all part of that as well.
Jocelyn Hittle: Thanks, Kristin, can you talk a little bit about your membership? Who’s part of Together We Grow?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. We have about 50 members right now. About 20 of them are agribusiness companies. The other 30 are pretty evenly split between higher ed institutions and nonprofits that primarily work with youth. Some of our members, you’ve likely heard of Kraft Heinz, for instance I’m guessing. Most of your listeners have heard of Tyson Foods, Land O’Lakes, [Bayer 00:17:06]. Some of them might be less familiar to the average consumer because they are involved farther up in the supply chain. Nutrien, for example, which is a Colorado based company, we’re in Colorado here having this conversation, their business arms include from the bottom of the mine to the top of the grain silo. So you probably don’t interact with them as a consumer, but they have a huge impact in terms of all of the food systems before things actually get to the grocery store or the farmer’s market, or wherever it is that you’re consuming your food.
Jocelyn Hittle: Great. So you mentioned academia. Can you say more about why academia is important as part of this?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely. I think academia is really crucial for a handful of reasons. There’s the obvious one that they’re helping students find their passions and connect into what they want to be doing with the rest of their life. Academia is also really important because of the research power that they bring to the table, and we want to ensure that as we’re moving this industry forward, that we’re doing that in a really evidence informed and data driven way. And the third is that most of our land grant system is really built on this sense of community, engagement and the extension arm of our universities, where they’re actually showing up in community, they’re educating people, they’re providing technical assistance. They’re really inspiring young people to get involved with these issues is another really critical way that we make impact and connect with people who don’t know that they want to come share their gifts in agriculture.
Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely. And you and I share that goal with the Spur campus at CSU, having that as one of our primary goals as well as to inspire the next generation of youth to engage in these challenges around food, water, and health, and think about careers that they might not have thought about before and how their particular skills and talents can be best applied. So absolutely aligned with you.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Well, and I would just add to that Jocelyn that I didn’t know that I would end up working in agriculture. And one of the things that I think we really have the opportunity to do is to expand the frame of both what students see as opportunities and possibilities generally speaking, but also to connect all of those things that we hear that young people really want to do. They want to live lives and have careers of purpose. And this is one of the best places where you can do that. If you care about climate impacts, if you care about food security, if you care about equity, all of those things you can do in agriculture. And you can do that as a statistician, you can do that in finance, you can do that as a app developer. There are so many ways to lend your talents. So that I think is really the goal.
Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely. You mentioned that there are non-profit organizations that are also part of Together We Grow, who are they and what role are they playing?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: The NGOs that are part of our organization are always so inspiring. Many of them work with youth, so we have some of the traditional partners that have always been part of the agriculture ecosystem, like 4-H and FFA. We also have partners that are newer into the space. So we have a fair number of NGOs like STEMconnector who really connect with youth around STEM disciplines. Discovery Education is another example where we have people really thinking differently about how we engage youth, particularly around STEM topics. We have a number of universities who also do really incredible work at the extension level. And then we have some affinity groups, and they’re groups that really provide best practices to our members, for example, the National Center for Lesbian Rights or the National Urban League, who both I think make sure that we’re staying accountable to the work that we say that we’re going to do, and also are able to provide that sort of best practice technical resource to our members as well.
Jocelyn Hittle: So, Kristin, I’d like to shift a little to look back over 2020, you and I are talking in the middle of January of 2021. And one of the things that feels important is to look at 2020, although many of the things that we experienced in 2020 are still with us, but to talk a little about what 2020 brought and let’s start with COVID-19 and the pandemic. Can you talk about how your work and the work of your members was impacted by COVID-19.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I mean, it’s funny. What a year. We have been talking about innovation and that is a lot of what Together We Grow is focused on. And 2020 for us as an industry, the food and ag industry was a case study in innovation of every kinds, like everyone else this year has been a study in real-time problem solving from one monumental crisis to another. And for our industry, what that looks like was stress testing the resiliency of our food supply chains. I think for the first time in many decades, consumers really thought about what our supply systems look like because we saw the impact in our grocery stores. I think that consumers are closer to the food system right now than they have been in a very long time. And it’ll be interesting to see what comes of that in the coming years. A lot of our industry has been thinking not only about the efficiency of that supply system, but also the resiliency, and you are seeing a lot of innovation come out of this last year, just on the supply chain front.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: We also saw a consumer behavior shift in really dramatic ways as people have been home bound, and home cooking more. And you see shifts in breakfast preferences and all sorts of things. So imagine being a consumer product [inaudible 00:23:30] company and having consumer behaviors shift in such dramatic ways in such a short time as well. Our industry had to worked incredibly quickly both to launch into remote workforces, much like many other industries did, but also because so much of the work we do is essential work, it is production, it is manufacturing, it is consumer-driven. So we have the dual challenges of figuring out how to make huge portions of our industry function from a remote standpoint at a global scale, and also how to protect employees who are still in plants, who are still doing production? And that has been an incredible challenge, and one that I think we continue to problem solve around.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: And because of the global reach of our companies, one of the big pivots that most of them also made was taking out these part of their manufacturing and moving it into personal protective equipment because of the obligation they felt to help meet that need at a global scale. And also because all of them are involved in some level of some sort of product that is important in that chain. So you saw, I think, just a huge shift in about 10 different ways, all happening simultaneously at a global level. And like many other industry, you saw probably a decade of innovation happening in just months. And I want to say that the same is true for our education members and our NGOs. So while what I talked about right now is mostly focused on what our companies have been doing, I cannot understate the Herculean effort that our school systems, our higher ed institutions have made this past year as well, to not only rethink how they deliver every single thing that they do, but how they do so with a lens towards equity. And I think that everybody has just really tried to band together to do what’s right. We haven’t always gotten it right, but I think we’ve always been trying to work forward towards progress. And the amount of success stories is just really humbling.
Jocelyn Hittle: Kristin, I’d like to talk a little bit too about the intersection between, I think, the two areas that most of us are thinking about when it comes to what happened in 2020, the second of course being Black Lives Matter, and other movements and conversations around inequity. Obviously that had to have been a huge part of what you all were talking about as an organization that’s focused on diversity and equity.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: For Together We Grow and our part within this food and agriculture industry, that was our primary focus this past year. And really what we’ve been doing is trying to engage across our membership with difficult and powerful and critical conversations that aren’t just about having the conversation, but are about truly assessing how we’re going to move forward in a really systemic, highly impactful way. So right after the murder of George Floyd, we hosted a town hall with our members on race and racism within our industry. And we started that conversation and invited our industry to come together with the expectation that we would be vulnerable, that we would engage with truths that are difficult to reckon with, and that we would hold space to listen and really take in the perspective of our members. And I have consistently been so impressed with both the willingness to show up and do this work, which is hard and emotional and vulnerable, and requires us to set aside some of our armor.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: And I think that is one of the benefits of what you’ve seen in the pandemic is because we’re also disrupted and we all have so many challenges, but that has leveled the playing field a little bit for us all to come together and say, “This is hard and we’re not all doing well.” So we’re able to connect, I think, at a human level that we haven’t always connected in the workplace in that same kind of way. And what that resulted in was that our annual meeting, our incredible board member Melissa Harper hosted a panel with four black professionals about their experience working in agriculture. We invited in our academic community to really look at the data and the literature, what we’ve learned from the last 50 years. And for the past about six months, we have been working with our members in four working groups, focused on inclusion more holistically, but on racial equity specifically. And the conversation that started last year hasn’t stopped. And we are not just talking anymore, we are really scaffolding strategic initiatives that will move our industry forward so that hopefully we can really make inroads, and to have some through lines hopefully in that 2050 timeframe where we look back to these years that have been disruptive and difficult and hard and feel like that was a moment when we really had some breakthroughs in a whole handful of ways, but hopefully, especially around these issues of equity.
Jocelyn Hittle: Yes. I mean, to your point, I think the last 18 months or so have really been an accelerator of work that many people have been focused on, Together We Grow in particular. So I’m curious how you’re thinking about 2021, maybe what your expectations are, but also what you’re hoping to accomplish.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Yeah. We have no end of ambition for 2021, so we are here. But I think you’re going to see our sector, I don’t think, I know you are going to see our sector engage in really meaningful ways around leadership, around culture, around accountability that is aspirational and celebratory, around capacity building and really strategic cultures of recruitment. And it is so humbling and really I feel very honored to be able to sit in the seat where I do with all of these members who are taking on additional responsibility, who are showing up in the leadership roles that they’ve taken on and are doing things that are hard to do, but because they know they’re the right things to do. And I’m really excited to see what 2021 brings.
Jocelyn Hittle: Me too. It is another year of huge change and transition, I have no doubt. So I’m going to shift gears a little bit now. One of the things that the CSU Spur Campus, as I’ve mentioned, is intended to do, one of our goals is to introduce new career paths to people who might, young people in particular who might not have been thinking about those career paths. So I’d love to showcase a little bit your path, how you’ve gotten to where you are. You have given us a number of statistics and predictions that in some cases are a little bit daunting around climate change, around population change, who are you to be tackling these big challenges Kristin?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I love this question, Jocelyn, who am I to tackling these questions? Well, at my core, I am the daughter of a mailman and a social worker. So what they instilled in both my brother and in me was the sense that whatever your job is, you show up and you give it 150% and you don’t stop until it’s done. So when you’re talking about making an entire industry more inclusive and equitable, I’m glad we have a 30 year time horizon because it is going to take us a long time to get there. My mom, the social worker, I think also really instilled in us this sense that you have an obligation to be in service to others, and that doesn’t have to be the primary mission of your career. But something I think that she really instilled in us was just the sense that you are obligated to serve something bigger than yourself.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: The other part of me that I think I really bring to work always is that I’m the mom of three small kids. And 2050 feels so far away, but my middle kiddo will be my age in 2050. And when I think of that fact in what the world could be like if fail in our mission for Together We Grow, that is an eternal source of fuel that ignites my desire to engage in this work. I’ve had a really interesting career that doesn’t make sense in a linear path for how I got to this particular role, but I think the things that I have as kind of my core skillset are that I’m strategic, futuristic, I’m an activator and I really have this sense of optimism. So essentially, the work I’ve always been really interested and engaging in was how to do strategic work that makes the future better.
Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful. Yeah. I asked that question tongue-in-cheek of course, because you’ve got all kinds of skills that you are applying to great effect on these challenges and with Together We Grow and I know in each of your previous positions as well. I think what we’re trying to get at when we talk about career paths is that everyone has a role to play here. And regardless of your background or your interest, there is a way that you can touch on these big global challenges and really make a difference.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Absolutely.
Jocelyn Hittle: So can you talk a little bit about that path? How did you end up as executive director of Together We Grow?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Yeah. I have always had a passion for systems change with a lens for equity. So I have done that work in transportation systems and city planning and real estate development and education and the food system at large. I’ve worked in non-profits and public sector and private sector. And most recently, I was working with Kimbal Musk and his national nonprofit Big Green, which is an organization that builds school gardens and promotes food literacy, mostly in under-resourced, urban schools. And I loved the work that we were doing and felt that it’s so important, but there’s this huge system at play. So as I thought about what I really wanted to do in the next step in my career, I wanted to work on a problem that was so big, the kind that would keep me up at night and give me a sense that the time I’m spending away from my family is being used towards a worthwhile goal. So I feel like check, check, and check, stay up at night worrying, I feel like the goal is big and audacious and so critical in so many ways.
Jocelyn Hittle: So let’s talk a little bit about what’s a day in the life for you? What does it actually mean to implement this work day-to-day?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I think any executive director of a fledgling non-profit probably has the same answer to this question, which is that there is no typical day in the life. Right now, I’m the only full-time employee of Together We Grow and we benefit so much from our committed members. I have the most incredible board of directors. We are so blessed to be housed at Colorado State University, and I have so much support from the university system. But my days are typical for the executive director of a startup non-profit, they’re long, they’re challenging, they’re incredibly inspiring. I mean, I get to connect with trailblazers and change-makers all over the country and I never end my day thinking, “Well, that was a waste.” So that’s great, but I get to wear all of the hats. So I get to be the future leaning strategist, I get to do member engagement, external and media relations. I get to spend hours doing spreadsheet and budget drudgery, fundraising, all of the things. And I think that every executive director is really a cat herder at a circus, some of the animals are yours, some you’re not sure how they got there, but you’re just trying to make it all cohesive and move forward in a strategic way.
Jocelyn Hittle: I had never a dull moment, never a dull moment.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: You know.
Jocelyn Hittle: Can you talk a little bit about … So we’re lucky enough to have you and Together We Grow, the plan is for you all to be housed at the Spur Campus once we open in roughly a year. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for you, why the Spur Campus is a good fit?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: We feel so honored to be housed at Spur. And Together We Grow was looking for a university partner a few years ago to house this effort and to be more of an independent, convening body. So there were several universities who competed for that opportunity. And ultimately, we ended up at Spur partly because of the shared mission and Spur is really this critical place where we’re convening conversations of global significance around food, water, and health. And I think that we’re in agreement that the future of our food security, our ability to feed the world is really critical in terms of those topics and challenges that have a lot of future significance on a global scale.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I think there’s also the incredible nature of the campus itself and being in the heart of downtown Denver, engaging a state that is urban and rural, that is a conservative and liberal. I think that we really are … one of the things I love about Colorado is that we really are all of the things. And because we are, I think we’re able to work together in a way that really benefits everyone. And I think that ethos you see in our university system, I think you see it in the Spur Campus itself and the incredible projects that are being launched and housed out of this initiative. So I think there’s so much synergy and I’m really excited to see five years from now, 10 years from now, 30 years from now what we have built, and more importantly, the impact it has on our state, our country and the world.
Jocelyn Hittle: Thanks. Yeah, we are so excited to have you there as part of the ecosystem that we’re building at Spur. You’re right that Colorado does have some unique features that I think make us a good place, but it’s more than just being a place, it’s what we’re doing and how we bring everyone together. And I think there’s something about Denver as well, even more specifically, that’s very collaborative. And I think that that sort of seeps into our work at Spur as well, which is an entirely collaborative effort. So just to wrap up Kristin, thank you so much for being with us today. I want to talk a little bit more about how we can engage with this topic with other folks. So you mentioned you have young kiddos, how do you talk with them about these issues? How do they engage in these topics?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Oh my gosh. I mean, I think this is such an important question and I want to start by saying that I’m not a parenting expert and so I don’t always get it right. I think all of this is a journey of humility where we’re just trying to show up with authenticity and love and do the hard work. But we do try to be really intentional and actually see some parallels in the ways that I talk with my kids and the conversations that I’m having with everybody right now. As you said, we’re having this conversation in January of 2021, and I think so much of what we are talking about when I talk with our members, when I talk with leadership within our organizations and our governments, part of it, whether we’re talking about equity and inclusion is I think being really clear and calling out what isn’t acceptable.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: And we do this when we watch a movie with our kids on Friday nights and reflect what we’re seeing and what seems acceptable and what isn’t. You see our corporations doing that this past year, where you have many who for the first time ever made public statements about the death of a private citizen. You’ve seen corporate members, including our members pull back their philanthropic donations to political campaigns based on the writing that we saw in Washington D.C. So I think that you’re seeing people draw a line in the sand and say, “This isn’t acceptable, this is not the standards that we are willing to accept in terms of engaging with one another in our common humanity.”
Kristin Kirkpatrick: I think there are a couple of other things. In terms of the food system, we really do try to talk with our kids. My oldest is old enough to volunteer at the food bank. So every couple of weeks, we volunteer at a pop-up at a local high school and volunteer with a pop-up pantry. For my five-year-old who’s my youngest, I think a lot of what we talk about with him are inviting the kid at recess who hasn’t been invited to play. And that seems really small, but it’s actually not all that different from a lot of the work our corporations are engaged in when it comes to mentoring. So we talked about that problem of having more diverse talent at sort of those top leadership levels. One of my favorite programs that I love is a program JPMorgan Chase does, which is called 30-5-1. And they’re asking mentors to spend 30 minutes a week having coffee with a talented up-and-coming colleague, preferably a woman or from a background that is underrepresented. Spending five minutes a week congratulating a colleague from an underrepresented group on a recent win or success and spending just one minute a week, talking up a success from a colleague to the other people in your room. It isn’t actually all that different than my five-year-old inviting a kid to play who has been left out of the game.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: So I think there are some really basic kind of common humanity things that it is that we’re talking about. But I think one of the trick for everybody right now, my middle kiddo is really empathetic and she asked me a few months ago, “Mom, should I be more worried about climate change or Black Lives Matter or the coronavirus?” She’s eight, and I think that when we think about the challenges that we face, it can just feel really overwhelming and that can lead us to inaction. So I think the real question, whether you’re talking with kids, whether you’re talking with colleagues, whether you’re thinking about if your leadership should make a statement based on what’s happening in the world today is to say, “What is actually in our control and what can I do to show up?” And I think that if we all do that in all of the places where we have influence, we are going to create the kinds of culture changes that we really want to. I know after the riots in D.C. one of our representatives said, “Go home and create shared experiences and common bonds in your community. You can’t hate the neighbor that just shoveled your sidewalk.” So how do we really just show up for each other in a way that is meaningful and authentic, because I think that’s how we really start to change the world.
Jocelyn Hittle: Wow. Amazing examples in your answer there Kristin. And I love in particular sort of the idea that what we’re doing is inviting the kid to play throughout our entire lives, right? And I like the example that you gave of the 30-5-1 because it gives a little bit more of a concrete way to do it, right? It’s something you can operationalize. I think some of these, “How can you be more inclusive, how can you address these really big topics,” the questions of your eight-year-old is kind of heartbreaking that she’s weighing such heavy issues at that age, but we’re all weighing those issues and I think can feel kind of paralyzed, and so those really discrete ways to take action are helpful. So how can others engage with you in this work? We’re all feeling like your middle kiddo there, that we want to do something, we are worried about these big issues. How can we all engage with you in your work?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Yeah, I think there’s so many ways. So if you care about food, for instance, every community has incredible ways that they are meeting the needs of their community. All of whom need volunteers or donations or corporate support, so I think if you looked at your local food bank, most school districts have some sort of backpack program or a community volunteer effort where they send kids home with food directly. There’s local food policy councils who think more holistically, there’s community gardens. If you call up your city’s sustainability department or planning department, they will be able to connect you in with those opportunities locally. If you care a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion, there are so many great books and podcasts and ways to educate yourself. The CSE vice president’s Office for Diversity has a really comprehensive list of resources that we can link in the show notes I’m guessing, right Jocelyn?
Jocelyn Hittle: Yes, I think we can do that.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: All right. So I think those are two really direct ways, but then I think really it is just this constant sort of asking yourself, how do you be intentional about how you’re showing up in the places where you have influence, and whether that is in your own home, whether that is as a volunteer in your community, within the place where you are employed, within your church. I think there are no end of opportunities for us to start to weave the social fabric back together in a way where we all have more opportunity and the ability to live lives of meaning.
Jocelyn Hittle: Thank you Kristin. Thanks so much. I want to thank you for being a guest on our podcast today. And one of the things that we are doing as part of the Spur of the Moment Podcast is asking a spur of the moment question. So here is my spur of the moment question for you, because we’re talking about food today, is there one dish that you would want to be able to get perfect every time?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: That is a great question. So I have to make a confession that my husband is the cook in our house. So I actually haven’t thought about cooking a meal in about 15 years.
Jocelyn Hittle: So maybe I should flip the question and say, what is the favorite dish that you have that your husband makes for you?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: He made the other night these really delicious tofu veggie lettuce wraps, and then a red chicken curry, and it was delicious. I’m really a fan of all of his cooking, and I’m a fan of not doing it myself. So I’m of the mindset that if it got done, it got done right.
Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful. Well, it sounds like you have it dialed in at your household. So last question for you, how can people find you on social media and how can they find Together We Grow?
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Both Together We Grow and myself are on LinkedIn, so find us there.
Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, thanks. I encourage all of our listeners to do that and find out more about Together We Grow, an organization that’s making such a difference in our food and agriculture sector and increasing diversity and ensuring that as we move forward, we have seats at the table for everyone. So thank you again Kristin for being with us today, and we really appreciate your time.
Kristin Kirkpatrick: Jocelyn, thank you not only for convening these conversations, which I think are so important, but also for the work that you’re doing. I think that any of the things that we’re trying to solve really take all of us working together. So thanks for letting us be part of it.
Jocelyn Hittle: Thanks, Kristin. I want to thank Kristin Kirkpatrick again for being our guest today on the Spur of the Moment Podcast. Again, you can find her and Together We Grow on LinkedIn. And also, you can get more information on the Together We Grow consortium at togetherwegrowag.org. Thanks again Kristin, and we look forward to having you all join us again for our next Spur of the Moment Podcast.
