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Interview with William Holdipp Jr., Asst. Exec. Dir., Consortium of African American Organizations (CAAO).
Introduction Good morning my name is William Holdipp. I am the Assistant Executive Director for the Consortium of African American Organizations, known as “CAAO” for short. CAAO is a collaboration of different Black professional organizations here in Northeast Ohio. We focus on leadership development, youth development, career development and entrepreneur development. |
PASSION [00:00:25]
In terms of what I’m most passionate about working with CAAO is helping people. We see a variety of people throughout the year and to be able to help them with what they’re looking for. So, if they’re looking for jobs opportunities, to be able to connect them with job opportunities here in Cleveland, to be able to help those entrepreneurs who may just need a little push to access to opportunities here in Cleveland. Those are the things I really like to do on a day-to-day basis.
BACKSTORY [00:00:58]
How I got involved in CAAO, it was in 2001, actually my wife, Connie Atkins, was given the opportunity to become the Executive Director and I helped her out with starting CAAO. I actually volunteered for CAAO for the first two years of its existence, helping and rebuilding the foundation and getting the other organizations involved, setting up Empowerment Circle meetings for those looking to network and get business referrals. In the second year, one of our sponsors actually found out that I wasn’t getting paid and I was volunteering. She provided the funding for me to get paid in the second year of CAAO. Which was great! From there I’ve had many positions with CAAO, Manager of Member Services, Manager of Social Media, and now recently, the Assistant Executive Director for CAAO.
I’m actually born in Bermuda, I spent my first twenty-nine years there in Bermuda, a beautiful island that’s actually just off the coast of North Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. I met Connie online through a friend that we both had who introduced us and I came over to Cleveland and never left!
I’m actually born in Bermuda, I spent my first twenty-nine years there in Bermuda, a beautiful island that’s actually just off the coast of North Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. I met Connie online through a friend that we both had who introduced us and I came over to Cleveland and never left!
CONNECTIVITY [00:02:35]
Throughout my years with CAAO, I’ve had the opportunity to get access to a lot of what’s going on in Cleveland. And a lot of what I see that’s going on here in Cleveland is that information doesn’t get to all the networks here in Cleveland. So one of the things I tell people interested in getting involved in CAAO, is that CAAO is a resource to give you access to a lot of information going on in Cleveland. It can be entrepreneurial information, for example the big thing that is coming up now is the RNC (Republican National Convention). Now there are talks about how to get your businesses ready for the RNC. So, information like that we provide to our constituents so that they have the information up front and not getting it last minute just before the opportunities come about. One of the things I’ve also encouraged people to also get involved in is to attend the City Council meetings, attend your County meetings because there is a lot of information that comes out of these meetings that people need to know about and if you’re not present you’re not going to know what is going on in your county and your city.
OPPORTUNITY [00:03:47]
In terms of young professionals here in Cleveland, I encourage young professionals to seek out opportunities versus waiting for someone to pass them on to you. If you want to be at the table for a certain organization, seek it out and go after it and don’t wait for somebody to pass it to you because Cleveland is a type of city that you really have to push yourself to get opportunities and I encourage anybody that’s young in this town don’t wait for opportunities, go after them and seek them and you will get them.
ACCESS [00:04:27]
One of my other passions is entrepreneurship. Actually, Connie, my wife, is a thirty-year entrepreneur. We have built a lot of networks around providing access. We don’t actually do training for entrepreneurship in CAAO because there are a lot of great organizations that already exist here in Northeast Ohio. One of the things we focus on is access. So, if you want to connect with a certain CEO in town, we have a program called CAAO’s Executive Management where we connect entrepreneurs to CEOs who may give them business advice or connect them to opportunities within their companies.
YOUTH [00:05:13]
One of the programs that I recently got involved in and am the manager of the program, is the CAAO Youth Innovation Forum. This is a really exciting program we’ve had for the last eleven years. It was actually created out of a partnership between an entrepreneur who came to CAAO and said he wanted to design a program that would teach critical thinking to young people between the ages of 10 and 19. Through working with him, we were able to come up with what is now the CAAO Youth Innovation Forum. The program has had some phenomenal results. We’ve had some students come in here as young as ten years old who are now in college and doing well. Every child that comes through the program for more than one year, 100% of them have been accepted to college. We’ve only had one person who dropped out of college and the reason was because she went from full-time to part-time because she got such a great internship at Disney that she did not want to let it go. This is a program we’re really excited about. Last year we got the opportunity to tour around the State of Ohio with the Ohio Board of Regents to talk about our universities and really get the word out about the program. We’re trying to take the program to the next level and what we mean by the next level is the ideas that the young people come up with, for example, this last year they came up with a product for T J Max that would help make their retail business more attractive. We want to now see how we can take these products to market. What I’m currently researching now is to find a partnership between a university and CAAO who can actually give us the resources that we need to make that type of idea a reality and the go is that once that product goes to market, the revenues from the product would then be put into an endowment fund where we can give back to our young students so it would be great to say to all our students that once they’re in their first year of college we can actually help them pay for that first year of tuition into college for their efforts in the program.
COACHING [00:07:53]
Another program that we have, is really a donor program and we call it the CAAO Bestt (Base, Enhanced, Sustaining, Trust Builders, Trust Builders Plus) Program. These are individuals who have donated to CAAO. We like to provide them opportunities and gifts. One of the gifts we provide them is the opportunity to come to us for coaching. Between Connie and myself, we actually coach a lot of CAAO’s Best. If you need somebody to help you get from point “A” to point “B” we provide that service to CAAO’s Best donors.
SPONSORS [00:08:29]
All of the things that CAAO does would not be possible without our sponsors, so I just want to take a minute here to thank our sponsors who have continuously supported our organization and understand and believe in what we’re doing.
Some of our major sponsors are PNC Bank, T J Max, Lubrizol, and Forest City Enterprises. I want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support of our organization and without your assistance we would not have been able to do what we do in community.
Some of our major sponsors are PNC Bank, T J Max, Lubrizol, and Forest City Enterprises. I want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support of our organization and without your assistance we would not have been able to do what we do in community.
FUTURE [00:09:04]
One of the things I’ve been thinking about for the future in terms of collaborations, and one of the collaborations I looking about and talking with people about, is a collaboration between African American business owners and those who have recently immigrated to Cleveland who have businesses themselves. To create those collaborations, build trust and get these groups to know each other and hopefully some business opportunities can come out as a result of these two groups working together and getting to know each other.
SERVICE [00:09:33]
One of the things I’d like to see for the future is to get more organizations in the African American community to work together. There are so many things that need to be done. A lot of us are doing small parts in these areas but if we come together we can actually have a bigger impact in our communities. If there was a goal for the future, it would be to get more organizations collaborating and working together. Seeing which ones do certain things well and having those organizations be the leaders of those programs.
MEMBERS [00:10:15]
The organizations that are a part of CAAO include the National Black MBA Association, which is an organization for those who have graduate degrees or who are trying to achieve graduate degrees can join. They have a lot of resources in terms of job opportunities, connecting people through networking events, and also they have a youth forum called, Leaders of Tomorrow, which is a great program for getting African American students in high school ready for college life. Another organization is the Urban League of Greater Cleveland. They have a lot of programs - a youth program, business and entrepreneurial programs, they have a program called the Soul program which gets those who are underemployed or unemployed an opportunity to get training and then be put into a position. Another organization part of CAAO is the Burten, Bell and Carr Development Corporation and they focus on academic development within their community. We also have the Karamu House, which a member of CAAO, which a lot of people probably know about, which recently had their one-hundred year birthday and one of the oldest theaters in the country. People like Ruby Dee have participated and got trained at the Karamu and we all know Ruby Dee through a lot of our movies. Another group is the National Society of Black Engineers and for those who are interested in careers in engineering, that’s a perfect organization to be a part of. They have a lot of programming around getting high school students interested and ready for careers in engineering. A unique group that has been with us for a long time now is the North Coast Black Bass Anglers. They are a group of African Americans who like to fish. They actually touch a lot of our young people in Cleveland through programs. They have one program called “Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs” to teach young people fishing and the environment. They take some of the students they work with, the ones who show promise in fishing to the State of Ohio Bass Fishing Tournament each year. This organization’s able to lend their time to encourage young people to get them interested in a hobby and hopefully, they may want to make it a profession because right now Bass fishing is a billion dollar industry in Cleveland and it’s another opportunity for those who want to take that to the next level.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP [00:13:16]
The primary area that CAAO focuses on is entrepreneurial development. We want to make sure the entrepreneurs in the CAAO network have the opportunity to be aware of the contracts that are out there and also be able to give them information and encouragement to bid on some of these contracts. CAAO sits on a lot of diversity programs in Cleveland to be the eyes and ears of the entrepreneurs here in Northeast Ohio. So we participate in the Case Western Reserve University Supplier Diversity Initiative, we work with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation on their program to get more minority businesses to do business with the Cleveland Clinic. We also work with Cleveland State University’s diversity advisory group and there are other groups that we work with - it may not be a permanent group as those groups but in the short term they have access and Connie and I help them find minority businesses who are ready to do business with organizations. We spend a lot of time helping entrepreneurs get access to high level individuals. CAAO never wants to be in the middle of those relationships, we want to teach our entrepreneurs, get them in the door, teach them how to have these business meetings and then let them run with it. We think it’s important to not only encourage them to get access at high levels but also teach them how to maintain this relationship so they’ll know.
In terms of a secondary focus, I would say our Youth program is our secondary focus in terms of the amount of work we do with CAAO. We really want to get as many of our young people in this program as possible. The outcomes have been phenomenal. We’re working with our school systems to try to get as many students involved as possible. Some of the students come back and volunteer for the program after they’ve completed college. I’m very excited about them coming back and reaching out to the young people who are coming up in the program today.
In terms of a secondary focus, I would say our Youth program is our secondary focus in terms of the amount of work we do with CAAO. We really want to get as many of our young people in this program as possible. The outcomes have been phenomenal. We’re working with our school systems to try to get as many students involved as possible. Some of the students come back and volunteer for the program after they’ve completed college. I’m very excited about them coming back and reaching out to the young people who are coming up in the program today.
REGIONS [00:15:34]
I think the area I would like to see CAAO invest in next is expanding our reach in Northeast Ohio. We are mostly in Cleveland and Akron. I’d like to see other areas like Youngstown and some of the other areas to get them engaged and involved and become a part of our phenomenal collaborative that can help them with some of the challenges they may be facing in their communities.
DEVELOPMENT [00:16:05]
Some of the main challenges that we hear that people have is really getting access to opportunities. Cleveland really still has an “old boys school” network that is pretty strong. And it’s difficult for many to actually get a foot in the door. Alot of people may not understand the systems for working. For example, for those who are looking for a job in a corporation, the pathway they need to take in terms of if they one day want to be a CEO, COO, or CFO, and the path they should be taking to get to those points. Alot of people have spoken to us about that. It would be great if some organization was able to be the guide to take them from point “A” to point “B” in terms of their career opportunities.
RESEARCH [00:17:05]
The research areas that interest me have to do with universities. Those students who are coming out of universities who actually not only come out with a degree but come out with the next big idea. Alot of these students tend to be from Asia, India, Asian Americans. We’re trying to find out how we can get African Americans to think this way. So, instead of just going to school, and you definitely want to get your degree, that is what you are paying for, but to take those resources in the university to come up with the next big idea - it can be huge! That’s what I’m looking at now. How can I encourage more African American students to go into engineering, go into biomedical industries to think about it? I can come out with a degree, which is wonderful but what about the next Yahoo!, the next Google ideas?
INFORMATION [00:18:10]
Sharing information for us at CAAO is very, very important. It allows those we are working with to be empowered to take their businesses, their careers to the next level. So, we provide those opportunities in many ways. Alot of it is online, so we actually have groups we send emails to based on their interest. We have programs that provide information. For example, one of the big things that was happening over the last couple of years was the Affordable Care Act. We partnered with the Department of Health and Social Services to bring some speakers to town to talk about what’s going on, to answer any questions, or address any issues anybody was having with the Affordable Care Act. So that type of sharing is an example of how CAAO shares information. We have programs for entrepreneurs to bring in speakers. A couple years ago we had a meeting with the Consul General for Israel. He wanted to meet some of our entrepreneurs, so we got the opportunity to bring in some entrepreneurs to talk to him and build a connection with him. One of the things he talked about as a result of that meeting was see how we could do a trade mission to Israel to get African American entrepreneurs engaged in doing business with a company in Israel. That’s another example of how we share information. We even share information for young people, so those in our youth program we send opportunities out to them on a frequent basis, scholarship programs or any unique opportunities that can help them in their development and in their preparation for going to college. We even help them after they get out of college. For example, one of our students who graduated from the University of Akron was looking for a job, so we were able to - he actually wants to go to the University of Southern California - to study the film industry. We were able to connect him to one of our entrepreneurs who is now a photographer in Hollywood and he is now helping and mentoring him and guiding him through living in California. We were able to get somebody to look out for him while he was in another part of the country and in school.
NETWORKS [00:21:03]
We at CAAO believe that building networks is a very important part of what we do here at CAAO. So, a lot of the networks we are building are not only for individuals to be involved in CAAO, but also building networks for our organizations that are involved in CAAO. So, finding ways to get more people involved in the Urban League, finding ways to get more people involved in the National Black MBA’s and the other organizations as well. Why is this important? Because each of these organizations - CAAO and the organizations themselves - all have very unique opportunities that they can provide to the African American community and we encourage people to see which ones match to what they’re looking for and getting involved in these different networks.
CAAO builds networks mainly just by talking with people and taking time out to have conversations with them, to tell them the value of being connected to different groups. We also send out information to our email newsletter which actually talks about the different organizations in CAAO. We highlight them so people can understand what is unique about that organization. We see this as a very important thing to be a part of. For me, building networks through conversations is probably the easiest way to do it. Not everybody understands the importance of getting involved in an organization, and to take time out to speak with them and find out what they’re looking for and start to connect to a network as one organization is how we build networks here at CAAO.
CAPACITY [00:22:52]
One of the things I've been thinking about at CAAO in terms of another opportunity for CAAO to get involved in, is to have some sort of network group among African Americans who are at the level of executive director and their non profit to come together, to start talking to each other, building trust, building conversations about what we’re doing just to help network, and connect who’s doing what. So now, we’re able to provide people to those organizations based on what we know about what they do. That’s something that is in the back of my mind in terms of an idea to bring together these executive directors for a program like that. I think that that will go a long way to inform us of what each of us is doing. There might even be situations where we’re doing something similar, and instead of doing it as solo groups, we can come together to figure out how to do it as a united front in terms of collaboration and doing it at a larger scale as a unit, versus separately.
SYSTEMS [00:24:07]
One of the things that I’m actually excited about in terms of what I would like to see happen in the near future is a program focused on our youth that brings organizations together to look at what each group is doing in the youth area and see how we can set up a pipeline so a young person can go into one program and by the time they’re ready for college, they just keep going from one program to the next, to the next…so they have continued support throughout their high school and college so that when they graduate from college they have the confidence and the understanding of what it takes to get a job after college.
ENTERPRISE [00:25:02]
In terms of taking an idea to execution, we at CAAO don’t like to spend a lot of time mulling over an idea. Once we realize an idea that we think needs to be done, we build the foundation for it. We get the funding support for it and make it happen. I can give you an example of that. The Executive Auction, now known as the Executive Matchmaker, that’s an example of something that was implemented within a couple of months of the idea being created. Basically, we went to a local event, George Frasier’s Partner Networking Conference, and he was auctioning off time with Oprah Winfrey. Within 10 minutes of the opening bid, he was able to raise a lot of money as a result. Connie and I looked at each other and said, “We can do this in Cleveland!” We might not have somebody the level of Oprah but we have a lot of executives in town that can participate in this event. So, we started putting together the plan right away for this idea. Fifth Third Bank was the first bank that came in and supported the idea of executive matchmaking. We knew the next step was looking at which executive in town had enough influence to get the ball rolling in terms of executives participating and we actually got Henry Myer, who was then the CEO of KeyBank. He said yes and it just kind of snowballed and everybody wanted to participate. We had over one hundred and thirty executives a year participating in the executive auction. So, in terms of the actual idea happening and the implementation, that was probably a six month period. So once we come up with a great idea we like to look at how to make it happen and get the funding support and have it out there right away.
INSIGHTS [00:27:11]
In terms of the executive auction I spoke to you earlier about, in terms of how did we gain insight? We just talked to people basically. We had conversations with people and tried to get their feedback about what they thought about the idea and what they thought we should implement and what we should avoid. We spent a lot of time talking to people who could be supporters of it, to get their feedback on it, and even those who may want to bid on an executive, so those who were potential bidders, we talked to them about what they would like to have involved and engaged. How would they like to see a program like this take place? We even asked them if they would like to be in a matchmaker event auction? Because at the end of the day if we get a ton of executives that nobody’s interested in meeting, the program is not achieving what it should. So we definitely get input from those benefitting from the program to find out they would like to meet with. We speak to people in the community from all walks of life. It’s not even a specific person or job title or leader. It’s just getting feedback from as many people as possible was the goal for setting up the executive auction.
BENCHMARKS [00:28:40]
In terms of benchmarks, in terms of how do we figure out or assess for the year, we developed a chart basic to what we do to record all those who have come to CAAO in some form or matter. We record what they came to CAAO for, what did they actually get from CAAO, and we also record the dollar value of any opportunities that happened that can be recorded in terms of dollars. We’ve been doing this for the last ten years now and really brings out a nice chart of how many people we’ve helped, who we’ve helped and how we’ve helped them and the result of how we’ve helped them in one chart that we can look back and say, “Hey, we did a great job this year!” Or, we even use that chart to look back and identify who may have not gotten help and how do we go back and see how they are now and how we can help them in the future.
COLLABORATION [00:29:49]
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Alot of things we would not be able to do on our own, so we look at opportunities to work with other organizations and we’ve done that for a very long time now and we continue to do it. I can give you some examples. We currently formed a collaboration with a local entrepreneur. In 2015, CAAO will be providing team building training to small companies who would like to go through a training process for their team and also for small nonprofits and small businesses who are looking for a way to strengthen their team that they have. That is something that CAAO will be providing. That is a result of one of our entrepreneurs in CAAO seeing the opportunity to have her program reach out to those in the African American community.
Another example of collaboration came about two years ago when I was trying to figure out how we could get more exposure for a lot of the African Americans and Hispanics here in Cleveland, in terms of what they’re doing. I actually got the Cleveland State University Black Studies Program, they’re in greater Cleveland, to come on board and build a partnership to create what is known as the, “CAAO Minority Good Works Program”. |
That program is where we award people in the African American and Hispanic doing good things in their community. We want to honor those folks because as you know in Cleveland we get the same people being honored every year for every award that’s out there. We want to highlight that there are more people in Cleveland doing phenomenal work and here’s a list of folks that we’ve worked with. That program has worked out very well. There is a second part to that program and in addition to nominating them for our award, we then look at national and local awards that we can nominate them for and it has worked out very well. In the last two years, we’ve actually nominated 59 people who have won awards here in Northeast Ohio. Alot of the entrepreneurs that won awards and as a result of them winning an award, and going to the award ceremony, they were able to increase their client base as a result. That is a good example of a successful collaboration of different groups.
IMPACT [00:32:40]
William Holdipp Jr., Asst Exec Dir Consortium of African American Organizations (CAAO) . Photo: Betsey Merkel
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The work of CAAO really has a great impact in terms of giving people access to opportunities, either through entrepreneurship, or taking those companies that are trying to get to the next level and guiding them and helping them to get to the next level through career development and really focusing on what they want to end up to. If there is somebody who wants to end up as CEO of a company, give them the guidance and the support and the connections to those who can help make those opportunities happen is a lot of what CAAO participates in.
-Betsey Merkel, Editor and Publisher |
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