Episode 4

What Does a K-Shaped Recovery Mean for Chicago?

Featuring	Eve Geroulis, Director, MSM Program, Senior Lecturer Margaret Mueller, President and CEO, Chicago Executives’ Club
Description	Senior Lecturer Eve Geroulis and Associate Director Rick Sindt are joined by Margaret Mueller, president and CEO of the Chicago Executives’ Club to talked about how Chicago is experiencing the K-shaped recovery from the pandemic and what the city and businesses can do to mitigate its impact.
Listen	Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Season	Season 5

Transcript

Speaker1: Welcome to the Q Talks podcast from Loyola University's Quinlan School of Business. This season, we'll be exploring issues surrounding the impact of wealth inequality, its ramifications for business and any ethical arguments or other anomalies that are a result of the inequality that currently permeates American society. Join us as we unpack important issues present in our country and our world. 

Eve Geroulis: Margaret. Good morning. How are you? 

Margaret Mueller: Good morning, Eve. I'm good. How are you? 

Eve Geroulis: I'm okay. The sun is out today. It's a good day. 

Margaret Mueller: I know, Sky. It makes all the difference. In classic Chicago fashion, we're like, it's spring. It's 40. Put on the shorts. 

Eve Geroulis: I went for a long walk yesterday because it was really nice. And did you wear shorts? No, but it was shocking to see how many runners were. I know the lakefront in just tee shirts and their running shorts and I know Chicago. Very, very Chicago and the U.S.. Anyway, I'm really grateful that you're giving us time today. And I wanted to just have a conversation about how you're seeing everything. But before we get into everything, how are you holding up? How is this past year been for you? Good, bad, ugly. Anything you'd like to share with us about how you've coped through this extraordinary human history? Because you were the one that told me you've been through one pandemic, you've been through one pandemic. 

Margaret Mueller: I know there's no model for this. If pick a day and pick a time of day, you asked me, I'll give you a different answer. I am so volatile on this. I think a few things: I had no idea what a closet introvert I actually am. I think of myself as very extroverted, but there have been a lot of I don't want to say gifts because this is horribly tragic, but some unintended positive consequences that have come out of it. So reinvesting in family and home and slowing down, I mean, there are a lot of things about this that have been good. I am starting to get a little antsy. I was sharing with you earlier, I'm getting extreme vaccine fatigue. You know, I did The New York Times "Where are you on the list?" and I'm 97th percentile. Not in a good way. So I'm like, you know, the bottom 3%, and so just looking down this long barrel of how much longer I have, I'm getting antsy. You know, I'm starting to get itching because I know all these people who have vaccines and I just want to start getting back. But, you know, I think we all have a huge opportunity to be really intentional about how we go back. What do we want our lives to be like? All the stuff that's just been on autopilot, default, well, that's just how it is, you know, that's gone. We're killing a ton of sacred cows, you know, at the club personally, everything, and just re-envisioning what this could be. So I am very hopeful about this huge opportunity we have to recreate work life the way that it's actually going to work for us. We'll see if that reality comes in. 

Eve Geroulis: It's a wonderful place to start because, you know, you and I go way back and we've had countless conversations about, you know, living lives that don't compromise your values. 

Margaret Mueller: Right. 

Eve Geroulis: And the ethos that I try to weave into all of my classes for all of my students, you know, don't compromise your values. And yet we do. Every day in small and large ways. We just go, that's the way things are done. And I'm wondering, do you really believe that this reboot that everyone's anticipating, this sort of "it can't go on like this because the model is unsustainable," do you really think it's going to take root when we do sort of rise out of our rabbit holes and that we do start making sort of strategic decisions personally and professionally that say, okay, that paradigm is way, way too 20th century and entirely broken. We need to modify. You really think that momentum will will take us into 21, 22 and beyond? Or do you think human nature is just to revert back to what's comfortable? 

Margaret Mueller: I know, I hope so, but I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, I do think that we have broken open, like the veil has been lifted, this is untenable, especially for working families. And I think that we can't unsee that. And you know, what parents with, you know, school age children have gone through now, and just realize, like work does not work for and largely it's been women. Right? We know that they've lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in this. And it's going to cause a real problem with the pipeline for women in some of these companies, and so I think the working family piece, companies see, but, you know, I continue to struggle with why some of these things are put on employers to solve. And I don't see us actually creating social solutions for this. So we still rely on employers then to grant you a generous parental leave policy. Right? Well, so company, you do this and you figure it out and pay for it and then hire a temp to cover this and it pushes it on the employer. The employers have to pay for the health insurance, right? Employers have to pay for the retirement plans and the 401 k. And so, you know, I think employers and the members of the executives club and stuff are very aware and they want to do right by their employees. But I just don't see how that's the solution. And I'm not seeing any inkling that there's going to be a large scale social solution for these things. 

Eve Geroulis: It's an interesting point because you know better than most that over the last. For 50 years the deliberate sort of neoliberal agenda of pushing and privatizing and removing from the public sector a lot of these responsibilities and putting them on the private sector. And now we're waking up because, like you said beautifully, we can't unsee what we've seen. Yes, we are too long. We could choose to turn away, but we can no longer claim we didn't know. Yes, right. Science is obviously the victor in 2020, science won and politics lost and the public sector seems so mired. Right. Look at what's going on with the parliamentarian in the Senate as to whether or not we can even include a $15 an hour living wage when America's poorest working class laborers haven't had a raise right in 12 years, and that the minimum wage in this country is 750, 760? How do you how do you wrestle all of those monsters that affect and contribute to the wealth and social inequality that has ravaged America? Ravaged America. 

Margaret Mueller: Because I think the stats billionaires gained $1,000,000,000,000 in all. 

Eve Geroulis: And look at the chaos in Texas. I mean, just look at what that sort of neoliberal agenda. Right. And I'm not I'm not here to indict. I'm here to point out facts that at the core of that agenda was this notion of stripping the working classes and the labor movement of its unions, of its power to negotiate, of its capacity to earn a living wage, and we've done that deliberately and systematically for the last 50 years. And so now we're waking up with a new administration that's trying to be bold and it's trying to be brave, but is also seemingly has its feet in clay, can't pass a $15 an hour wage increase, is struggling to get any bipartisan support for this child tax credit of 3600 for young children and 3000 for children, 6 to 17. I mean, these are table stakes in other Western economies. This is the role of government in other developed economies in the world. Why do we struggle so violently with this stuff and why here in Chicago? I mean, what is with Chicago? What are we going to be able to do here to address some of these big issues? 

Margaret Mueller: Well, I think Chicago is suffering from just such extreme economic inequality and racial inequality. And I think we have a mayor who has put that at the forefront. And so her emphasis is an equitable recovery for the city. Right? So whereas our last mayor was really invested in getting Chicago Swagger back, right? And he was really tied to the business community and a lot happened with Chicago business in the central business district and our current mayor saying that was good and all, but that was really at the expense of the rest of our neighborhoods and we're worse off for it now. And so I don't think she's really interested in doing anything that is not going to be equitable and lifting up all 77 neighborhoods of the city. So that's a long game approach. And there is no economic recovery until we get the virus under control. I mean, that's the thing. I heard, I think it was Austan Goolsbee the University of Chicago was like the best stimulus plan they ever could have done was put it all into knocking out the virus and distributing the vaccines. If we could have done that six months ago and just six months ago, be where we think we're going to be in August, September. Like, what could have changed? So I think we're still kind of behind the ball with the virus. I mean, companies aren't even really talking about opening up their offices yet. I mean, no one's talking about opening up their office that I'm hearing this year. You know, I mean, they're just waiting and waiting. 

Eve Geroulis: Nothing? 

Margaret Mueller: No. You know, we do live events. We're not really planning for much until January. We might do some small in-person stuff in the fall. We just have to see. But I'm it's not about can we we do it and will the laws and CDC regulations allow us to it's what is demand going to be. That's my biggest concern, that I don't know how much demand there's going to be for some of these things, given that people have reprioritized their time and seen what's possible and the kinds of things that we're on autopilot and don't necessarily want to do anymore, I think it might take a while till some of these activities come back at large scale, if ever. And I don't think employers are going to necessarily allow their employees to attend things like conferences. They're going to have policies in place saying you can't attend an event with more than X number of people or something like that. So I think employers are going to be driving a lot of this. 

Eve Geroulis: Are you seeing like inspired examples across the work that you do for the Executives Club that seem to suggest that there's a new ethos coming into how businesses are addressing the challenges that they're facing? I mean, can you single out a company that's doing an exemplary job in trying to mitigate these inequities or trying to address all the challenges that we're all trying to unpack right now? 

Margaret Mueller: Yeah. So just today, you'll see in the Sun-Times there's a full page ad on this letter to the mayor that's signed on by, I think, 63 Chicago business leaders supporting an equitable recovery for the city. So the Chicago Community Trust started together. We rise and there's a new executive director, Gloria Castelo, who was the CEO of Chicago United. And it's all around a more equally distributed and equitable recovery for the city of Chicago. And it's based on roughly three principles. So hiring practices, business procurement practices and investment in the neighborhoods. And you'll see a lot of big Chicago businesses have signed on. And what they are committing to, and some of it's already happening, is opening up call centers, things on the West Side. Bank of America has a huge call center in the building, Belmont, Creighton neighborhood, way on the West Side. And they hire and train from the neighborhood. And I believe it's I don't want to misspeak, but I think it's actually like a lot of their wealth management inbound calls go into that call center. I know that health care service corp is doing a lot. I was just talking to Joe Manzano this morning and he's a big investor in it's called the terminal, which is going to be in Humboldt Park, which is going to be a big kind of coworking office to try to drive more kind of business working into these neighborhoods. 

Eve Geroulis: Will there be an incubator in Humbolt Park to get people sort of communal workspace? 

Margaret Mueller: Like an office park. So not necessarily an incubator, but more of like a cool, really big workspace. But the more that we can bring business to these neighborhoods and then you need the services to support it, right? And then it helps with transportation and all of that. And so I think that's what the mayor has really been calling on the business community to do. And I do see them rising to the call. There's a lot of momentum happening right now. 

Eve Geroulis: That's really very encouraging because one of the things I'm sure you know, that Loyola has invested energy in over the years is trying to mitigate the food deserts on the south and west sides. And, you know, there was a lot of skepticism when the Whole Foods moved into Englewood on 62nd Street. Remember all of that? But if you look at that development down there, that particular intersection, I think it's 62nd or 61st and Halsted 

Margaret Mueller: Yeah. 

Eve Geroulis: It has a Chipotle, it has a Starbucks, it has a Whole Foods, it has some medical clinics. It's an oasis. It's truly an oasis in this food desert. And they're hiring local employees and they're training them. And it was interesting because I was just reading, I don't know, I went down a rabbit hole one night and I found myself reading reviews of different Starbucks. And the Starbucks at that intersection was getting rave reviews about the staff. Right? How these young men and women that are baristas at that Starbucks in Englewood are just so grateful to have this gig and so happy to welcome you when you walk in the door and expeditious and kind and knowledgeable. And this idea of getting these companies to do the training that they need to do and invest in these communities because, you know, you think of the paying it forward concept, right, and how this works. So that's those are all very encouraging signs. But the social inequities, maybe we can more fluidly address the economic inequities and to take a long time and a lot of heavy lifting. Social inequities, child care, education dynamics in the home. I hate to be that blunt instrument that asks the question so directly, but can we address those? Are those beyond repair? What are we going to do to address those social inequities in our communities? 

Margaret Mueller: I know. And so this is the problem I have when it continues to get pushed on to business is that that's not universal and it's equitable. So great. And the idea is like, well, then there will be competition, and so the companies that offer better benefits will hire better talent. And you know, this is the free market idea and it's all going to shake out but that's not true. You know, it's not true for the broad swaths of people who don't work at a Deloitte or an Accenture. I mean, that's a very privileged part of society. And so I think it's. Going to have to be these social solutions that I just don't see anywhere on the horizon. We are not set up to support families. We're all about 'you're all out for yourself, good luck with that'. We're not quite sure whether families are private or public enterprise. Right? So sometimes we want to get really involved in things like abortion and we want to be able to tell people what they can do. And then other times like, well, no, no, no, no, not our problem. This is your problem. So we're really confused about this as a society. We don't have a guiding star. And I think it's really polarized. Something about the food, though, too, which is interesting, is did you know that Chicago Public Schools is the largest landowner of crop producing in the city? And so the city is working on some really cool solutions where the neighborhoods can be farming and feeding the neighborhood and doing more with that. 

Eve Geroulis: Another example of that, when Detroit was just ravaged by the Great Recession, you slowly got companies that were reinvesting in urban Detroit, and they did this urban farming project with sort of this like food court idea. And that's where Shinola, the great watch company, was born. There's those investments that the City of Big Shoulders, we've done this before. We've been here before, addressed enormous challenges, and I just feel as if the biggest culprit and the biggest hurdle that we face as a society at large is just an institutional imagination. Mm hmm. Biggest failure for me is just a lack of imagination. We've institutionalized how we think, and it's become really creepy Hobbesian, right? It's really Hobbesian. It's like Hobbes meets The Hunger Game moment. That's what I keep calling this. This sort of the moment that we're living in. People just don't dare to be brave anymore. Intellectually brave. Yes.? 

Margaret Mueller: Right. 

Eve Geroulis: I dont know how you feel about that, and maybe I'm overstepping the line by suggesting that, but how do we unleash brave, bold action among young and old alike to sort of push through ideas that we would never have considered pre-COVID?  

Margaret Mueller: Well, there does need to be some turnover, right? So Jamal Cole of my block, my hood, my city, he's running for Bobby Rush's seat. What's happening with AOC and others and saying this is great. He respects Bobby Rush tremendously for what he's done. But you have to start getting this new generation in with some new thinking. 

Eve Geroulis: I mean, look at Madigan. 

Margaret Mueller: Right. Exactly. I mean, Feinstein. Pelosi. I mean, this has been decades. And I mean, look at her own president, Joe Biden. I mean, God bless him, but I think it's going to require a rising up of this young generation who really wants to get in. And I don't know that they're interested. They're interested in starting a tech company and becoming a billionaire. There are the Jamaal Coles and the AOCs and stuff, but I'm not seeing that in big swaths. You know, Obama was young, he was a community organizer and he got into this young. We don't have many of that that I'm seeing. There is this organization she should run, and they're all about getting women to run, especially. Younger women, women of color, and they're there to support all these women. And I, I follow it and I do see some interesting conversations, but I just am not seeing a lot of people putting their hat in the ring just yet. 

Rick Sindt: I want to unpack the the statement you made, Margaret, about this generation of people being unengaged and more interested in building a company and becoming a billionaire, etc., because I wonder if some of that is because that is where we've been indoctrinated to believe the solutions are. For me, I am 30 years old, so I am part of that generation and I cannot really tell you of a time where I saw the government as like doing something for the collective good. It was something that they kind of stumbled into at best. And so I wonder if part of what you're talking about is that people my age, we see that the government lacks the institutional imagination to tackle these problems. And then here comes along the tech sector and the entrepreneurial sector and we think we can like engineer away our social inequalities. 

Margaret Mueller: Yeah. And it's become a real problem that basically Silicon Valley has been driving some huge proportion of philanthropic giving. And they're really shaping what's going on in a way that is potentially dangerous. Right? And so, I mean, I'm a huge admirer of the gates, but there is a problem with 'okay the wealth will trickle down to individuals who then can dictate where they believe the solutions are and where they want to give their money in a way that they believe will have the greatest impact' and that, you know, is not going to drive towards a universal change of things. And that's starting to get a little dangerous too. 

Rick Sindt: Yeah. And issues are only addressed if they take notice. 

Margaret Mueller: Right. Right. And I do think the Gates are very good actors. I think they are focusing on a lot of the right things. Thank goodness. But what if they decided that it was something else that they wanted to pour all of their energy and money and influence into? Right? So that is a little dangerous. So I'm thinking of unpacking that. I guess I would ask you to unpack it, which you just did. You know, why is it that it's just not exciting or interesting when I think about some of-- I mean, Eve, you have some really bright minds that are coming into your classroom and can you get them excited about getting into the public sector and solving problems? 

Eve Geroulis: What I find challenging with my students is that I think one of the things that we do, I think pretty well at Loyola that I'm particularly proud of, and I speak as an alumna, is this notion of encouraging a classroom ethos that allows them to be really creative and push the boundaries of conventional thinking and just ask questions important to humanity using real world examples so that in a classroom setting, I think they're brave. I think that weaving in the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and asking them to identify and build their strategies rooted in one or more of those SDGs, and sort of how does business become part of the solution and not always the problem? I think it's really good in the classroom environment and I encourage them to understand that this is one of the last great venues that you have to be brave and ask questions that are wonderfully provocative. But then once they leave the classroom and it's time for them to shave, as my son did the other day, my son was literally looking like Bear Grylls, the guys just like hair and beard. And he looked like a like an animal in the wild. And he faced times yesterday and he's all clean-shaven. Poor Geoorge went and got shaven because now he's interviewing for summer internships to do face time calls. And the irony is that he's interviewing to be collecting botanical samples in back country camping in the Sierra Nevada. Sorry, he's an environmental engineering major. So he wants to spend the summer with a backpack, setting up a tent, collecting botanical samples. Not something that you need to be clean shaven for, is what I'm trying to say. You get what I mean? That's like that little light thing goes. That switch goes off. And it's one thing to be brave in a classroom and say, Yeah, of course I want clean water. Yeah, I want to address income inequality and BLM forever. But then when the ad agency or Deloitte or one of the big offers you that gig toeing the party line you get in line. 

Rick Sindt: Or you find yourself in an environment I think where you're incapable of 

Eve Geroulis: Affecting change? 

Rick Sindt: Yeah. Or like if the cultural norm is not to champion those causes, someone who tries will either be pushed down or forced out. 

Eve Geroulis: But look at what they accomplished this summer with the BLM movement. I mean, look at the companies that have contributed, look at what the Jordan group has done, look at what Apple with Tim Cook is doing. And, you know, I feel that that's a major win for these kids. In the same way that same sex marriage under the Obama administration. I never as a child of the 20th century, I never thought I mean, I'm a child of the Cold War, I never thought that the White House would be awash in the gay flag colors. I never thought I would see that in my lifetime. And there it was. And look at what happened with all these social causes and how companies are contributing. And, Margaret, to bring it back to the point you made earlier about the Gates is another sort of robber baron philanthropy, think about the fact that one woman named Mackenzie Bezos is almost the exclusive reason that people ate in the fall of 2020 at food banks. 

Margaret Mueller: What she's done is so important because that was all unrestricted giving. And she said to these organizations, Get creative, have imagination, do something that you were afraid to do before because you didn't have money to waste and you were afraid it was going to fail. And that's what she's calling on them all to do with her $6 billion is do exactly what we're talking about have imagination, try something new, see if it works. I'm not going to care if it fails. You know, I'm not going to come after you and ask what you did. The best steward of my money is to try something new, start experimenting, start innovating. And that has created such opportunity for some of these nonprofits like United Way and the YWCA. I mean, they can start doing things that they've always wanted to do but just couldn't, couldn't take the risk, didn't have the money. So I think it'll be interesting to now track what's happened with what she's done over the next few years, because it has potential to break open this imagination that you're talking about. 

Eve Geroulis: You see cases like that. I mean, I'm a big believer and maybe I'm naive in public private partnerships, right? A lot of what you started out saying that the mayor wants to invest in bridging these inequalities, whether they be social or economic or educational or climate. Do you see examples of people asking the right questions in the city? 

Margaret Mueller: I do. I think where I'm seeing at best is in creating the talent pipeline, Skills for Chicagoland Future, which was originally skills for I think America's Future--it came out of the Aspen Institute and Penny Pritzker, and now Chicago's really the leader on it. And so what they're doing is working with Chicago employers saying, what do you need if you're going to hire from some of these disadvantaged communities? What are the skill sets? What are the kinds of jobs? We will prepare them for that and we will find them for you and you hire them. And companies are signing on as partners. There this other great thing, The Chicago Apprentice Network. Similarly, in partnership with Chicago community colleges, where companies--and big companies are signed on like Accenture and Aon and JPMorgan Chase--and they take all these apprentices and they train them up. So they'll come out with a two year degree from--and if you get I can't remember it, the GPA is in high school--you get to go to Chicago College for free and get an associate's for free. So now it's not costing them much. And then with this associate's, they can get a job and get trained up at Accenture and then get a job as starting out as an analyst or a project manager or whatever it is, and they're having a lot of success with that, too. So these are some of the things I think this long term, you know, creating the pipeline. I think even David Brown, the superintendent of the Chicago Police, there's this really neat program that anyone from CPS, they will pay for you to go into officer training and then go back into the community and serve the community from which you came. And again, it's all free and all funded is a way to turn it into more of a community. You know what a lot of the rallying around defund the police is about is we actually need more of community support and social support and not people who are not from the community coming into the community and policing it more. So there is stuff happening. I don't know why. You know, I think I have a real problem with our media in this city. I mean, they just seem to focus on. 

Eve Geroulis: Well, the media in general. It's not. 

Margaret Mueller: I know. Just thinking about Chicago, like I don't hear any of these stories. I mean, how many more stories do we need to hear about a failed Boeing. 

Eve Geroulis: And Tiger Woods, we all wish him a speedy and full recovery, but it went from 24-7 coverage of the hearings about January 6th, insurgency right to 24-7 coverage of poor Tiger, as if there's no story. And again, those business models are what fuel the engine of their liquidity. 

Margaret Mueller: I know. And so there's actually good stuff going on in Chicago. So that's part of my mission at the executive club is start to get these messages out. And so we're doing a lot of programs around some of the stuff that's happening and how the Chicago business community can get involved. So I think there's pockets of things happening. It's, you know, it's got to get some real momentum, though, and I think it's going to take businesses to start getting really creative. And I think some companies are like I said, I think Accenture is doing a lot AON is doing a lot. Jpmorgan Chase is doing a lot. Bank of America is doing a lot. Bmo. I mean, there's definitely stuff happening. 

Eve Geroulis: What about the brain drain and the residential flight from Chicago? Is that's something that you've been discussing? Because I think that that's also going to be, sadly, a contributing element to this inequality. If people with revenue, if people with jobs start fleeing for the suburbs that keep local businesses afloat, that pay their taxes. That's been going on pre-COVID. I mean, Chicago has become an unlivable and way too expensive and prohibitive for people. What are you seeing on that front or is it too early to take the temperature of that ailment? 

Margaret Mueller: Right. So I do live in the city. I take public transportation, my kids go to CPS. I can't believe how real estate is moving in. So I'm in the Lakeview neighborhood and what housing prices are. And so, again, it's interesting to read the news, but then to see what's actually happening in the market. And there are a lot of people moving into our neighborhood and stuff is happening. And so. I think there's not a clear answer. I think we're going to see a disbursement of people going into small towns back to where they came from because they can. So their job is now completely remote. And so we have that, too. We have a neighbor who said they've moved to the middle of Wisconsin to be closer to their family because they've realized they don't need to be in an office anymore. And then you have people moving to the suburbs because they want more room and a bigger house to survive the pandemic. And then you have people like me who are really digging into the city because we believe that it's coming back and this is just temporary and we want this lifestyle in another year or two. So I think its going to be really varied. I do wonder about this remote work strategy, though, that a lot of companies now saying, oh, we can hire from anywhere, we don't need you to be local. And that that sounds good now, but I do think it's going to have a big impact on culture and things. I don't know that a dispersed, fully remote workforce 5 to 10 years from now is going to seem like the best idea. I'm really curious to watch this. Some of it feels a little knee jerk, a little shortsighted, maybe fine for now. But I can I can see in 5 to 10 years it's starting to come back. Like, actually, we do need you to relocate or we need you to be here two weeks a month, or we'll get you an in-town apartment. This has been working because everyone knows each other. 

Eve Geroulis: It had to. 

Margaret Mueller: And. You know your team. You know everyone. You know how to do your job. This is working. How is this going to work when you're onboarding new employees when in five years, actually, the team has never really met each other in person? It's going to be very different. I mean, you talk to people that are being onboarded virtually now across generations, right? Whether it's young people getting their first job or people who have switched jobs, there's actually been a lot more job switching than people are aware of. There's actually been a pretty big job economy right now that--I hired a CFO last May. I've met her once in person. She's my CFO. And she wants to get into the office, you know, and see people and have a sense of community. And, you know, it's kind of isolating. So I don't know. I don't know that this full remote workforce is really. 

Eve Geroulis: I think 5 to 10 years is generous. I think more 2 to 5. 2 to 5 years from now. And I was reading this morning that Albert BOURLA, the CEO of Pfizer, announced that they're experimenting right now with a third booster shot for Pfizer. And it's going to become like an annual flu shot, right? You're going to go every year and get a booster for COVID. And I think once that becomes entrenched in the public health policy of the world--and let's hope the COVAX program and all these global initiatives to more equitably distribute the vaccines around the world--I think people are going to want, even though, like you, I've become a bit of a closet introvert, which shocked me. I don't mind not leaving. We've had these busy lives, I'm much older than you, but I've had this sort of high octane lifestyle for a very long time. Right? Traveling and raising children, working and juggling. And it's kind of nice to just kick back and not move and write. But for younger, younger people, my students, they're going to want to get back into the class. I want to get into the classroom and physically teach. 

Eve Geroulis: And I want to see them begin their lives and get their professional sea legs in an environment that allows them to take a lot of these issues that we've been discussing--and they themselves are so passionate about these inequality issues that I do believe if afforded the platform and given the ability to engender strategies and campaigns and business modeling that allows them to bridge the gaps that have been abandoned for 20 or 30 or 40 years, deliberately ignored. We've ignored a lot of the macros in business strategies you and I have talked about. Are we finally asking the right questions? As a business as a business community. Are we finally at the point where we're asking the right questions, because we've ignored a lot of these macros. Yet we haven't talked about them in strategy sessions. We've ignored them and we can't ignore them anymore. Right? Because if Texas taught us anything, if COVID taught us anything, if climate change, if politics, if the rise of the demagogue taught us anything, its that we need to start asking these questions in boardrooms. This isn't just to the nonprofits of the academicians. Do you see corporations asking the right questions to try and bridge these inequities? 

Margaret Mueller: I do think that we're starting to see a shift. Right. You're seeing big investment firms now saying we will not invest in you if you do not hit these metrics, whether they be diversity or sustainability or corporate social responsibility. I think there's been a lot done around the board, right. And diversity on the board and saying, sorry, you don't get our money unless you do these things. And we actually believe it's because it's good for business. Right. And I think businesses outcomes and results are data driven. Right? So the more that we have the data showing that more diverse teams, more equitable things, that it's actually better for business and results in bottom line, then everyone's all in. And so we're starting to see those data. And I think you're starting to see a lot of companies put a stake in the ground on those things. I do think that the environmental and sustainability stuff has been kind of pushed by the wayside this past year. It's just no one's talking about it, but it's actually a really big deal and I think that's going to be coming to the forefront. A lot of the conversation is around diversity and equity right now, but I think pretty soon we're also going to see a reemergence of the ESG part of the conversation because it is so crucial and it just we haven't been focused on it right now. 

Eve Geroulis: And I think that's going to come at us like a truck. When you see Detroit's EVs. 

Margaret Mueller: I mean, you're starting to hear a little bit about the water crisis. You're starting to see some news and some headlines on clean energy. But that really it's looming large. 

Eve Geroulis: It is looming. And I don't know, I don't want to be dire and dark, but we're living a Jared Diamond moment, right? I mean, this is civilizational collapse. I mean, we've we've in many cases, it's all happened so fast. And I'm dealing a lot with colleagues and and friends overseas who I talked to regularly. And and it's been fascinating to listen to European and Asian and Latin colleagues and friends who are telling me it's just shocking to watch what's happening in the United States and how fast it happened. Right. How quickly systems collapse, if you will, of climate and race and equities. I remember a quote. I don't remember who. I remember Bill Clinton was speaking in Chicago post-presidency and he made a comment about people have been betting against the United States for over 250 years and they've always lost that bet or whatever the number was in 200 years, and they've always lost that bet. But I find myself wondering today, when Biden gives his first sort of G-7 address and Merkel and Macron essentially respond by saying maybe this post-American world has arrived and I don't know if if we should be looking east or are we are we finding ourselves at a moment where the rise of the rest? 

Margaret Mueller: I know, but there's such a gap in leadership, though, right? So like. So then who who is emerging as the leader. You know in this post America--and I'm not, again, that's a separate podcast. The whole conversation about, you know, the rise of America and the influence that we had and, you know, was that good? But still, you know, it was Great Britain, it was Europe and it was Great Britain. And then the United States was really this global leader that 

Eve Geroulis: The hegemon. 

Margaret Mueller: Right. And but if it is post America, who is it? Is it the EU? Is it China? Is it collaboration? I mean, none of this is happening, so. I don't know. I just don't know where the global leadership is. 

Eve Geroulis: At this point, like you said earlier, it depends what time of day and what day, you know. Right now, in this moment, I'm putting my money on China. Stepping into that vacuum and taking over the global hegemon. Because Napoleon was right. Let China sleep. For when she wakes, she she will roar. And I do believe that they have been very long term, as is China's sort of cultural ethos and identity, they have been investing in what we need to invest in, and yet they've got profound inequities and those aren't going to change. But bringing it back to us, I think that great cities like ours, great American cities, have an opportunity to reinvent themselves and reinvent. Whether it's what France and Paris are doing with the Champs-Elysees, where they're going to basically turn this into a green space and a headway, and they're going to create this sort of center of Paris 15 minutes by foot or bike to get anywhere you want. Right. I think they're going to have to reinvent themselves. And we're going to have to be the city of Daniel Burnham that invented sort of civic and urban architecture at a level that America had never seen. Are we able to do and think big like that again? And that's the big question. We're going to have to sit back and wait and see, I guess. 

Margaret Mueller: Well, and I think that's what the mayor understands, that all 77 neighborhoods need to be vibrant, thriving, a place where we would all like to go and visit and see and check out and look at their parks and cultural institutions. And that's the vision that she has, is that it's not that there's, you know, over 50% of the geography of the city that no one would dare step foot into. That's not a city. So I think that's where her focus is. And I think it's the right focus. But again, it's this is a long game. And I think people are looking for more short term, you know, things that they see movement on to. And so it's going to be a balance of those two things. But we can't lose sight of that. 

Eve Geroulis: Right. And we're dealing with medical inequity right now. You've got the reports coming up and rising all over our media about suburbanites driving into really difficult, impoverished south and west side neighborhoods to get the vaccine right. But they're not willing to go there and visit the Kahului exhibit, for example, in the Humbolt Park conservatories or drive to the Whole Foods that might be ten or 15 minutes away to empower that neighborhood. Those are the type of initiatives of cross neighborhood sharing and viability that I think only public-private partnerships are going to help to create. And it's going to take this imagination that we've spoken to this morning about being brave and bold and doing things courageously in a 21st century way, because we've got to disentangle ourselves from the paradigms that aren't going to address the challenges that we face. Right? Using 20th century approaches to 21st century problems is just doomed to fail. And so I see examples over and over again in my in my students project work and their willingness to sort of introduce new ideas and introduce me to ways of thinking that I'm not exposed to. So I am putting it in as a late bloomer right at the tail end of that comment. I apologize on behalf of all boomers to my Gen Z students, but I do see them able to to come up with some pretty creative solutions if we give them the ability to do it. I hope you're seeing some of that, too. 

Rick Sindt: I was just thinking that this seems like a really nice place to draw to a close of our conversation as we're talking about a vibrant city and imagination. So I'm wondering maybe in closing, if you two would both share with us maybe like a paradigm that you hope to see dissolve and what you hope a future direction will be in the city. 

Margaret Mueller: So a paradigm I would hope to see dissolve is to have universal, nationally subsidized, gender neutral parental leave, support for working parents, and also health care. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I don't know what the path is there. I think the Affordable Health Care Act was a start. Not really what any of us envisioned, but Obama did what he could to just open the door to it. But I feel like we need to ensure that we have a universally educated and healthy workforce. And right now it's just not the case. And it's all dependent on who your employer happens to be, whether or not you have some of these things. I mean, there's so much, but I think those are things that we can fix so easily. I'm just thinking of like a quick, short winds and things that have really broken open because of this pandemic, which is working families and health care. So if we could try to get some movement on those things quickly. 

Eve Geroulis: Yeah, I would totally agree with that. If I added a third leg to that stool, it would be helping to erase some, because I know it's unrealistic to ask for all of those student debt to be erased, but addressing the enormous weight that these young kids are taking out of their college experience into the workforce, and if we can help them to mitigate some of that credit burden, the one point I think it's reached over 1.5 trillion in collective student loan debt. I think that's the third leg to this. Right, that universal health care, providing parental leave, giving working families or young workers the support that they need to get get started. That's the only way to reinvest in the economy, reinvest in our communities, reinvest in humanity. There was a time where you knew your neighbor. They rang the doorbell. You knew their name. Now we close the shutters, right? We don't run to the door if someone's unknown. And those sort of community barriers need to be addressed, we need to humanize our relationships again. And we do that by making people feel that they've got a doctor. They can go to the doctor. They can get the support they need for their children in their home. And they're not going to be carrying the student loan burden for the rest of their adult life. I think that's the way that you make people feel good in the morning when they wake up, because we had those gifts and we've denied that that from this young generation. I remember graduating Loyola as a student in the early eighties and felt that I was going to get a job. It wasn't an issue. And so I was able to major in what I was passionate about and pursue an industry career that I was really interested in. And we need to embolden young people to be able to feel that sort of sense of optimism again. That's what I hope comes out of this moment, right, is that we reinvigorate that imagination and optimism. Above all else, I suppose. 

Margaret Mueller: So I could answer that question in a very different way. We could do like two versions of an ending, do it. Because if you think about Chicago in particular, I feel like and then the city and the state, I mean, our fiscal situation has just got to be fixed. I mean, it's just become a real problem and we cannot continue to tax our way out of it. I mean, that's at some point that's also untenable. But I'm also not a big proponent of cutting broad swaths of social services either. And so I think some possibly some business creativity getting in there and having businesses come in and just really think through if this was a company, you know, how would I be handling this? I think could be just interesting to maybe just put together a coalition of business leaders to just start thinking through this and then also the schools. I mean, yes, I can get all haughty, 'Well, I'm sending my kids to Chicago Public Schools.' Yeah, I'm sending them to one of the best Chicago public schools. And I bought a very expensive house in a very nice Chicago neighborhood so that my kids can go to CPS. But, you know, if you lift under the hood or scratch the surface, you realize that I'm actually very entitled and elite about this, but I get to say my kids go to CPS. So I just think that fundamentally our public school system is very broken in the city and we are not doing a good service by these kids. I have all sorts of creative ideas and solutions, but I would say that for Chicago, you know, the two things we really need to focus on is getting our financial situation under control and fixing our schools, because that will just lift up everybody.  

Eve Geroulis: That will get people back into the city. That'll get people to stay in the city. That will get people to invest in the city. You're right. You're right. 

Margaret Mueller: Why are people leaving? They all leave because of the schools and they can't afford--my next door neighbor, I mean, sent his kids to the same school. It's getting really expensive. So they start doing the math and be like, 'I can't spend $1,000,000 on a house to send my kids to a good Chicago public school. I got to go, you know, so I'm moving to the suburbs and I'll send them to public schools out there.' It's just I have so many friends who have left because they can't afford to live in the city the way that they want to live. Yeah. And every time I see all of these teardowns to build these huge mansions on multiple lots in these neighborhoods, it just makes me cry. You know, we either have one and two bedroom condos or we have two and $3 million homes, nothing in between. So what do you expect, you know, even affluent families to do, even people who are making good money? There are not a whole lot of options there. 

Eve Geroulis: You know, the upper middle classes are not the comfortable lower upper middle classes. Right. They can't make ends meet with these taxes. They can't they're getting by I mean, it's this curse. And one of the things that the housing crisis that we're dealing with, one of the big ideas that I read recently was this notion of taking all this abandoned commercial real estate and transforming it into affordable housing. What's happened to all these mid-rise apartment and or rather office buildings? United just left the Willis Towers and all of these businesses that are leaving their flagship stores and not reopening their offices. I mean, what if we convert those spaces into affordable housing, you know, and keep people in these. I don't know. I don't know. That's what I mean about this notion of being wildly creative and imaginative in the solutions that we design for the next generation. So yeah, school again, you're right. I think it is school, health care and child and family support. And those humanist values that made America what she is investing in that stuff and hopefully will help us to rise out of this abyss. 

Margaret Mueller: I mean, when you were growing up, did anyone even talk about what school you went to? I mean, we went to the Catholic school that was attached to the church where I grew up, but like we didn't choose where we lived. And if my family wasn't so Catholic, I would just would have gone to the local public school. It just wasn't even--you didn't even think of these things. And now I can't tell you how much of the conversation with my friends is about where are we going to live because of the schools? I mean, it's just. It's exhausting. I don't want to talk about this anymore. It's boring. 

Eve Geroulis: It's also a privilege, right? I know this is all privileged. This is from our privileged perch. These are discussions that 95% of Chicagoans aren't having. Right? They're not having these conversations. And I think that's part of the problem. I know because they're struggling to get food on the table because we can't pass a $15 an hour minimum wage or we can't get all schools to be funded with one of the only states in the union that continues to fund local school districts locally, as opposed to putting all the revenue in one big bucket and dispersing it equitably. 

Margaret Mueller: Right. There are just some artifacts and relics of our system that are so confusing. Why are employers are responsible for health care? Why are they responsible for retirement plans? And why are local schools funded by local property taxes? I mean, these are three things that make no sense to me. If you were to create a society right now, blank slate, would you have any of those things? Absolutely not. So just like COVID has forced us to, we've broken all the molds. Right? We don't have to keep doing things just because this way we did. Can we also approach these three things with that same 

Eve Geroulis: And do you think we can? That's like that's the closing question, Margaret. Do you do you have faith that we can do this? 

Margaret Mueller: We can. Will we? 

Eve Geroulis: Okay. Two different questions. 

Margaret Mueller: Yeah, but we can. We absolutely can. 

Eve Geroulis: It was really great talking with you. I enjoyed this enormously, Rick. Thank you. This was just so much fun and it's always a pleasure and I hope we can do this again for Quinlan or another podcast a year from now, we get together again and pick up where we left off and see how accurate our hopes and projections were. So Margaret, thank you so much for the good work that you do at the Executives Club and keep fighting the good fight, my friend. 

Margaret Mueller: My pleasure. I will come talk to you any time. And I really just have so much admiration for Loyola and as an institution and everything you're doing. I think the Baumhart Center is also doing great work in this regard and Quinlan and all of it. So I'm just honored to be part of it. 

Eve Geroulis: Thank you. Thank you. Margaret, thanks a lot. Thanks, Rick. 

Rick Sindt: Thank you. 

Speaker1: This has been an episode of the Q Talks podcast where we seek to marry the wisdom of the Quinlan community with the issues of today. Special thanks to our guests as well as Dean Kevin Stevens for his generous support of this podcast. Matt Shelley, our student producer for editing this episode, as well as Loyola School of Communication and WW for their continued collaboration. Before you leave, take a minute to support us by sharing with friends or rating and reviewing our episodes to help expand our reach. Thanks for listening. I hope you join us next time.