Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. It works with formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people, enabling them to redirect their lives.
This weeks guest on Trumanitarian is Thomas Vozzo, who has written a book about his experience as the CEO of Homeboys industries
In this conversation Lars Peter Nissen and Thomas discuss leadership and management, how to balance profit and purpose, the role of spirituality in the workplace and how joy and focus on the individual should drive your work as a leader.
Transcript
Homeboy Industries is the largest gang rehabilitation and reentry program in the world. It works with formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people in Las Angeles, enabling them to redirect their lives. This week's guest on Trumanitarian is Thomas Vozzo, the CEO of Homeboys Industries. He's written a book about his experience called The Homeboy Way and that's what we talk about in this episode. Thomas has a really interesting story. He first worked as a very successful corporate executive, before making a radical career change and becoming the CEO of Homeboy Industries. As I read Thomas's book, I thought a lot about the similarities and contrasts in his experience to the international humanitarian sector and found it really fascinating. We had a great conversation about leadership and management, how to balance profit and purpose, the role of spirituality in the workplace, and how joy and focus on the individual should drive your work as a leader. Thomas describes himself as a committed capitalist, but having read his book and spoken to him I would like to respectfully disagree. I think he's actually a good old fashioned Scandinavian-type social democrat. He just hasn't realised it yet. However, it may take another lengthy conversation to convince him of that point. I hope you enjoy the conversation. As always, like us, review us, follow us on social media, all that stuff, and keep your excellent ideas for new episodes coming, you can, as always, reach us on email info@trumanitarian.org.
Thomas Vasso, welcome to Trumanitarian.
Thomas Vozzo:Thank you for having me.
Lars Peter Nissen:You're the CEO of Homeboy Industries, and we will explore a bit what that is, and you've just written a new book called The Homeboy Way that we're going to talk a bit about. I had a chance to read that book. It's a fascinating read. And I think your story has a lot to tell us in the humanitarian sector. It's a really interesting example of what leadership means in different contexts and how to ensure that you remain purpose driven in whatever you do. But I'd love to begin with with you telling us, What is Homeboy Industries? it's very well known in the in the States, but I'm not sure internationally it is as well known. So could you give us an an overview of what that is?
Thomas Vozzo:Sure. Thank you, Lars. Homeboy Industries was essentially... we're a nonprofit organisation, and we help former gang members and formerly incarcerated people change their life and get on the straight and narrow become contributing members to our society. Homeboy was founded over thirty years ago by a Jesuit priest, named Greg Boyle, Father Greg Boyle, and as a first stop as when he was a priest, he was stationed in Dolores Mission, which is the poorest parish of the whole Archdiocese of Los Angeles. And this was back in the late 80s and early 90s. And as it turns out, Dolores Missionary was the epicentre of gang violence in Los Angeles. In the parishes, there's eight different rival gangs all, you know, a block or two apart from each other. And it was a terrible situation and what Greg wanted to do is figure out, How do we get young men out of gang life and life of crime and to do something different. And he, Greg, hit upon it very simple, obvious concept, that if you can employ somebody or give them enough money for food and shelter, they're not going to go back running with a gang, because they don't have a family, they don't have a support system, and they were running with a gang to earn some money for the basic needs in life. And so, early on Homeboy started as essentially a jobs programme. Greg, Father Greg was able to convince local businesses to hire these young men. And so then over the years, it grew from that effort to not just a jobs programme, but we have our businesses (and we can talk about that in a minute. Our social enterprise businesses), but essentially, what it became is an organisation that helps people heal from their trauma, since every one of the men and women we work with are victims of complex trauma. They've been victims from a young age, they jumped in a gang when they're 10, 12, 15 years old, never had a support system, as I said, so at Homeboy, when people come through our doors looking for help, we help them heal from the trauma of their young age. You know, we have a saying that other people have said, but if you know if you don't transform your pain, you'll transmit it. And that's what these folks doing when they're still running with a gang along the way. So today we're a nonprofit organisation $30 million. We raised 3 million, we spent 30 million. Over 8ooo people walk through our doors every year seeking some type of help from us, all for free.
Lars Peter Nissen:The Homeboy story in itself, such an inspirational story, but to then add your story into it actually makes it even more interesting because you started out someplace very, very different from Homeboy Industries and gang violence. Could you tell us a bit about your own background?
Thomas Vozzo:I came out of corporate America. I was a corporate executive. My last role was EVP of AirMark corporation which is a multinational food service and uniform service company, a $12 billion business. I was EVP so I ran a $2 billion set of uniform businesses for Aramark. You know, I love my corporate life, it's... I love business. I'm a... Even when I go to conferences now I still stand on the committee capitalist because I believe well run businesses are good for our society. And oftentimes at conferences, I'm speaking on behalf of Homeboy, a little murmur goes across the crowd when I say I'm a committed capitalist.
Lars Peter Nissen:Yeah, but it'll go down very well with our audience here at Trumanitarian. We are all committed capitalists, at least in our spare time.
Thomas Vozzo:Right? You go... But to me like a well run business is good for our society, and they have good jobs, people's life's dreams can come true via those jobs, and you're providing a product and service hopefully someone wants and will pay you for. Alright, so that being said, I love my corporate role. It was a very entrepreneurial type of business environment. Through through hard work, and if you're smarter than the next fellow over, you can, you would succeed. And it was a service business. At AirMark, we had no special technologies or patents. It was like you had to lead the team to do... perform the service as well, you know, picking up dirty laundry and serving hotdogs and serving cups of coffee. It's not a sexy business, but done well, people pay for the services provided. And so I rose up through the ranks, you know, at a young age, I was running a $50 million business and that grew that $200 million, and eventually got promoted up the run that, like I said, the $2 billion businesses. But along the way, AirMark invested a lot into its leadership: a lot of training, a lot of, you know, adding to my toolkit along the way and I think what's interesting as I knew it, you know, as you run... as you're in these corporate jobs, I think they have a certain shelf life. And so after 26 years, and being a public company, private company and private equity guys owning us, I knew I wanted to go off and find a different chapter of my career. And so I feel so fortunate to be at Homeboy. But to close the chapter on my AirMark career, I've learned so much about how to run businesses, how to be successful, and what teamwork was all like. But there was something always gnawing at me about my time at AirMark. I was really successful I... once someone tells me the rules of the game, I'll know how to win within those rules, but oftentimes, not all the time, but sometimes, I would feel like we would be doing things that would leave the our employees behind, right? And so a seminal moment for me, was in the 2oo8 recession, remember, we had a worldwide recession, quite difficult and so many businesses were downsizing. And so even my businesses, we had to downsize, and I remember, we downsized, and for my businesses, we were still going to make at the end of the year, making profit, $140 million of profit (this is on 2 billion in revenue). 140 million in profit. And I still remember the CEO of the Corporation saying to me, Tom, that's not good enough, you gotta get another 10 million back. And as he's saying this to me, I'm knowing that boy, for me to get another 10 million back, I know I'm gonna have to lay off another 500 people. And some of these are long term (like, we already cut out all the fat)... Some of these are long term employees. Some of them we've been with... They've dedicated their lives to the corporation. So I'm thinking, where's this... Where's the contract we have with these employees. And so we're so essentially, you look, I was a corporate guy, saluted and went, and we made those cuts, but I felt like, wow, at the end of the day, whether we made $150 million a profit, $140 million of profit, it didn't change this [inaudible]... the valuation of the company over the long term, but it did change people's lives. And at that point, it was in my mind to say, Hm, I wonder if there's a different way of doing business that could... you can bring people along all the way as opposed to most of the way.
Lars Peter Nissen:So you have this really interesting description of how you're trained to take this very, very senior role in in the private sector. I mean, you're you were in the NFL of the private sector, right? It wasn't a small deal. And you described it as... you have this great expression, the $6 million man. That the some how took you apart and built you back up, spending a lot of money doing so. And yet, in spite of all this training and honing of your skills, and as you say, I'm sure you're excellent at that, it somehow clashes with your personal values or your belief in what a business should be and what society should be. What... Was the problem that they didn't take that bit out of you? Or was... Did they deliberately leave the principles in there?
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah, no, look, I'm [inaudible], I appreciate all the training they gave me and essentially, it was the training of what's it take to be successful in the marketplace--in this capitalist marketplace. And to do it as a team, for sure. But then there's always that last part: that as you're as trying to push for shareholder value, there's tension point as well. When's this shareholder have a higher priority than your employee? And in American business, at least, it's always the shareholder that has the higher priority, right? And... Right? They didn't sort of delete that part of my training for me, and then maybe they never saw that along the way. But look, I loved my time in my corporate world, and those are good people and they... they're generous people and they help out. But to me, it was a flaw in our system, is what I was seeing. And I'm thinking of what... Was there a better way going forward?
Lars Peter Nissen:But maybe I should just rephrase my question in a clearer way. So do you think that you need that empathy and that principled, you know, nature that obviously you have, to succeed in private business? Or is it more... Does it hold you back from really making the tough decisions? I mean, do they select you because you have that empathy and you are somehow a complete person who can... who can engage with your stakeholders in a good way, but then also makes it tough...? Where does that piece fit? Is it just in the way? Or is it a... is it functional to the capitalist project, if you want?
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah, really, really interesting question. I think, look, I think you become, in a people business, in a service or organisation (again, we don't have a special technology with patent, right? If you're just leading people and how well they do the job, you need to have that empathy. You need to have that thought of your employee and that societal pack), I think my answer to you would be... it comes down to the way our capital markets are formed. And in this private equity world or public company world, when you're trying to meet your 90 day performance, and you've made a commitment to the street of meeting numbers, you're... you think that's the most important thing going. Along... let me put it in contrast to this: I love my (as you can tell), I loved my time at AirMark. AirMark acquired a lot of companies, I bought a lot of those companies, and I always was a very... intrigued and appreciated those family run businesses that had multiple generations of families in their business. Now, you might say there's a downside of how efficient they could be down the line. But that what they did is they had a very long term perspective about their employee base. And so it's not so much whether you feel for employees, don't feel for employees, does that get you promoted? It's sort of, what's rules or the games or you're sort of playing towards is the way your business model is set up.
Lars Peter Nissen:And then you make this truly dramatic shift, right? It is a massive thing to go from running a multi billion dollar company, to hanging out with a nonprofit working with former gang members.
Thomas Vozzo:You got it.
Lars Peter Nissen:The attention throughout your book is this tension between margin and mission, as you put it, or whether you hire the homies, the former gang members, to bake bread, or you bake bread to hire more homies, right? And maybe... And it struck me, as I read your book, that you come into this very purpose driven organisation with a very different culture with a very strong founder character, who seems to be an absolutely wonderful man. And there you are with your six million dollar man skill set. How do you balance margin and mission? What are the rules of engagement there?
Thomas Vozzo:Within helping people, we also have, so at that time, six social enterprise businesses (a bakery and a cafe and others) that would provide the homies a place to, you know... purposeful activity while they were healing from their trauma and in other ways (we can talk about those services in a bit) But essentially, it was sort of the businesses were being run in a very much of a nonprofit mission way as opposed to businesses being run into business business way and so. So I came in to lead as a volunteer to lead the businesses. And early on you saw that... I saw that clash of margin versus mission and to me it was a pretty... for Homeboy, it was pretty straightforward what you got to do. So well, no, no, We need to run (I needed... I told all the business managers)... We need to run this like a for-profit business. But the only... but there is one place in the P&L where we're not going to be as for profit. It's going to be on the labour line. Our point of our social enterprise businesses is our cafe and our bakery. We have two to three times as much labour as a for-profit business would have because we're trying to provide purposeful activity and skill set training. And so thankfully, we have generous donors who pay us for that labour. So I'm saying to the business manager, No, no, we need to have good quality, good customer service, you need to manage the shrinkage, you need to manage all the other aspects of the expense structure. But Labour line... and that gets sort of paid for elsewhere. And so it was very early on about teaching the business managers of the social enterprises, how to perform their job and what their expectations were. So that was pretty straightforward. But then, on the bigger picture of margin versus mission and financial resources: You know, one of the reasons why Father Greg, and the board asked me to come on as CEO was, homeboy was going through another (financial crisis is too strong a word, but) crunch, you know? Homeboy Industries is privately funded, nearly all donations and business revenue and very little government revenue. And because of that, a lot of stuff was sort of out of kilter. And so early on, I had to sort of work with the management team that to explain how we're going to run, what's are going to be our strategy for the year, what's our budget for the year, how to live within that budget, and then move on. So it's all the things that are pretty typical about running any organisation, we sort of had to do that at Homeboy. And boy, what I came to appreciate, though, is very early on, I remember sitting with Father Greg and two guys when I was a volunteer and we were chatting and he says something to me, and I still say this all the time, homeboy is blessed with so many people volunteering to help us out, but he said to me, and I say this to volunteers too: "Come in. You don't need to, sort of, contribute right away, just be part of the community, soak it all in, you'll find your way you're fine while you contribute." When I say to volunteers is... that before they come in, and I say "Listen, homeboy. We... Every day, we do 1000 things wrong: We don't answer our phones, we don't sign the voicemails, we probably deserve cold cups of coffee sometimes, our folks may be a little bit of rude, but the one thing we do well, every day, is our mission and help people get out of gang life. And so, let's not be wound up about the side stuff, we'll fix that eventually, but the point is, we're not about running an efficient organisation, we're about helping people. And so when you take that to the businesses, we bake bread to hire homies not hire homies to bake bread. It's not about the amount of revenue we're getting it but it's about how many jobs we can provide.
Lars Peter Nissen:Maybe one of the reasons that your stories spoke to me as much as it did was that I think in many ways, we as humanitarians, a good chunk of us, follow the exact opposite trajectory of what you did. We started out in small NGOs, as volunteers across the world in really difficult places, (I started in El Salvador, people volunteer in Uganda, in Myanmar, wherever) and then as we move along and get better at this, we end up where I am right now in Geneva with often jobs in very big corporate type entities. And I think a lot of us at this stage of our career, feel a detachment from what drove us into the business to begin with. So if we were to imagine that you were to step back into one of the large... we don't have to name it, but lets pick... Think of a large nonprofit, sort of one of the more corporate nonprofits in the US, How would you instill some of that purpose focus in an organisation with say, 6 or 8 thousand employees and a budget of 3, 4 million a year. But you know, something's that big. How do you take all the good stuff from Homeboys and get that into an organisation that size?
Unknown Speaker:I think it's really two things. And a lot of big organisation may do this, but what I would make sure would happen is... it's cliche to say it's about the people, it's about the mission. That's all true. What I've learned at Homeboy is that when our client is in crisis, or even a client that's actually talking to you in the hallway (we call them trainees, I'll call them clients), you got to be centred...
Lars Peter Nissen:You say client, you're speaking about the former gang members who are now [inaudible]...
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah, they're gang members. Yeah, yeah. The homeboys and homegirls, right? The former gang members looking to change your life, right? And in for the... Our clients, our homies and home boys, all their life, they've had people kind of wag their finger at em and tell em what they've done wrong and that they're no good and the society wants to throw them away. And so anybody who works in a Human Services organisation and works with people who are poor and aren't housed, have this struggle of how do you... you absorb the trauma and the stress and the pain of the people who are standing in front of you. In the corporate world, you meet somebody in the hallway, you know, you're chit chatting, but you have like nine things going on in your head that you're thinking different way, here, you need to be centred and focused that this is what's been... what you need to do for that person today is the most important thing. And what I've learned is, you don't worry about setting precedents that if you're going to do something for this person today that you got to do the same thing for someone else, or tomorrow. No, it's you got to treat everybody as an individual and what they actually need along the way. So part of that, what I would take their big corporation is, let's not worry about setting precedent and doing something in the big wide system, but what an individual person needs, that's what we're going to focus on. Now whether that it's a client, or whether that is a manager, a low level manager, a mid level manager, a high level manager. So that's the... that's sort of the big number one. Thing number two is, (and it's this interesting point is I've kind of learned in my life where this is now a much more... what I've learned at Homeboy is I understand my own spirituality in a much different way--in a much deeper way). And I picked this up from Father Greg, but other people talk about joy, right? You got to lead with joy, gotta find foundational joy in what people do and have a balance. And I think organisations don't spend enough time allowing joy to happen, allowing people to find their joy, and making that work. And so those are the two big changes, or two big topics I would bring with me back to a big organisation.
Joy over discipline, maybe? And people over rules?
People over rules? Definitely people over rules. And joy over discipline I mean it's... you know oftentimes, and you're running big, big organisations, you know, people get rule bound, and you got to be disciplined about the rule, and you got to always follow the rules. And I'm not saying that we're gonna do anything illegal or immoral. But it is like, Come on, how do ya help somebody in a particular situation?!
Lars Peter Nissen:Yeah, I... so I like that. And I particularly like the joy part. I think creating an environment in a... The way I think about it is creating an environment where you can bring all of yourself to work, actually, and be who you truly are. That I think creates that joy and also the focus on on people that that you speak about.
Thomas Vozzo:In fact, to say a third thing, as we said along the way (and this may be true for other organisations as well), but I've definitely understood Homeboy... It... Look, if you're a human services organisation, this gets onto this diversity perspective, you need to have... Any (I learned is that AirMark) any well run corporation has management team that looks like their frontline workers. So translate that to the nonprofit world, your management team needs to look like having type of diversity as your the people you are serving along the way. Now, it's not going to be perfectly matched up but you want to get much closer to and so, we're, we've been really good about promoting people from within, and mostly people with lived experience, and so over half of our management team are people who are former clients. And as I've talked to other nonprofits, you know, we have nonprofit community here, not as many of those organisations have as much diversity of people with lived experience as others... as I think they should have. And so, I think big organisations are kind of slower at getting there. And yet big organisations actually have the resources to make that happen. And it's not like you can just say, Okay, now we're just gonna hire people lived experience. You have to know... you have now to over invest into their training and to their development, because they don't have those same set of 15 years of work experience as, quote unquote, professional people.
Lars Peter Nissen:I'm trying to think through how that would work because I think, just like you describe, the tyranny of having to deliver the quarterly results to your shareholders, I can also see in some of the big organisations, how the fundraising drives so many things and, you know, you have to get the budgets if... You know, that there's just a whole bunch of constraints. There's donor regulations that "Oh, we can't lose money what about...", anything from anti-terror legislation to, you know, anti-corruption things that can be really difficult to deal with when you work in some of these very difficult contexts that we operate in. And so, if you were to move back into, sort of, this... the top tier of the private sector, into these Fortune 500 companies, do you see any of them actually moving in that direction? Are any of them able to focus on people over rules, have some fun, some real joy in the workplace and the diversity, I guess is getting there. But do you see anybody doing it?
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah, that's a very good point and sobering question. I, you know, it's, I don't think so. But I think we're on the tipping point of this. I mean if you think about the last, as I think about, the last couple years, and there's this concept about workplace engagement, how do you engage your employees, particularly in this pandemic, you know, people just... people want a purposeful job. And I guess what I'm trying to trying to say is, boy, if you're a corporation, or you're an organisation that wants to, sort of live by those sort of goals, hey, here's how you do it. You have to sort of have people over process, right? You have to sort of make... give enough latitude for mistakes to happen and you have to sort of have more laughter in the workplace and more hugs in the workplace. And it doesn't work for everybody I understand what I'm saying is sort of a little bit out there. But you got to move, you got to move that big battleship in the direction of what you're trying to accomplish. And it takes a standing from from top on down.
Lars Peter Nissen:No, I don't think it's out there. I think it's fantastic. And I totally agree with it. I just see some very strong incentives moving against it.
Thomas Vozzo:I'll give you an example of... for homeboy where we struggle. You know, we have, we don't get much government funding, and we're one of the few nonprofits... sizable nonprofits, out there that doesn't have a large amount... less than 10% of our funding comes from the government. And it's not through lack of trying, because I've been trying along the way, but we we don't succeed... you're not as... first of all, there's not a lot of requests for proposals, as we say here in the states, that goes out for reentry services, people coming out of the jail system and helping them out. Right? And then when they do come out, they're very prescriptive with the way a government person wants to see service being performed. We do not... Most of the time, we don't agree with how they say they want their services perform. We have our own way of going about it. I'm going to tell the story, but let me first say, a number of years ago, folks at UCLA, the university here in Los Angeles did an independently funded study and measured Homeboys success, quote unquote (you'd never get Father Greg to say success, but this is for a study). And so what it showed was clients who've been part of the homeboy programme, two years later, have a recidivism rate going back in the jail system on a renew charge of only 30%. And that recidivism rate compares so favourably to the statewide average of 70%. So here we are over two times better than the statewide average at helping people not go back into the jail system. And we're dealing with serious violent offenders along the way. So without a doubt, what Homeboy does works. It really works, right? And so, I came in at Homeboy with the hubris of a private industry executive thinking, Jeez alls I gotta do is... you know, Homeboy's got a great brand, new management team. I can just go to the elected officials offices and say, listen, here's the reason... here's the study results, give us money to do it a Homeboy way and we'll be all set. No, I haven't made make that great happen. And so there's... Now my... There's particular story, and it kind of touches on on two points at once. Finally, after a number of years, an RFP came out for what's called case management work here in Los Angeles County, right? And so we said, Great, we have eight case managers on our staff, it'd be wonderful to have those funded by state and county funds. And so we applied and we were able to get two positions funded and they said, You know, work with those... start with those two and if you do a good job, you know, you can get more positions funded. So a year later we asked, Hey, can we can we go from two to four being funded? And they said no, because, you know, the the case managers you have working on the account are not doing a good job of filling out the database. And so that's... hm. So I said, are they... Is it incomplete? He said, Well, it's not not... it's like 90% Complete is not 100% complete. Then I go and talk to our two case managers about it. Now, here's the thing. These are our two best case managers. These people... these are people with lived experience. They don't have college degrees, they might not even have high school degrees, but they are great at helping men and women get out of gang life. They are great. And so if you've looked at the... everyone who was on the caseload on that contract, we've had good success with them. We just don't get all the information 100% into the database on the same time schedules of what the county wants us to do. And so we say to the... Like, we say to the people who created this date county database... I mean, there's someone who went through college and university and they came out with like one year of experience working with people, and they wrote the prescriptions of what type of data needs... they need to collect. Hey, I'm not against data. I know, it's... the importance of data. But they're missing the point that we probably have the most successful case managers in all their contracts, but they're holding us back because our people lived experience, It's hard for people who have the experience to sit down for hours at a time and do data. I'm not excusing it, will get better, but that's sort of an example of institutional bias, I guess, or institutional racism that you can't... that if you if you're trying to get people who lived experience... So in other words, when we... if we were not, so... let me... last point.... Thankfully, Homeboy has generous donors, and we're privately funded. If we were very dependent on government funds, I would probably have to change it around and not employ those case managers probably employ other case managers who can fill out the database. That's what sort of it's... a little bit of a heartbreaking part of this story.
Yeah, it sounds to me like the reason you don't get government funding is that you're unwilling to compromise on purpose.
Yes, exactly right.
Lars Peter Nissen:And you know... and I think you would be surprised how many of the listeners to this show are nodding their heads right now. Part of me almost don't want to ask this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyways, right? So you have this organisation, and somehow you're spoiled beyond belief in that you have an incredibly charismatic, purpose driven founder, who keeps a purpose on track. And then on top of that, you get a $6 million man who's been trained left, right and centre on how to manage things. So from a management perspective, you are very well equipped. I would say, What about scaling? Is that something you think about? Because you you have this great model, you know, it works. You are, I think, the biggest programme in the US, but no doubt there are many people who would want your services who don't access them in other cities and cross... What about scaling? What about building something much bigger?
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah, let me... I want to answer from a couple of perspectives, you know. As a corporate training guy, right, you're focused on scaling. Hey, if you got a good thing going, do more of it, right? And if Father Greg was here talking to you, he couldn't care less how many people we serve, he just, whoever sitting in front of him today, that's who he's going to help and we're going to stretch all our resources. You know, we've... as I'm sitting here thinking, as I'm talking, it's like, it sounds like we're super successful but we don't have a lot of money. We struggle from time... though many years there, we struggled payroll to payroll making it all work, stretching our nickels to help as many people as possible. And so yes, when we do get more money, we help more people. And so in my time, we were went from being an $11 million a year organisation to now a 30 million, as as I said, and, and so thereby we've tripled the size of the number of people we are helping. Unfortunately, LA County is the gang capital of the country and the world. So there's a lot of gang members still to be served in LA County and we're hopefully growing to serve more of them. But the other thing is, though, we understand that is not... we have something that, my words, something that's pretty special, and we want to teach, and we're willing to teach, other folks. So a lot of people have come to visit homeboy over these past years and so pre-pandemic, we actually counted you know, that we had over 8000 visitors to Homeboy come through our door and experience what we're about. And over the years, we've seen lots of organisations, small and large come to Homeboy and learn what we're... what we do, how we go about it. And we're willing to share. And so about seven years ago, we created our Homeboy network, but we don't want to own locations around the country, but we're willing to share. And so and so what now we have is 150 organisations from 42 states and seven countries who have modeled themselves after Homeboy Industries. And the important thing is they, you know, they they pick and choose, they take what we do and then bring it in... because everybody has... problems are locally based. I mean, so a gang situation in Chicago is definitely then a gang situation in LA. And and really so we've been now... our teams have gone on to two trips in Northern Ireland, as an example. The gang situation in Northern Ireland is obviously different LA but boy, the elements, of sort, about rivalries and gang members and demonizing and what society thinks of folks is all the same, right? And so we... so our folks go around the world for help sometimes, but then a lot of people come here. And so our goal is to sort of... my goal is to sort of help homeboys visibility in terms of, There's a homeboy way of going about things, people come take advantage of it, learn by it, and make it local. And most importantly, grow from the people you are serving allow them to be the next generation of leaders.
Lars Peter Nissen:So it is as a beacon you scale, it is not as a headquarter.
Thomas Vozzo:Yes, it's not as a headquarter. That's correct.
You spoke a bit about spirituality before and the role that that plays, and it's quite a central theme in your book. And Father Greg is a Jesuit priest. As you were writing, for example, that you feel like it's being soaked in spirituality to work at Homeboy, I thought, What a beautiful way of describing your workplace and I can see how that brings joy. At the same time I was thinking, Is that also excluding people? The sort of... I fully realised that you're not evangelizing at work, that's not the point. I mean, you know, and... but as a question myself, I would say I am probably very Scandinavian in sort of keeping that back office. That's something that inspires me what to do, but it's not something I would bring to work upfront. It will be something that I would hope will transform the way I behave in my workplace, but I wouldn't talk about it. And, you know, would you set this up in Afghanistan?
Yeah. I mean, I want to talk more about and I'll get to your Afghanistan question in a second. Look, for me, as a corporate guy, I always wanted to show me the rules, I'm going to win by the rules, right? So he never talk about your own spirituality or talk about God, you just don't do it. And it was when I first joined Homeboy it was so a little bit... I was actually uncomfortable with all the talk of people's own spirituality, own God. Just like whoa. And I didn't like... I wasn't... I was only uncomfortable because I was wondering if they were waiting for me to say something as well as opposed to what they're feeling. But what I come to learn is... is what makes one of the things that makes Homeboy successful is that... anybody works from the human service organisation, right, it's about people, the clients, needed feel safe and secure. And at homeboy, I mean, the streets are tough for Homies. And they are on the streets. Work is a sanctuary such that they can walk through those doors and be more of themselves. What we do is we talk about "soaked in spirituality", but one of the things we won't shy away from is understanding that God is too busy loving us to be judging us, right? And so we don't judge people, we care for them. We help we hold up a mirror and help people see their own goodness. And God, in my observation has given us so many of the... what we do is we have NA classes and AA classes and transformation happens through those process and through that way of thinking and that is a spiritually based ways of thinking. And so that's... what really makes homeboy work is the relationship side, the loving side in the spiritual side. Now, we don't have classes on spirituality. We don't have classes on religion. You know, the only thing we get it is... we have every morning, it's a beautiful thing, we have a morning meeting and everybody shows up in the centre space. We read our mission statement. We read announcements, we've seen people happy birthday, sometimes, you'll be amazed how many people will say this, That's the first time in my life I've had happy birthday sung to me, because they've been incarcerated all their life. We celebrate, you know, getting off roll, we celebrate getting driver's license, we end with a thought of the day, and it's rotating people do a thought, and we end with a prayer. And this is the only time. So it's a rotating who gets to say the prayer. And so it's said... whoever's saying the prayer is to their God, their religion, however they want to say it, articulate, and articulate, but it's heartfelt. And that's where we leave it. And so what I'm saying is, in a human service organisation, for people to really get through their pain... and in the end, it's not like we're telling them to do this, but in the end, what happens is their own spirituality gets folks there. And so what I would imagine, back to Afghanistan question: Yeah, I feel very unable to answer this knowing everything that happens in Afghanistan, what it's like working in foreign countries with oppressive regimes. But if someone's going to change your life, they have some of their... whatever their spirituality is, could be, that's what they got to hark harken it to, lean in to, and get them through the suffering and getting through realizing that they are a good person, and they're not being judged and they're not being demonized, they can move their life forward.
Lars Peter Nissen:Yeah, it was a slightly unfair question, I apologize.
Thomas Vozzo:[Laughing] Right!
Lars Peter Nissen:I think the... I think what I have experienced is that, what people speak to across many cultures is that you show them who you are, and show them how you think of the world, your own spirituality, whatever that might be or your own lack of belief in a god, but then believe in some principles, or in the worst of every single human being, I think, showing others who you are open so many doors, and quite often, in Africa, for example, where I lived for a number of years, I found that you really have some wonderful conversations, and it opens doors to be able to speak about your religion, and that it's a shame that at times, we as a community are quite secular, in a sense.
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah yeah. I'm with you on that. Right.
Lars Peter Nissen:But I also really get the point that it is a balance, and you have to be so careful to leave... There's a lot of power in this as well. And you have to leave an open space for whoever is there to feel comfortable and welcome no matter what, what they think and how they pray and who they are.
Thomas Vozzo:Exactly right.
Lars Peter Nissen:Maybe a last question, Thomas. If you were today to give advice to yourself, your 25 year-old or your 29 year-old self, just embarking on this extremely successful career, climbing up the corporate ladder, what would that be?
Thomas Vozzo:Yeah. I want to... I don't want to be too glib on what I'm saying.... Clearly, I was driven to succeed. And obviously, the the cliche would be that, sort of, appreciate, and revel in more, the more, the journey than necessarily getting to the goal. But would also be, I wish I had learned more about my own spirituality at a younger age, and can help had been a more balanced... I would have been more mentally balanced or more emotionally balanced in those earlier years. Not that anything was often wrong, but it's like I think, I have found much more joy and fulfilment and happiness in these past nine years that it would've have been... would have been interesting to see if, as a young man, could I have seen all that, and it had my eyes open my heart open to see people in a different way. And maybe I would have gotten into the human services work sooner. But it is... there's... I guess the other thing is to say is, there's different ways of thinking out there and for us here, I... one of the themes of the.. what I try to write down is like there's two Americas, the America I live in and the America the poor and demonized lived in and go out and reach more into that poor and demonized America because, listen, everybody I want... everybody can help out somebody else, right? You don't have to be a Jesuit priest who's almost a saint to do this work. As you know, Lars, you go out and you've been in these countries and people can do action, go help other people. And I wish I didn't spend as much time on corporate job, and probably spent more time helping people along the way.
Lars Peter Nissen:Thomas, thank you so much for coming on Trumanitarian. And thank you for writing your book. And I should say, it's actually a much broader book than what we have discussed today, there is a really interesting critique of, sort of, the some of the more brutal capitalism in the US and some really interesting suggestions as to how to change that, to not produce such a devastating outcome from a human perspective, as you sometimes see, and I just encourage everybody to, anybody to, to read the book. It's The Homeboy Way, and it's published about mid February, I believe, it comes out?
Unknown Speaker:That's correct. Mid February.
Lars Peter Nissen:And thank you for the work you do with Homeboy Industries. It's truly an inspiration to become familiar with that piece of work. It a... I really enjoyed that.
Thomas Vozzo:Thank you. Well, thanks for having me. And, for you, and anybody who's listening, if you ever in Los Angeles, stop by, I don't say that, again, glibly, because we've got so many visitors, but you actually get the... you feel the sense and you feel the vibe that in Homeboy and being with the Homegirls and Homeboys is just terrific. So we're happy to have as many visitors as we can see.
Lars Peter Nissen:We will take you up on that. Thank you very much.
Thomas Vozzo:All right, thank you very much.