Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.
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Ryan: I'm Ryan Millsap, host of the Blackhall Studios Podcast from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm an entrepreneur mostly by necessity, because I have massive authority issues, and also by constitution – as the entrepreneurial life is filled with things I love: freedom, adventure, creativity and imagination. When I began this leg of my journey into the entertainment industry, you may find it interesting to know that my background before this was all commercial real estate.
And then I built Blackhall Studios as a specialty real estate project for production giants like Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Universal to have a place to ply their skilled craft of production. I'm from Los Angeles, but I moved to Atlanta six years ago. I've done business all over the world, and I know few places with the dynamism of Atlanta. It's a world-class city with a huge economic future as a center of commerce for a global economy. On this podcast, we get local and global and talk to people who are inspirational, sensational, sometimes motivational, but at all times somehow tied to the ecosystem. That is the culture and business of entertainment as it relates to Blackhall Studios.
Today on the podcast, it's a privilege to speak with Milton Little, President of the United Way of Greater Atlanta. In this challenging time, organizations like the United Way work overtime to provide assistance to those in need. In addition to being a health crisis, for many in our communities, it's also a financial crisis. Before we start the conversation, I'd like to ask Blackhall Studios podcast listeners to support the efforts of the United Way to the Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund by making a donation.
Go to my Instagram page, @Ryan.Millsap, and click on the link: Secure.GiveLively.org. Your contribution will provide immediate support for emergency assistance, health services, and critical needs like childcare and food. I know we have some amazing listeners, so thank you in advance for your generous support.
Milton Little joined the United Way in 2007, and has grown it into the largest chapter in the United States. This Morehouse man traces his beginnings in the community involvement to his college days here in Atlanta, and some sage advice even earlier from his mom as a young man growing up in New York. We’ve got a great conversation on tap with a dynamic community leader: Milton Little, coming up on the Blackhall Studios podcast.
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Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan Millsap. This is the Blackhall Podcast. We are broadcasting remote. Everybody is in quarantine today. We're fortunate to have the CEO of the Atlanta United Way, Milton Little. Milton, welcome to the Blackhall Podcast.
Milton: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Ryan: I appreciate you taking the time. Where are you quarantining?
Milton: I am in my house in Midtown Atlanta. And the only thing I do like about it is I get to see the trees beginning to have leaves on them. Otherwise, I'd rather be in the office doing the work.
Ryan: Well, we appreciate you running the United Way Atlanta from your home. I know that for you guys, this is a busy time. Tell us a little bit about what the response has been to COVID, how you guys are facing the coronavirus, who's starting to come alongside, and what you guys are doing to tackle it.
Milton: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. The United Way has been in Atlanta since 1905, and it actually began in the height of an ice storm in 1905. So we're used to dealing with significant community challenges. As the COVID pandemic and its impacts became increasingly clear here in Atlanta, we partnered with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, one of our long-term partners, and created the Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.
Our two organizations are premier fundraising and partnering organizations. It didn't make sense for us to compete for donor support for COVID response when we could join our forces. And that's what we've done: prioritizing families that live in communities of lower and very low child well-being, seniors, families with children receiving free and reduced lunch, families in need of childcare, hourly workers, and frontline workers most impacted by the pandemic. Those became our priority targets, and we were able to receive, at the beginning, a $5 million grant from the Coca-Cola company and a $5 million grant from the Robert Woodruff Foundation. That got us off and running. And so far, we've raised close to $21 million and have distributed about $4 million worth of grants.
Ryan: Are you guys focusing on shelter? Food? I mean, what are you finding to be, or what are you hearing to be, the biggest needs right now?
Milton: Right now, what we are hearing are the following: emergency financial assistance, with people having been furloughed from their jobs or having had their hours cut pretty significantly, or finding themselves in desperate need of financial help to pay bills and to just make ends meet. And we're also seeing a tremendous amount of need in the area of food assistance.
Food banks are being tapped and challenged to be able to provide food, because their supplies are difficult to come by – because the surplus foods that they've always been getting from supermarkets and others is now no longer surplus. Those supermarkets are having bare shelves themselves. So food and financial assistance seem to be the two most pressing needs of residents in greater Atlanta.
Ryan: How are you finding that people are seeking that out? Like, if somebody needed financial assistance, where are they turning? How are you guys getting money to those organizations, and how are those organizations determining who to help and how to help?
Milton: First and foremost, back in the 90s, United Way created something called 211, which is an information and referral system that allows people all across Greater Atlanta to call or contact 211 – dial that simple number – and state what your needs are. And then we go through a database and find agencies near the zip code where you live that can provide the assistance that you're looking for.
So we're seeing lots and lots and lots of people contacting United Way 211. And we're able to direct them to food banks and other organizations that provide emergency assistance. They're also going to those agencies themselves. People know how to find an agency like Salvation Army or Saint Vincent de Paul, and those agencies do what they can to provide support. Those are the organizations we know well, and those are the ones that we have been targeting for funds – from the response fund, to be able to continue to meet the needs of those who come to their doors.
Ryan: But, you know, Americans historically aren't as accustomed to turning to the government for help. Americans have had a long tradition of helping each other, but the United Way is a centerpiece of that kind of work. For people that are listening, what would you encourage people to be thinking about, and ways that they can help? Obviously, the government is trying to do a lot, and trying to figure out how to get money into people's hands and save this economy in the midst of a pandemic. But – in Atlanta, let's say – what can people in Atlanta be doing to help one another from your perspective?
Milton: Sure. And the government is planning to do a lot, but it's going to take some time for the resources that the government is promising to get in the hands of people. I mean, if you just look at the news, you'll see what they expect to be the time lag between the decision to get that money out and when it will actually get in somebody's hands. So there are tremendous needs today that are not going to be addressed by government support that's coming weeks from now.
And so we would ask our neighbors and friends and family to contact United Way, to contact the Community Foundation, and to support the COVID Response Fund. You don't have to be a rich philanthropist to make a difference. All you need to do is be willing to provide support of any level, and that amount is going to make a world of difference, in the hands of the people who need it. The people who are calling the agencies and calling United Way for help. So we just ask people to be as generous as they can, even in the midst of concerns about their own circumstance. Every little bit helps to save this community.
Ryan: When the day-to-day of charitable infrastructure is happening… I'm dealing with a crisis, right? You're dealing with a lot of administration. You're dealing with building infrastructure, but you're building all of that for times like this, not just for the day-to-day. Tell me a little bit about the United Way's history with crisis. I know you mentioned that the Atlanta United Way was born out of an ice storm.
Milton: Yes, sir. Every day there's a crisis. I mean, it's not that it can be an ice storm or a pandemic. But every day there are people across greater Atlanta who've lost a job, who are searching for childcare, who are searching for assistance for their elderly family members because they don't know where to turn. And so the crisis can be one of global proportions. Or it could be one that just rocks an individual in the family. The infrastructure that we help to support across the region is one that deals with crises, big and small.
But the United Way has been on the forefront of a number of responses. Hurricane Katrina was one, when thousands and thousands of people left New Orleans and went to cities like Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, and resettled. How do you help all of those people resettle? How do you help them find housing? How do you help them find jobs? How do you help them get themselves secure here in Atlanta, with the hope that when they are ready to go back, they can go back? Or they may simply want to stay in Atlanta.
The 2008 recession is probably the closest parallel to what we faced today – thousands of people lost their jobs. Thousands of people were at risk of losing their homes or being evicted from apartments. They didn't know where to turn for food because they were suddenly unemployed. United Way worked with local communities and funders to create the Critical Needs campaign.
And then we worked with the state to create something called Fresh Start that enabled the United Way of Greater Atlanta to deploy about $22 million across the state – resources that helped with mortgage foreclosure, and food assistance, and those kinds of things. When the downtown tornado hit in 2008, we helped to stand a community response to those issues. And so, on days when there are huge issues like what we're facing, on days when it's just families calling because they don't know where to turn – that’s the business the United Way is in.
Ryan: I love the distinction you've made about, the local crisis. The individual crisis. It shows me what an empathetic and compassionate person you are. Share with me a little about your journey to become the CEO of the United Way, your journey in nonprofits, your journey in wanting to help other people in this way. I bet I bet you have an interesting background, an interesting story, that led you to this place.
Milton: Well, thanks for asking. This is a background that's had tentacles in the for-profit world, in the nonprofit world, and in government. So I'm not a lifelong United Way person, or really a lifelong nonprofit person. But I tell the story about being a young person, and my mother and father who were very involved in civil rights issues in the North. I grew up in New York, and my mother sat me down one day and said, “No matter what you do in life, son – no matter what your profession – find a way to help somebody.” And that simple conversation became the guide for the professional decisions that I would make throughout my life.
So, I had a career in public policy, and I worked for Ed Koch when he was mayor of New York. And I did a lot of work in corporate philanthropy at AT&T and Lucent Technologies. I came upon the United Way as a volunteer in New York and, ultimately, as a professional in the CEO ranks in Boston, and then came to Atlanta in 2007. So I've been here in Atlanta a while, and it's become the largest United Way in the country by annual revenue and impact.
Ryan: What was your educational background? You grew up in New York. Did you stay in New York for college? Tell me some of that story.
Milton: I left New York and came to Atlanta, actually. I came to Morehouse College, which I think added to the lesson from my mother – because one of the things that you learn when you get to Morehouse is your responsibility to give back and to be a good community citizen, as well as somebody impactful in your career. And so that added to the urgency of the focus that I was bringing to what I wanted to do in life. And then I went back to New York to graduate school and spent the bulk of my career in New York, working nationally for national organizations.
With the United Way, it gave me a chance to live and work in a community and be responsible for seeing the impact of the work in ways that you don't see when you work for a national organization. You get to fly in, you get to run your mouth, and you fly back home – and you don't know whether anything you did or said has any long-lasting value.
Ryan: Well, you get to see the value every day, every year, so deeply integrated into the fabric of the society and the culture of Atlanta. How have you developed those relationships over the years and helped bring so much fluid ecosystem to the way that Atlanta's business community works together?
Milton: Well, one of the things that I learned early on is the power of relationships. I mean, it's trite to say that no one gets anything done by themselves, but it is an absolute truism. And one of the best things about this job is that you find people at their best. In this job, I get to talk to people about giving and giving back and making a difference. It gives them a chance to be their best self. I'm not selling anything other than, as a mentor of mine once said, “The only thing I'm selling is an easy way for you to get to heaven.”
Ryan: Haha, that’s a good sell!
Milton: So, you bring that approach, and everybody wants to get to heaven. And so, if you can give, and give back, and be generous and thoughtful and open up your networks to others who feel the same compassion that you do? If that's not going to get you to heaven, I don't know what will.
Ryan: I love that. That makes me think of an old Emily Dickinson poem. The poem where she says... well, I just blanked, actually, on the beginning of the poem, but she talks about how some people are trying to get to heaven ‘at last,’ but she's ‘going all along,’ right? Yeah, I'm going to get that poem, and I'll get it over to you after this podcast, I think.
Milton: Okay, great.
Ryan: So what have been some of the things that have been encouraging to you in the Atlanta response to this pandemic? What things have been surprisingly good? Sometimes, in crisis, that's when we learn the most about the people that are all around us. And sometimes we're amazingly surprised at what we find out about their character, good and bad. Tell me about some of the things you've seen in Atlanta so far that have been encouraging to you.
Milton: Number one, the amount of trust and confidence that people have in the United Way of Greater Atlanta and the Community Foundation, and the excitement that they have for our two organizations coming together to help bring relief across the region. That's been exciting. The fact that the fund is not even three weeks old, and it was able to amass $21 million in a very short period of time, with very generous gifts from companies. And, just yesterday, we received a $1 million gift from Michael from Argonne Capital, who hopes that his individual effort will help to encourage other people of means to follow suit. When you see examples of generosity from foundations and individuals and companies, you just can't help but be encouraged, and you can't help but feel good. In my case, I've run an organization that has continued to receive the faith and confidence and trust of people and the expectation that in circumstances like this, we are going to play a leadership role. And so, you can't help but feel good by all of that.
Ryan: I can see that happening all around me. I've been really encouraged by seeing my friends all reaching out to each other, checking in on each other. You know, I've watched people be very selfless, which, I find to be surprising. Living in a capitalist country and watching capitalist principles at work, oftentimes it's easy to feel like everyone is selfish until you get into a crisis. And then you start to realize that in a crisis, people's hearts are socialist. They want to take care of the whole. They want to take care of each other. They want to take care of their community. Now, in America, we may not want that mandated. That's always a political question. And sometimes it has economic consequences because you don't want to stifle innovation. But wow, is it encouraging to see the socialist spirit in times of crisis. I've just been moved by that.
Milton: I agree entirely. And what's unique about this is the fact that it's revealing how interdependent we are, because at the very core of the solution to how we're going to get past this is my having to rely on you – that you're going to wash your hands, and take precautions that will enable me to be safe. And you have to rely on the fact that I'm going to do the same. And this is not an ‘us and them’ or, or ‘we against whoever.’ Only everyone working together will get us through this. And that, I think, is what helps to animate the kind of spirit that you were just describing.
Ryan: Where did you get this kind of spiritual imagination? You know what I mean by that question?
Milton: Yeah. You know, the people in Atlanta who have heard me talk about this heard me say my mother's father was a Baptist preacher. So, there's a little bit of that. I went to an Episcopalian high school. I went to a Baptist college. My mother really thought I was going to be a priest when I grew up. So there is a spiritual and sort of religious stream that sort of runs through me. But I also just approach the work from the standpoint of, ‘how do you appeal to that part of goodness that I believe exists in everyone?’ And I think people are searching for purpose and for meaning, and charitable giving and responding to crises like these really helps to fuel that sense of purpose and meaning. And that's the sort of philosophy that guides the work I do in this charitable sector.
Ryan: What you are talking about is that family dynamic that in many ways gives you exposure to the possibility of a spiritual world, and then at some point that has to take hold, and you have to take responsibility for your spiritual imagination in your own way. And it sounds like you did that in college. Is that fair? Is that when it felt like it really got rooted and you started to say, “I'm going to take responsibility for making the world into the world that I want it to be, and I hope it to be?”
Milton: Yes, it did. It guided me there because I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in public policy – because I wanted to learn how the machines of public policy work to create or to undermine fairness and equity and opportunity. I could be in a small agency and run programs, but I needed to know what the levers of power and influence were. And so, yeah – all of that sort of got solidified when I was an undergrad in college.
Ryan: One of the things I'm observing in this crisis is that we just weren't ready for this as a society. We didn't have any pandemic plan, whether that was medical or economic. And so we're learning as we go. I have a lot of grace for that, you know, because this is how change happens. We encounter things that we didn't realize were problems or we encounter weaknesses that we didn't know we had. But in order to learn from this kind of stuff, we have to be willing to have very candid feedback. We have to be willing to look at ourselves very clearly.
It's kind of like athletes watching game films, right? When you screw up on film, there's nowhere to hide. Coach just rewinds it and plays it back and rewinds it and plays it back and rewind until he says, “You see what you did wrong there?” And when you see what you did wrong, you’ve gotta admit it. Then, when you go out on the field, he's going to remind you all the things you did wrong on that film. He's going to make you work on all the things you did wrong, so the next time, hopefully, you don't make those same mistakes. And if you have the right kind of mentality, you're going to get better.
I say that as a preface because we're working together to get better, and I know that in the position that you're in, sometimes it's hard to be candid because there's a lot of personalities in play and a lot of institutions in play. But yeah – setting that aside, where are you watching as we're going through this crisis? Where can we get better? Where are we falling down together? Where can we do a better job next time?
Milton: Well, I would say, number one: we need to pay more attention to prevention. We are a great nation for responding to things when situations crater. But we're not as effective in working together to prevent problems from happening in the first place. We don't do enough around early education, to make sure that every child who graduates from high school and gets to whatever is next is skilled; we're not doing as much with respect to pandemic awareness. I mean, the reality is, not all of this was a surprise. But you don't get as many medals for stopping something from ever happening as you get from fixing it after it blows up. If there's a lesson that I hope we learn, that's one of them.
The second is that we've got to get back to a moment where facts are facts and truth is truth. Until we again begin to agree on some underlying truth, I think we're going to go down a path in which we're going to continue to see something and not believe that the sky is blue or water is wet. And if we don't get to agree on those underlying premises, then we're not going to be able to do the big things that we need, where collective action is absolutely required.
Ryan: Well, no, relationships are sustainable without truth. It’s the fundamental building block.
Milton: Correct. And I think we've got to just get back to building and strengthening those relationships and building a sense of community. We've seen over the last number of years that the sense of community is not what it appeared to be before. And we've got to get back to doing this. The United in the United Way is not about being united when something is broken. It's about how only everyone working together helps to make a community strong and prosperous under all circumstances.
Ryan: There's an area in philosophy called virtue ethics, which spends all its time trying to understand what traits in a human being can lead a human being to happiness. What do you think the virtues are? If you were talking to a young man, and the young man just entered Morehouse. He comes to you. He says, “Mr. Little, tell me, what virtues do I need to cultivate as a man in order to find happiness?” What do you tell him?
Milton: Well, I'd say, most of the time, when, when a young man enters Morehouse, he's going to have that conversation anyway, because that's just part of the ethos. But I'd say it's compassion. It's empathy. It’s a sense of fairness and equity, as a piece of that. And I think it's selflessness. We can be successful in any profession if we embrace those. And the idea that we've got to be in it only for ourselves and only for our families. Grab everything we can. I just have not subscribed to that as the key to happiness and the key to success. No one has ever gone broke because they gave their heart away.
Ryan: Paint me a picture. Cast me a vision. Atlanta, over the next five years: what are some of the things you would love to see?
Milton: We are, at United Way, dealing with a truth that has been the guiding force for our work over the last couple of years. And that is, unfortunately, poor children in Atlanta have the lowest rate of social or economic mobility in the country. If you're born poor, the story in Atlanta is you're going to die poor. Only 4.5% of poor children ever make it from the bottom income quartile at birth to the top.
And so, what I'd like to see over the next five years is our fixing that – because having that many children consigned to poverty throughout their lives undermines the economic progress of the entire region. We've got employers on one hand who are saying they can't find people, and we've got people who are never going to get out of the circumstance from which they were born. So the fix is there. How do we make sure that more people born in Atlanta are educated and skilled and can become full participants in the labor force? That's the easiest thing we can do to solve the labor challenges that employers were facing before this pandemic, which I'm sure they will face once this pandemic is over. If we do that, this community is going to thrive in ways that it's never imagined possible. And that, again, is because we allowed everybody to be a participant in the social and economic transactions that you and I and many of your listeners take for granted every day.
Ryan: Milton, we're out of time. But I so appreciate your leadership, not only in this time of corona crisis, but – as you so wonderfully pointed out to me, and what I'm taking with me from this podcast – thank you for your leadership in the day-to-day crises that all these people in Atlanta face. All the ways that you gather resources and deploy them to the people on the ground. Distributing those resources. Thank you for your leadership and nobility and virtue. I can tell that you've had a big impact on a lot of people's lives. And we really appreciate you being on the Blackhall Podcast.
Milton: Well, thanks for having me. Thanks to your listeners, and thanks to the people of Atlanta, who time and time again step forward to support the United Way and allow us to do the work that we do.
Ryan: I appreciate it. I'm going to leave you with that Emily Dickinson poem that the producers hunted down for me, and I'm going to just read it. Yeah, I think you're gonna like it. It's Emily Dickinson's “Some Keep the Sabbath.” It goes like this.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
Milton: I got it.
Ryan: Isn’t that fantastic? God, I love that poem.
Milton: All right. Well, hold on to that.
Ryan: Hey, I appreciate it. Thanks, Milton. Have a great day. Stay safe out there.
Milton: You too. Bye.
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Ryan: I'll leave you guys with thoughts, which are reflections that I write on Instagram. ‘Coronavirus can only win if extroverts can't stay in.’ I'm Ryan Millsap, and this is the Blackhall Studios Podcast.
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