Skills as the recipe to opportunity: a conversation with Maurice Jones

Growing up, most Americans were taught that the best way to earn a liveable wage was to go to college. But is education really the best determiner of a good employee? Our guest today disagrees. 

Welcome to this episode of What Unites Us, a podcast about building businesses meant to last. We aim to answer some of the toughest questions about branding, leadership, and success while talking to business trailblazers about their biggest lessons learned. 

Today, we welcome Maurice Jones. Maurice is the former CEO of OneTen, a coalition of businesses that are aiming to employ one million African Americans by the end of the decade. He shares what the Rhodes Scholarship is, his career journey, and why OneTen is dedicated to changing the mindset of the workforce.

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Episode Credits:

Produced by Ginni Media and Unite Us

Original music by Starling Studios

Copyright ©UniteUs2023 all rights reserved

All opinions expressed by podcast guests are solely those of the guest and do not reflect the opinions of Unite Us.

Transcript

[00:00] Maurice Jones: When you're talking about hiring, you're looking at skills, and you may come about those skills through multiple pathways: A four-year degree experience may be one, military experience may be another, work experience may be another. So, at hiring, we're going to look at skills. That is the recipe for really making sure that more folks have an opportunity to earn their way into the middle class.

[00:29] Taylor Justice: Welcome to What Unites Us — a podcast about building businesses meant to last. We're your hosts, Taylor Justice and Esther Farkas. We lead Unite Us — a technology company that connects health and social care.

[00:42] Esther Farkas: We became curious about the way other leaders develop, innovate, inspire, and lead to drive change. We've invited an incredible lineup of visionaries to share their experiences, whether they created a new industry, turned an existing one on its head, or breathed new life into an old brand. 

[00:59] Taylor Justice: We're glad you're here. Thanks for tuning in.

[01:10] Taylor Justice: Welcome to What Unites Us. My name is Taylor Justice.

[01:13] Esther Farkas: And I'm Esther Farkas.

[01:15] Taylor Justice: And I am super excited about today's guest, Mr. Maurice Jones, not only because he's on our board, but a very accomplished leader in his own right. We're going to get into a number of different things — his childhood, his professional career, and what he's up to now.

[01:32] Esther Farkas: I'm excited to have you on the show and talk a little bit about leadership in the private and public sector. You had experience in both and you've been a leader just about as long as you've been an adult. You have much wisdom to share with us and we're excited to hear it.

[01:47] Maurice Jones: It's good to be with you.

[01:49] Taylor Justice: So, first question Esther mentioned a leader since you've been an adult: Were you a leader also as a child? Tell us a little bit about where you grew up, your background, and also tell us a little bit about being a Rhodes Scholar.

[02:01] Maurice Jones: First of all, I haven't grown up yet. I have no aspiration to grow up. But I am from a little small town in Virginia, little place called Cambridge, which the population now is about 1200. I was born in a hospital near there and raised on a farm by my grandparents. So, my first job was farming. And it was our big cash crop, if you will, at that time was tobacco actually. So, I'll never forget one day it was August, it was 100 degrees outside, I was pulling tobacco. So you go down the row and you pull four or five leaves and you put it under your arm and you keep going, and then when you get to a full arm, you put it over into some kind of carrier that they have in the field. I'll never forget thinking, “Okay, I'm going to college. This is not what I'm here for. I'm not built for this. I'm built for an office job.” So, it inspired me to go to college so I went off to college. 

[03:17] Esther Farkas: So, first in your family? 

[03:18] Maurice Jones: Yes, my grandfather was born in 1914. And he literally went to school for six years in a barn a mile away from his home and couldn't go any further because at that time, the county wasn't going to send a bus to pick up a “colored child” to take him to a segregated school. My grandmother who was born in 1919, and she lived in a “town” and so was able to walk to school, so she got her high school diploma. But because of their race, that was as much schooling as they could get. So, yeah, when I went off to college, it was a big deal. 

[03:59] Esther Farkas: What did they think?

[04:01] Maurice Jones: It's interesting. They were happy for me and they were proud. But it was a whole nother world, so they were also a little frightened about it. I was 40 minutes away from home, so I'd come home practically every weekend, particularly the first year. And the fact that they saw me and they were able to assess that I was still doing alright, that gave them some comfort, but they were very worried. But then I went through four years of undergrad, 40 minutes away from home, and I then won a Rhodes Scholarship to go to England. 

[04:37] Esther Farkas: And what did they think of that? 

[04:38] Maurice Jones: Well, my grandfather lived, he was a week before turning 93, and my grandmother was 82 when she passed nine. Neither one of them had ever flown on an airplane. So the notion that I was going to England to go to school — first of all, my grandfather didn't believe it. He thought it was some trap, he kept saying. When I told him that I won the scholarship to go to England, he said, “Oh, no! They got you in the army, don't they?” 

[05:14] Taylor Justice: Nothing wrong with army. 

[05:17] Maurice Jones: It wasn't that. He just thought I'd been duped. So, they couldn't believe him.

[05:23] Taylor Justice: Can we take a step back on that real quick just so not everybody may know what a Rhodes Scholar is? Super prestigious award. Can you walk through a little bit; one, what is it; two, what's the process for getting selected? And then let's talk about that trip to London. 

[05:41] Maurice Jones: The Rhodes is a scholarship that enables, right now, 32 people from the US to study at Oxford. And some people get a graduate degree, some people get another BA degree. But the Rhodes pays for the entirety of that education. The criteria — they base it on scholarship; they base it on whether you're fit to fight the world's fight, that's theoretically part athletic and part something else; they base it on character; and they base it on surface. So those four or five criteria are what they use to actually decide it. And when I was competing for it, you had to first academically qualify, then you had to go through a interview process at the state level, so I went through Virginia. And then they divided the country into eight regions, and they picked four people from each region. So I was in the southeast region, Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, and maybe South Carolina as well. It's a rigorous process that if you're lucky enough, in the end, you get to go to Oxford and study for two or three years. I did three years, and look, it changed my life. A country boy from a town of 1200, now, all of a sudden, studying at what is an incredibly global university.

[07:19] Taylor Justice: Talk to me about the personal feelings of that — country boy, small town, first to go to college, not only first to go to college but to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship is a feat in and of itself. But then being in London, and then where you're at today, do you reflect on that? As like, “Man, I've done a lot.”

[07:39] Maurice Jones: Well, I think what I reflect on is that my grandparents were the most transformative folks in my life without a doubt, the most brilliant, the most loving, the people to whom I owe everything. So, what I reflect on is they didn't have the opportunity to even compete for a Rhodes Scholarship. I'm grateful to them, but I'm also reminded that in our country in the world, there's a lot of work to do before opportunity is fairly distributed. And what I hope is to use something like the Rhodes Scholarship to hopefully prepare me to do some good because I know I wouldn't have gotten it but for grandparents, teachers, coaches, and all the rest. So, it was definitely an award that I share with a lot of folks.

[08:49] Taylor Justice: One thing that we've noticed across everybody that we've interviewed that's done very significant things in their life is there's a couple components that are present in everyone, there's some level of adversity, or there's some focus areas where they drive their energy from. And that, in your case, you're saying your grandparents setting the stage and moving on. Do you think that all of that was purely these outside influences? Or where do you get that personal drive? Because you still had to do some work.

[09:22] Maurice Jones: I did and there's no question in that, but I was lucky. I did work hard. But other people worked hard. I got some really, really big blessing, starting with my grandparents, and it never stopped. It was eighth grade science teacher, coaches, college professors. I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship not because it was an aspiration of mine, I know what the Rhodes Scholarship was; I applied because in my sophomore year, my college president called me into his office. By the way, I was terrified, I was like, “Oh my god, I'm getting called into the President's office. I'm about to get kicked out of school.” That's all I could think. And I was racking my brain about what I did because I knew I was making good grades. I get in there and I sit down and he puts on the table a catalogue about Oxford University. And I look at it and he looks at me and he goes, “This is where I want you to go after: Hampton, Sydney.” And I looked at him and I said, “Do they have a law school?” Because I was going to law school. And he looked at me, he shook his head, and he goes, “I'm not talking about law school! Law school will be here when you get back.” I looked at him and he started talking about the Rhodes Scholarship. My sophomore year in college — honestly, I walked out going, “Okay, yeah, whatever. Let me go back and study for law school.” My senior year, he calls me and he goes, “Have you applied for the Rhodes Scholarship?” And I looked at him and I said, “No, sir. I haven't. I don't think that that's in my future. I think I'm going to law school.” And he looked at me again and he goes, “Law school will be here when you get back.” So I applied. I wouldn't have applied but for his being in my life. So, worked hard, don't get me wrong. But man, I had some big brakes. And the brakes were primarily in the form of people who saw things for me that I didn't even see.

[11:32] Esther Farkas: So what did you do when you came back from Oxford?

[11:36] Maurice Jones: I spent three years at Oxford, and literally, they were transformative. But when I came back, I pursued law school just like I had planned because my thought was that legal training will give me the ability to do public service, private service, law business, that was a great versatile training. So that's what I did. And then I practice law and I didn't like it. 

[12:04] Esther Farkas: What kind of lawyer were you?

[12:05] Maurice Jones: I was a corporate lawyer. I was in a law firm in Richmond, Virginia, and I had great supervisors and partners that I was working with. But the work itself — it was boring. A lot of contracts, a lot of putting the commas. One morning at 3 am, I'm drafting a purchase agreement for an acquisition that my client was doing and I could care less about this thing. I was like, “Okay, all of this preparation is not for this.” The next day, I went to the partner who supervised me, I said, “And it's time for me to go.” And he looked at me to his credit and he goes, “You better go now because the longer you stay, the tougher it is to go for various reasons.” And then I got lucky, again, I had a friend who was working in the Treasury Department in DC under President Clinton, and he knew I was unhappy in this job, so he said, “Look, there's a job in Washington, right in Treasury. You'd be grate for it.” I go, “No, I don't want to move to DC.” 

[13:23] Esther Farkas: Clinton, by the way, another Rhodes Scholar. 

[13:25] Maurice Jones: Another Rhodes scholar, he was. In fact, the guy who was my friend is also a Rhodes Scholar, that's how I met him. So, I went up, and I interviewed one day, and I interviewed the second day, and they offered me the job. So went back to Richmond and I said, “Yep, I'm moving to Washington.”

[13:43] Esther Farkas: And did you know you wanted to go into public service because of your experiences at [13:46 inaudible]. 

[13:48] Maurice Jones: Yes, I knew that at some point, I wanted to do government service as well as the private sector, absolutely. That was always the plan. 

[13:56] Taylor Justice: How long were you at Treasury? 

[13:57] Maurice Jones: I was at Treasury for six years. I started out as a lawyer at Treasury. I worked for the general counsel, that was much more exhilarating, challenging, and fun because at that time, law enforcement was in Treasury, the Secret Service was in Treasury, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was in Treasury, and then all the international economic pieces. Treasury was fun to be a lawyer. So, I did that but I ended up moving from practicing law at Treasury to running one of the small agencies, the CDFI Fund. So it's where I learned about community development financial institutions.

[13:47] Esther Farkas: Was that your first, what you'd say, leadership experience?

[14:44] Maurice Jones: Yeah, it was because I was a lawyer. I was the Special Assistant to the General Counsel of the Treasury Department. And then from there, I became the Deputy Director. So I had 25-30 people that I supervised and then I became the Director. So that was my first experience leading people. 

[15:05] Taylor Justice: Talk about that experience a little bit. 

[15:07] Maurice Jones: So I went from having the mentality of a lawyer to needing to be a leader.

[15:15] Taylor Justice: For the folks that are listening, what's the difference? What's the mentality of a lawyer?

[15:19] Maurice Jones: Lawyers are best at keeping you out of trouble and making sure that they consider all the risks. You bring something to a lawyer, they tell you all the risk associated with it. That's their job. That was what I was there to do. I was there to make sure that I was helping us identify risk and mitigate it as the lawyer. Moving from that to being one of the policy leaders, my job was to actually take risk.   all together.

[16:21] Esther Farkas: And have certainty around it. So, I think lawyers are taught literally to see every side of everything, and then you're asked to go, “This is what we're doing, and this is the only path because this is the right path.” And in your head, you see all the other paths.

[16:35] Maurice Jones: The good lawyers are also ones who can both mitigate risk and get you to where you want to be as a client. But the bottom line is, particularly when you're in the public sector, if you're going to err as a lawyer, you're erring on the side of keeping your client out of the Washington Post. But if you're me, and you're leading an organization that is literally fighting poverty, you want to be in there. If you're going to make a mistake, you want to err on the side of serving your constituents. So, yeah, it was quite a transition but it was fun. I really enjoyed much more attempting to lead a purpose-driven organization than being the lawyer.

[17:29] Esther Farkas: So then what happened? 

[17:30] Maurice Jones: One day, I got a call and this lady said, “It's the White House, and so and so wants to talk to you.” I was like, “Yeah, right. You tell so and so that I don't have time to talk.” And literally, I hung up the phone. They called back, and the lady who was my executive assistant comes and she goes, “This guy says he's from the White House.” I said, “I just talked to them.” She goes, “No, no, no, he's serious.” So I get on the phone and I go, “Okay, who is this?” Guy is from the general counsel's office, they were calling me to see if I was interested in being the Deputy Secretary of HUD. And I said, “Wait, are you sure that you're calling the right person?” The next thing you know, I'm up on the hill at a confirmation hearing and I was the Deputy Secretary at HUD for two years under President Obama. And the reason why that happened is people from the Clinton Administration remembered my work there.

[18:36] Taylor Justice: So then HUD transitions, you go straight to LISC?

[18:38] Maurice Jones: No. From HUD, Terry McAuliffe became Governor of Virginia. And one of the guys who had worked with me in Warner's office was his Chief of Staff, so he calls me up one day and he goes, “Look, we're interested in seeing if you want to work for the governor.” I said, “Well, I just started at HUD. There's only one job I would really consider.” And the guy goes, “How about Secretary of Commerce and Trade?” I was lke, “Oh, man, that is the job.” Because that job had all of the economic development and all of housing. I mean, it was the job, so I did.

[19:13] Taylor Justice: Well, I don't want to fly over LISC because I think it's important. So, let’s maybe take 20 seconds to explain what LISC is, but I really want to get into OneTen. 

[19:21] Maurice Jones: Well, LISC is a development finance organization. It provides capital to catalyze opportunity in places that are under-invested, disinvested, neglected to prosper — so, housing, workforce development, social determinants of health work. We invested about $2 billion dollars in capital a year on housing and other things that we're literally attempting to help underserved areas get common to the main stream of market activity.

[20:01] Esther Farkas: And that's where you met, right?

[20:03] Taylor Justice: We didn't say it. You were the CEO at LISC and we met there, and then you started your transition to now being the CEO of OneTen. Let's talk a little bit about how that even happened, because I know it was in the works for a little bit.

[20:17] Maurice Jones: Well, actually, I had been at LISC for four years, and I got a call from a search firm. It wasn't even called OneTen then, it had another name. But she described the effort to me, and she said, “They want to know if you're interested.” And I said, “Well, it's a great opportunity. We're going to get folks who don't have four-year degrees into family sustaining jobs and concentrate on black talent.” Well, when I was at LISC, this was one of the biggest problems to be solved. And the notion that a group of companies was coming together to put resources behind this, I thought, “This is too good to be true.” So I said, “Well, just send me over the job description. I'll take a look at it.” And I looked at it and I thought, “Wow! This is too important to fail. This is one of those things that it can be transformative.” So, I, literally in a matter of three weeks, went from planning my next year at LISC to saying, “You know what? I'm gonna go for this thing. It's a startup, I'm gonna try to do everything I can to make it successful.”

[21:31] Taylor Justice: I remember, we were on the phone and we were asking you to come on to the board, and you're like, “Oh, by the way, I took a new job.”

[21:42] Maurice Jones: This was over the holiday at the end of the year. I mean, I had already developed my budget for the next year. So I had no intentions of going anywhere, and I was like, “You know what, I think I'm gonna do this.”

[21:54] Esther Farkas: Why don't you just set up the problem for us a little bit that this is compelling? 

[22:00] Maurice Jones: Here's the problem. I think you start with the wealth gap in the country, which largely in our country breaks down along lines of race in place. So, if you look at the average wealth of a white family in our country versus the average wealth of a black family, the white family has 10 times more wealth. And by the way, that's the average. If you look at our largest metropolitan areas, the range is wider than that. So you start with that, and that wealth gap leads to life expectancy gaps and opportunity gaps, and it spirals. That's the sort of context. Well, within that, if you really want to fight that racial wealth gap, you’ve got to do a number of things, one of which is to create opportunity for folks to earn a living wage. When we looked at the data, we looked at the fact that if you look at all jobs in our country today, they pay $60,000 or more; on paper, 79% require that you have a four-year degree just to compete for the job, just to compete. Same thing, look at all jobs that pay $40,000 or more; on paper, 71% of them require that you have a four-year degree just to compete. When you look at all black town, ages 25 and above, in the workforce today, 76% of us do not yet have a four-year degree. So, this credential is a systemic barrier to folks earning their way into the middle class. So, when OneTen came and said, “So, what we're going to try to do is to create and scale a skills-first culture amongst our employers where skills become the dominant factor of success across the entire talent journey.” When you're talking about hiring, you're looking at skills, and you may come about those skills through multiple pathways: A four-year degree experience may be one, military experience may be another, work experience may be another, community college experience may be another. So, at hiring, we're going to look at skills. That is the recipe for really making sure that more folks have an opportunity to earn their way into the middle class. So that's what makes this really compelling for me and then when you combine that with this real focus on black talent. My grandmother didn't have a four year degree, so for me, this was personal and In professional.

[25:01] Esther Farkas: What I think is amazing is you don't just talk about it, you don't just advocate for it, you ask for companies to make a real commitment to it. 

[25:08] Maurice Jones: Absolutely. We ask for companies to put jobs on the table already that don't have those four-year degree requirements and we ask for them to remove four-year degree requirements where they’re not really necessary to do the work and focus on skill. 

[25:25] Taylor Justice: I think when you lay it out the way you did, it's like, “Well, it's a no brainer.” What are the challenges you're running into now?

[25:33] Maurice Jones: You just hit the challenge — it's mindset. It is the brain that's keeping folks from doing more of it because, look, we've been telling ourselves, particularly in our country, for generations, “You want to make something of yourself, you better go to college.” Companies have been requiring college degrees for all kinds of jobs. You really have to be willing to say, “Yes, when Esther comes before me, my job is to figure out the skills that I'm looking for and the skills that she's acquired through all of her experiences.” How do I do that? Well, the four-year degree was a proxy. By the way, it's a terrible proxy. The data will show you that skills is five times a better predictor of success on the job than education and two and a half times better predictor of success on the job than experience. And the other way that the BA degree is used in the workforce is to weed people out. You get 1000 applications, you’ve got to figure out how to narrow that down. Check the box, they don't have a four-year degree, who cares what their experience is? All of these things, practices, mindset, biases in favor of people who have had the same experience that I have had, and against all of this is part of what these companies that have joined OneTen are agreeing to fight.

[27:15] Esther Farkas: And they're signing up for hard numbers, which I love.

[27:19] Maurice Jones: So they're signing up and they're putting goals on the table for themselves. And we, of course, have the big goal — a million over 10 years. And they're basically saying, “This is gonna be my chunk of it.” Some of them come, and they've been doing skills-first hiring and they have a skills-first culture that's relatively advanced. Most come to the table at the very beginning of the journey. And that's cool because we can actually use the muscles of those who are further along to hopefully accelerate the journeys of those who are not.

[27:57] Esther Farkas: And these are big companies, Fortune 500 companies. Do you want to name some of them?

[27:59] Maurice Jones: Wallmarts, Merck, IBM, and Accenture. These are companies that hire a lot of people.

[28:19] Taylor Justice: Education is a big business. Think about it. The pinnacle of academic achievement, a Rhodes Scholar now advocating that, “Hey, maybe we should pull back on this a little bit.”

[28:33] Maurice Jones: My grandfather used to say, “Boy, you’re just going to be able to collect social security when you finish here.” One of many humbling moments, I went to take the bar exam after law school, and I sat down, and the guy beside me, we started introducing ourselves to one another. And I told him I was from Cambridge, and that I had gone to Hampton, Sydney, and then I went to law school at UVA, and now I'm here taking the bar. And he was from the western part of the state, I think he'd gone to college at one of the small liberal arts colleges in the western part of state, and then he stopped and I said, “Well, where'd you go to law school?” He said, “I didn't go to law school.” I looked down and I was like, “Dude, this is the bar exam.” I was like, “I’m not sure anybody has told you.” He said, “Oh, no, in Virginia, you can actually sit for the bar through two methods: You can go to law school for three years and then you can sit for the bar, or you can be in an apprentice with a lawyer,” it was either six or seven years, and take the bar. Even the Bar of Virginia recognized that you can get the skills needed to do law work through multiple pathways, and it doesn't have to be that formal credential. We just, in this country, we leave a lot of time on the sideline because of a mental predisposition, a mental bias in favor of a credential. Other countries are ahead of us in this. So, I'm encouraged because these companies are doing it. So we officially started March of 2021. As of the end of September 2022, over 73,000 hires and promotions — black talent, no four-year degree, living wage job at a minimum. This is doable.

[30:41] Taylor Justice: Well, Maurice, I want to thank you so much for sharing your story today. I think the sense of duty that you showed towards your grandparents of setting you up and giving you the example of where to go, the sense of duty you had in public service. And I think it's coming full circle of you've talked a lot about a lot of luck, a lot of people that paved the way, and you now returning that favor of putting a million people into better prosperous lives. It's a big calling and we thank you for doing it.

[31:10] Maurice Jones: My pleasure. It's also what has attracted me to Unite Us — the mission. So, thank you all for what you're doing.

[31:18] Esther Farkas: So we always ask one question at the end. You've been in the public sector, you've been in the private sector, what makes an enduring company? Is it the people? Or is it the product or the brand?

[31:32] Maurice Jones: That's easy. It's the people. Look, I, unfortunately, eat a lot of fast food too much and milkshakes are my favorite. But I love it when I go, there's one fast food place that I go to and I'll say, “Here's what I want. Thank you.” And they will say, without hesitation, “It's my pleasure.” And that, I go back because of that spirit. So, yeah, in every place I've been, what's really been the piece that is the secret sauce is the people in the place. Don't get me wrong, it helps if you have a great mission, it helps if you have great technology, it helps if you have a lot of money. But the secret sauce, the people, for sure.

[32:23] Taylor Justice: Well, again, thank you. I know you’ve got a train to catch and we appreciate you spending time with us, we really do. This was great.

[32:38] Esther Farkas: Thank you for coming in.