Banking on KC – Henry Wash of High Aspirations
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us.
With us on this episode is Henry Wash, the Founder and CEO of High Aspirations, a mentoring program serving young African American males. Welcome, Henry.
Henry Wash:
Thank you for having me. How are you today?
Kelly Scanlon:
I'm doing great. I'm so happy to have you here and to tell us about the High Aspirations program. What is its mission?
Henry Wash:
We support African American males socially, mostly academically and spiritually from 8 to 18. High Aspirations was a research project I performed while attending the Henry W Bloch School of Business Management at UMKC in 2003. High Aspirations was founded on evidence-based, peer-reviewed and empirical research from various backgrounds, such as public administration, anthropology, sociology, higher education, psychology, black studies, and of course business management.
We serve African American males from 8 to 18. Okay, that's what the research was done on, but we do allow other young men to join. We do have Asians, Latinos, and we also have Caucasian young men. Every Saturday our programming is chess. It's part of our core programming.
Kelly Scanlon:
Chess? The game of chess?
Henry Wash:
The game of chess. We also, on the second Saturday we have leadership training, and then the third Saturday we have pre-collegiate, and then on the fourth Saturdays we have community service.
Now, it would probably surprise you that we have 76 wonderful community partners. And those partners, such as the Kansas City Zoo, Union Station, K State, UMKC, Penn Valley, Country Club Bank, and many others who come and aid us in the programming of the organization to create a better community for our young men.
Kelly Scanlon:
So you serve 8 to 24-year-old African Americans. Why this population? Why is that focus so important to you?
Henry Wash:
I want to say I was the phantom of the Bloch School. Decided to take on this research project when no one else would. And the guy who really, really helped was Dr. Gary Baker.
The research and evidence that really drove me here, I've had a background of a lot of challenges myself, but just now researching everything that happened with this particular group, I really understood why I was having issues. We had a strategy planning meeting and Dr. Gary Baker and our board sat down to help with that particular piece. Mr. Bloch was the one who called Dr. Gary Baker to ask him to help with the strategy. The board decided to hire me on.
I wasn't the greatest kid in school and I felt like, "Well, I was going to get my payback." But everything has been really good. Now, I've had challenges with this particular group. They're kids; you're going to have challenges. But at the same time, I think my wife and my daughter, we get a lot of fulfillment out of High Aspirations. There's nothing else that we would do.
Being a guest lecturer at Yale and being able to have the freedom to do most definitely what I would want to do, and particularly with this, I could say I retired early, which I did from a career that I mastered pretty much to step into my purpose-driven life. So when I look at the why, it was most definitely purposeful behind the research as well as my history and background that led me in this direction. I was able to stick my neck out and say, "Hey, if no one is going to do it, I will because someone needs to."
It's just sad our society has come to what it has come to that folks are not willing to address the issue. When you look at the news, the first face you see on there is an African American male who has done a crime, who has done something crazy. We're the only one that's willing to stick our neck out there and say, "We're going to deal with this. We're going to catch it before it gets started. From 8 to 18, we want to get these guys mentored and give them a chance to get a job. We're going to get them a chance to get their education right, socially adjust and get connected spiritually and be supported socially." So that's the why behind it.
Kelly Scanlon:
When you talk about some of the people who help you out, I know one group that you have is mentors. Tell us about the mentors who work with the people that you serve.
Henry Wash:
One of my favorite mentors, and I've never forgotten this and I hope that he hears this, is Barnett Helzberg. There's a reasoning behind so many partnerships; because it's necessary. He is a really good friend of mine. He had this saying. He said, "If you always try to be everything to everybody, then you're nothing to nobody." We need that team concept to really come to play there.
We need to understand that we're not experts at anything. We need the partnerships for people to come and help us. I don't mean to name-drop, but we got so many others like Terry Dunn, Bill Dunn Jr., John Sherman, Mark Brandmeyer, Peter Clune, Ted McKnight, Rick Butterfield, John Smith. And we have Leo Morton, Anita Maltbia, Dana Nelson, Tom Bloch, David Myles, Jonathan Kemper, Bill Dunn Sr. I know you guys know who that is. He just turned 100.
Kelly Scanlon:
100.
Henry Wash:
Yes, he did.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yes, a huge achievement there.
So lots and lots of people from all over the metro. How long does the mentorship last? Is it a one-year commitment or longer?
Henry Wash:
I'm glad you asked that. It's a two-year commitment. It's renewable. So if someone has said, "Okay, I've had enough after my two years," they don't have to continue, but I find very often that that's not the case.
Kelly Scanlon:
Are you finding that a lot of the mentors get as much or more out of it as the young men who are involved with your program?
Henry Wash:
I believe they do because those mothers they cook really wonderful meals. We have lunch now, and man, I tell you, they really enjoy that.
Kelly Scanlon:
In what ways do the mentors engage? When they come on these Saturdays, do they participate in whatever activities are already scheduled, say chess or leadership, or do they have a separate program that they do in addition to those already scheduled programs?
Henry Wash:
Now you got my eggs cooking now. I think we're getting there. This is my favorite part to talk about.
We just took these young men to K State a couple of weekends ago there. There were some mentors who went. They had a chance to actually participate. Went to the School of Agriculture and Architecture. And some of those mentors really emphasize in those particular key areas. So they had a chance to be involved there, and they were just all lit up. It was just exciting.
This one particular guy I know by the name of Stedman Graham, he's going to be coming to Kansas City pretty soon. He's going to be doing some things with us. He's one of our partners, Stedman Graham & Associates. He's going to be doing some things with this. So I would classify him as a mentor.
He comes in, he does workshops with the young man, and he really loves this program. He really believes that it's something that's scalable, something that could really be taken from city to city, because it's just set up with the structure. The empirical and the evidence-based research that's behind it lends to the credibility. Within itself, we know mentoring is an evidence-based practice, but we have the empirical research and the peer review research to back that up as well.
Kelly Scanlon:
So Stedman Graham is coming to work with you on perhaps expanding this, but at the very least, working with you here in the Kansas City area, correct?
Henry Wash:
Yes.
Kelly Scanlon:
Henry, you've had a long and successful career, most recently with Freightquote, a very successful company in itself. So what personally inspired you to leave that?
Henry Wash:
Oh man, now you're going to make me cry. This is a heartfelt touch story that I really will never forget. First, I loved working at freightquote.com, and I really thank Tim Barton for giving me the opportunity to be there.
While I was there, I began doing High Aspirations as a volunteer. My wife and I, we found it in 2003, and now it's 2023. I tell you one of the things I admire is the Thompsons. Paul Thompson and his wife are going to be our honorary co-chairs this year. We're bringing in Coach Ken Carter, the original Coach Carter. He has a remarkable story and one that you should most definitely hear.
I think that it's going to be an opportunity to touch so many people in the community who support High Aspirations in that evening. It's going to be November the 3rd at the downtown of Marriott. For more information, you can give us a call at 816-305-3334. 816-305-3334. Ask for my assistant Regina Heath, and she will help you.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay. And this is for the Mentors Challenge?
Henry Wash:
The Mentors Challenge November the 3rd, 2023, this fall.
Kelly Scanlon:
Is that an annual event or is this the first time?
Henry Wash:
It is an annual event. It's a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to give back and help our community.
Kelly Scanlon:
And you definitely have some wonderful co-chairs that will be helping you out for that. What is the point of the Mentors Challenge?
Henry Wash:
It's actually an advocacy event, and it actually raises resources. We recruit mentors, volunteers, someone who would be interested in becoming involved in such a great mission as this. It's well grounded. It has a lot of credibility. COMBAT supports it. United Way supports it. We actually are a GuideStar transparency organization. I think it's a wonderful program that's really changing the narrative of how someone would view a program like this.
Kelly Scanlon:
In what way? Expand on that a little bit.
Henry Wash:
When I say changing the narrative, if you look at the empirical research, you look at the peer-review research and you look at the evidence-based research that's behind this program, it says that we're supporting these boys socially, emotionally, academically, and spiritually. In all those four areas, they're factors as far as why African American males don't fare well in our society. We took those top factors in those particular categories and we put an answer to each one of those. You don't really find that too often in programming that it's that intentional.
So with the metrics that we measure, we're actually looking at the amount of time that we're given to each young man. I know that a lot of people don't associate time with outcome, but we do, because the more time we spend with the kid, the more successful he's going to be.
Kelly Scanlon:
With that in mind, what kind of results has the program yielded so far?
Henry Wash:
When I look at the results, they're striking. Over 76 program partners, over $3 million in a 30,000 square foot campus we renovated successfully in 2018. We invested over 75,000 last year in workforce development for our young men to have jobs. We also raised over 55,000 for scholarships to help our young men with school. The boys have moved tons, I mean tons of dirt to make our campus happen.
Kelly Scanlon:
So they built it?
Henry Wash:
Yeah, they pretty much. Now, we had to have professionals come in and do work that they couldn't do. We've had over 15,000 contact hours. When I look at this year in particular, the boys have moved over 50,000 pounds of dirt to make their gardens and raised beds and stuff happen at the center. The boys have harvested a lot of produce from that. So much that I've said, "It's time to get those things out of here. It's just a lot. Just too much."
100% of our young men have a plan for their life. As a group, these young men raised their GPAs from 2.5 to 2.8 last year. Per young man, they perform a minimum of 36 hours of community service a year, and we don't pay them to do this either. It's volunteer. It's all volunteer.
We assist the Lone Bellow community with projects that they want us to do. We do things at the Mentoring Center. We help with harvesters. The list goes on and on and on and on. But this particular year we're going to organize things where we're just forming an alumni association. We'll meet two times a year. That's another opportunity for someone to become involved. Because what we're going to do is encourage these young men to give a dollar a year, each young man that's graduated from High Aspirations. That's not a lot. We don't know their personal life circumstances at this moment. A lot of them may be saying, "Okay, well, I need that for rent." Or, "I need this for that." It's just a dollar.
Kelly Scanlon:
It shows the commitment and starts to establish that mindset of giving back to a very worthy cause.
Tell us about this new center that you have. Where's it located?
Henry Wash:
It's off of 27th and Charlotte. It's a very beautiful 30,000 square foot campus. We have a small soccer field with a little track around it. We have a pavilion space that's 2200 square foot, and it's really so awesome. We have 12 raised bed gardens out there with switchbacks with the grass.
Inside the center, we have an inside game truck that the boys are able to do some gaming on. But they have to earn the right to go in there. It's not something that they just get a chance to just experience without earning the right to go in there. There's a criteria. We also have some things inside of there, like foosball, pool.
The criteria is they have to have at least a 2.5 GPA and they also have to be involved in a program at least six hours a month, and they have to be on good behavior at home. So mom has the last say so, and if you ain't doing what you should be doing, you can't go in there.
We have a very structured way of doing what we do. In the main area, we have a kitchen and the same people who did Patrick Mahomes' kitchen in his first house that he bought, did our kitchen. So I hope Patrick is listening to this.
Kelly Scanlon:
We hope so too.
Henry Wash:
Maybe he'll come and cook for us one day.
Then we have breakout rooms built interior. Mark Brandmeyer, the CEO of the T-Bones, which was the T-Bones, now the Monarchs, he's on our board. He donated those rooms for us. And in the main foyer area where we have all of our sessions, it's just a great explosive area where we have a lot of transformational programming that occurs there. It's wonderful.
Kelly Scanlon:
How many do you serve each year on an annual basis?
Henry Wash:
Right now, we have 147 young men. We have two cohorts. We have a cohort that meets at 10:00 and another cohort that meets at 3:00 for two hours, and in each cohort we have 70. We're over the amount of young men that we would have because we're beginning to march toward, of course, a third cohort.
Kelly Scanlon:
You have talked a lot about the mentor program, but for Henry Wash, who has influenced you most throughout your life?
Henry Wash:
If there was one, it would be most definitely Mr. Bloch, no doubt, because he touched my soul in a way that no one else has. We were very, very close. The things that he taught me, you cannot put inside of a book. I would say the other, if there would be one, would be Thurman Mitchell. He left KCTV5 to become a full-time minister and pastor. These most definitely would be at the top of my list. I know you only want one, but I can't mention just one because both of these guys were very impactful, very impactful in my life.
Kelly Scanlon:
You said that what you learned, you can't put in a book. I'm not going to ask you to limit it to one. But if you could mention maybe the most important lesson that you learned, and that has really become an integral part of your life.
Henry Wash:
It had to be integrity and then achievement, compassion, enthusiasm, and most definitely, teamwork. Both of them had that in common. And then finally I look at spirituality. No one had a different belief system than the other. I just took so much from both of them because they adored their wives. They love their wives with all of their heart. They love family, and they would do anything for family.
It's just the basic things in life that you can take away from that'll take you further than what people think. Integrity is a very big deal with anyone, with me particularly, and that's because I was mentored that way. I'm just a regular, normal man. I'm a square. That's just me. I go home. I go to church with my family, and I'm with High Aspirations. There's not much to me at all. I don't go to the nightclubs. I don't do any of that type of stuff. I feel like that, as leaders, it's our responsibility to be mature enough to understand what true integrity looks like.
Kelly Scanlon:
You were talking about how Stedman Graham is going to be working with you on possibly taking this to another level, perhaps across the country. So what are your next steps for High Aspirations?
Henry Wash:
We earned the Kansas City Kansas Community College Hall of Fame in Kansas for the work that we do with the young men from that particular community. We have increased our reach in that particular population.
Concerning the young men who attend High Aspirations over the last couple of years, we've had a really huge impact in that particular area. We don't have a timeline yet. Nevertheless, we should be planning our expansion very soon in the near future over in Kansas to do some things with that particular group there because it's just a natural segue there. The things that we're doing with Stedman Graham here pretty soon that you're here a lot about, that's another way we're going to expand as well.
One other thing that we're going to do is through what we call the High Aspirations University. What we're going to do is look at partnering with 40 corporations. We'll ask them to come in and do a presentation to young men. It's an outreach program that any company could benefit from; the workforce to improve their workforce. These young men would get a certificate at the end of those two hours, with the possibility that it would open up a door for them to walk in the door to pursue maybe an opportunity with that particular corporation.
We're looking to do that because we know that a lot of folk struggle trying to just find good people, and if we're able to help in this way and expand our reach, it's going to help Kansas City be a better place.
Kelly Scanlon:
How can our listeners get involved?
Henry Wash:
They can become involved and be a volunteer through helping with our garden. We do have a lot of community service cleanup projects. They could be a mentor and mentor a young man to success. They can help with tutoring. We have a tutoring program. We also have piano lessons, where we do piano with our young men. We also have singing lessons as well. They can volunteer to be a guest barber to come and cut hair. They can volunteer in a variety of ways. So just don't limit yourself because there's always something you can do. Even if it's volunteering for event planning, we need help there as well. Or volunteering to give a dollar. That's always a good thing.
You can get us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. We also have a website; www.highaspirationskc.org. That's www.highaspirationskc.org. You also call us at 816-305-3334. That's 816-305-3334. We are on KPRT Gospel 1590 every Friday at 6:45 AM. I know that's pretty early, but that's the time that we come on. We're there with Debbie Dee on that morning show.
Kelly Scanlon:
You are doing a wonderful service, not just to the community, but for generations to come. I mean, you're changing lives right now that are going to change other lives. Thank you so much for being our guest today, Henry, and for all that you do and all that you work with for the Kansas City community.
Henry Wash:
Thank you. Appreciate you. I just want us to take this time out to say thank you to PJ, to Paul Thompson, Joe Close. I appreciate you guys and you are rock stars as well. Appreciate you.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, President of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Henry Wash for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC.
True to its name, High Aspirations is laying the foundation for participants to achieve something great with their lives. In doing so, the organization's impact extends beyond the young men currently engaged in the program. It is elevating the opportunities for their future families and therefore raising up all of Kansas City.
As Henry noted, High Aspirations emphasizes integrity, achievement, compassion, teamwork, and enthusiasm, all of which coincide with our core values at Country Club Bank. Given that alignment, it is only fitting that our chairman, Paul Thompson, and his wife will be serving as honorary co-chairs of this year's Mentoring Challenge taking place in November. We hope you'll consider getting involved in supporting the important life-changing work of High Aspirations.
Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.